Doomsday clock: countdown to nuclear destruction shifted back one minute

Anti-nuclear campaigners welcomed forecasts by the symbolic clock, created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947, that the current threat had lessened.

The gimmick was built in New York two years after the US dropped the first atom bombs on Japan in World War Two and was first set at seven minutes to midnight.

In 2007 it was wound on to five minutes to midnight, to reflect the failure to solve problems posed by nuclear weapons.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) said the hands on the clock were now being moved back to six minutes to midnight.

Kate Hudson, from CND, said: ''This shift reflects the significant improvement since the end of the Bush era. Both Presidents Obama and Medvedev are committed to nuclear abolition and have put the issue firmly at the centre of the international political agenda.