North Korea announced May 25 that it has successfully conducted its second nuclear test, in defiance of international warnings. Geological authorities in the US, Japan and South Korea reported that the test triggered an earthquake with a magnitude of between 4.5 and 5.3. The tremor emanated from Kilju, the same area where North Korea carried out a test in October 2006. North Korea said that test was a success, but the US and South Korea said the bomb did not detonate fully.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said May 12 that President Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso will discuss a possible peace treaty between the two nations at a G8 summit in Italy in July. Putin spoke at a news conference following talks with Japanese officials during his visit to Japan.

The US March 9 vowed to keep up military surveillance in waters off China and protested what it called harassment one day earlier of a US surveillance ship operated by civilian contractors for the Navy's Military Sealift Command. The Pentagon charged that a Chinese intelligence vessel and four others "shadowed and maneuvered dangerously close" to the USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea, then threw obstacles in the water as it tried to leave. During the confrontation, the Impeccable crew sprayed some of the Chinese sailors with a fire hose, causing some of the Chinese sailors to strip to their underwear.

Protesters in small motor-boats flying red flags circled the USS John C. Stennis chanting "carrier get out!" through megaphones as as the warship arrived Feb. 27 for a visit to Japan's Sasebo Naval Base, outside Nagasaki. Some 100 activists from the Nagasaki Peace Action Center, Rimpeace Sasebo and All Japan Dockworkers Union also gathered on the city's docks to cheer on the protest flotilla of some 25 boats.

As Americans mark the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, an imbroglio breaks out in Japan over World War II revisionism and calls for rearmament. Japan's former air force chief Gen. Toshio Tamogami, forced into retirement for denying the empire's wartime aggression, wasted no time in making even more controversial comments. "I think there should be debate about this, because nuclear deterrence would be enhanced as a result," the former head of the Air Self Defense Force told reporters Dec. 1 at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo. Tamogami said that if Japan had had nuclear weapons in 1945, it should have retaliated in kind for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Once you have been hit with something, then there is no choice but to hit back with it," he said.

Authorities in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu have imposed a curfew on districts of Longnan city following two days of violence between security forces and local residents resisting eviction. Fighting began Nov. 17, when some 1,000 people attacked a government office, smashing cars and beating police and officials. A group of more than 30 seeking redress for the loss of their homes and land were joined by hundreds more outside a petition office.

A week after the close of the Third Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, officials announced Oct. 19 that new rules have been issued allowing China's 800 million farmers to "lease their contracted farmland or transfer their land use right." The long-anticipated reform is officially intended to double rural incomes by 2020, the official news agency Xinhua reports. The reform is portrayed in the Western media as a response to the growing tide of peasant unrest in China. But Xinhua also made clear the ultimate aim is actually a de-emphasis of agriculture. "This breakthrough is necessary," said Xu Xianglin, an economics professor at the Party School of the Central Committee. "It meets the need of industrialization and urbanization in the current stage."

Former Boston Indymedia journalist and media activist Bryan Conley, founder of grassroots media videoblog Alive in Baghdad, is one of six US citizens detained in China for covering actions of Students for a Free Tibet during the Olympics. The other five pro-Tibet activists are Jeffrey Rae, Jeff Goldin, Michael Liss, Tom Grant, and James Powderly. On Aug. 21, the Chinese government handed them and four other European activists a 10-day detention sentence.