Despite a massive nationwide protest campaign, the ruling bloc in the Diet's lower house pushed through a law "reinterpreting" Japan's constitution to allow combat missions.
At least five Chinese attorneys from a human rights law firm were detained after being accused of running a criminal syndicate and smear campaign against the Communist Party.
Protesters attacked the Thai consulate in Istanbul as Bangkok deported 109 Uighurs back to China despite international warnings that they could face persecution and torture.
Archaeologists are racing against time to salvage artifacts from the 5,000-year-old Mes Aynak site in Afghanistan's Logar province before it is destroyed by an open-pit copper mine.
Vietnam's paramount leader Nguyen Phu Trong meets with Obama at the White House, as the US and China play a dangerous game of chicken over disputed islands.
China's top legislature, the NPC Standing Committee, adopted a controversial new National Security Law that increases cyber security powers and "ideological control over the public."
Up to 28 were killed in an attack on a police checkpoint in Xinjiang, as Chinese authorities take measures to discourage observance of Ramadan in the mostly Muslim region.
China's ex-security minister Zhou Yongkang was found guilty of bribery, abuse of power and disclosing state secrets, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Deadly repression of a mass protest march over regional development issues in Linshui, Sichuan, comes as wildcat strikes are hitting China's mineral sector.
Chinese prosecutors said that human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang has been indicted on charges of fanning ethnic hatred and provoking unrest for comments that he posted online.
After weeks of escalating tensions along the remote mountain border, a Burmese MiG-29 fighter jet carried out an air-strike on Chinese territory, killing four farm workers.
The latest fighting in Burma's opium-producing hinterlands involves a Han Chinese ethnic group, the Kokang. Some 50,000 have fled across the border into China.
