East Asia

South Korean anti-missile protesters score victory

As Trump and and Kim Jong-un exchange nuclear threats, anti-missile protesters in rural South Korea scored a win, prompting Seoul to delay plans to expand the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery that the Pentagon installed in April. The announcement came as villagers and activists were blocking the road to the THAAD base.

East Asia

Korea: protests as US begins THAAD installation

Protesters blocked roads and clashed with police in South Korea’s rural Seongju county as US forces began installing the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system.

North America

Trump-Putin breach: real or charade?

Is Trump's breach with Putin real, or is all the sudden sabre-rattling part of an elaborate charade to throw Congress off the scent of ongoing Trump-Putin collusion?

Planet Watch

Doomsday Clock: 2.5 minutes of midnight

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand of its symbolic Doomsday Clock from three minutes to two-and-a-half minutes to midnight.

East Asia

South Korea’s victory: can it happen in US?

Weeks of relentless street protests in South Korea finally succeeded in impeaching President Park Geun-Hye. Can a similar stateside mobilization stop Trump's inauguration?

Planet Watch

UN moves to outlaw nuclear weapons in 2017

The UN adopted a resolution—hailed by disarmament campaigners as an important landmark—to launch negotiations in 2017 on a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons.

East Asia

Real threat in North Korea: regime collapse

North Korea's missile tests point to a desperate regime trying to keep its own populace distracted, and to spook the international community into providing food aid.

East Asia

Tiananmen spectacle, historical revisionism

The massive spectacle in Beijing commemorating China's victory in the Sino-Japanese War was preceded by arrests of activists pushing a dissident version of the conflict's history.

East Asia

Korea escalation amid US military exercise

Artillery exchanges across the DMZ come amid the joint US-South Korea "Ulchi Freedom Guardian" military exercise, involving 30,000 US troops and 50,000 South Korean.