Late last evening juts before going to bed, I read a news report that said that after a meeting with his senior military advisors, Donald “Moron” Trump had ominously told the people present that what they were witnessing was the “calm before the storm”. When asked what he meant, he had added “You’ll find out”. While trying to drop off to sleep, I honestly worried that he was about to launch an attack on North Korea that would unleash unpredictable consequences.

I was relieved to wake up this morning to find that war had not in fact broken out but that he had been referring to withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, which is also very bad but not as immediately catastrophic. It is telling that I, not someone prone to alarmist fantasies, actually feared a war breaking out on the Korean peninsular. This is what the ‘deranged dotard’ who is running this country has brought us to, where the possibility of a war that could turn nuclear is considered a real possibility.

Now there are reports that Trump may have been just ‘trolling the media’ with his ominous remarks. If true, we have a toddler as president, someone who does ot realize that words matter if you are in a position of authority where childish games are not appropriate.

At least there was some good news this morning in that the Nobel peace prize committee has given this year’s award to the group International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) that has been fighting to abolish nuclear weapons.

The chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said the award to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) had been made in recognition of the group’s work “to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”.

The committee’s choice amounts to a reprimand to the world’s nine nuclear-armed powers, all of whom boycotted negotiations for a treaty banning nuclear weapons – approved at the United Nations in July – and who described the treaty as dangerous.

The treaty was endorsed by 122 countries at the UN headquarters in New York after months of talks. None of the nine countries that possess nuclear weapons – the US, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – took part. The treaty will only be enforced when 50 countries have signed and ratified it, a process that could take months or years.

Any glimmer of good news is welcome in these dark days.