NRA Push Police To Sell Guns, Trump On 2nd Amendment, Cruz Brushes Off Birther Questions,

The tests North Korea conducted until now used fission weapons, which break large atoms like plutonium, into smaller atoms. Such weapons can have a devastating impact. Think the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

But hydrogen bombs use fusion, which take small atoms -- such as hydrogen -- and combine them. The result: a bomb that is hundreds of times more powerful than an atomic bomb.

Here's why: In order to combine the small atoms and start a fusion reaction, such a bomb needs a large amount of energy. And that energy comes from an atomic bomb inside the hydrogen bomb.

So, basically, a hydrogen bomb causes two separate explosions.

What is a H-bomb?

Why would North Korea test a hydrogen bomb?
Boosting nuclear capability has been one of the hallmarks of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's rule, said Mike Chinoy, author of "Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis."

"I think it does send a signal, again, that the North Koreans are a power to be reckoned with, and they want the rest of the world to take them seriously," Chinoy said.

Why now?
In a signed letter broadcast on Korean media, Kim wrote that he wanted to ring in the new year with, quite literally, a bang.

"For the victorious and glorious year of 2016 when the 7th convention of the Workers' Party will be held, make the world look up to our strong nuclear country and labor party by opening the year with exciting noise of the first hydrogen bomb!" the letter read.

Does North Korea really have an H-bomb?
Maybe not, some analysts say.

French magazine Charlie Hebdo's front covers are known to be provocative. But now they've irritated the Vatican -- or at least its newspaper.

One day ahead of the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the publication's headquarters in Paris that killed 12 people, Charlie Hebdo released 1 million copies of a special edition.

The front cover features a bearded man, apparently representative of God, splattered in blood and carrying an assault rifle over his shoulder. The headline translates as: "One year after: The assassin is still out there."

In its commentary this week, L'Osservatore Romano, the newspaper of the Vatican state, said it's not impressed.

NRA declines to participate in Obama gun town hall.

The nation's largest gun rights organization declined Wednesday to send official representatives to a nationally televised town hall with President Barack Obama on gun violence -- just days after the president reignited a discussion over this controversial topic.

"The National Rifle Association sees no reason to participate in a public relations spectacle orchestrated by the White House," NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam told CNN, which is moderating the live town hall Thursday evening in Virginia. The NRA strengthened its comment after initially saying the White House had "organized" the event.

The NRA, the most influential gun rights group in terms of political persuasion and financial contributions, boasts a membership of about five million people.

A CNN spokesperson said that it was the network, not the White House, that proposed the idea of a town hall on guns, and noted the audience would be evenly divided between organizations that support the Second Amendment including NRA members as well as groups that back gun regulation.