Japan loosened the bonds on its powerful military, proclaiming the right to go into battle in defence of allies, in a highly controversial shift in the nation's pacifist stance.
The death toll from a military offensive in a flashpoint town in east Ukraine rose to at least 34, officials said Tuesday, amid fresh warnings of civil war and the shutdown of a major airport in the region.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon flew into South Sudan Tuesday to demand an end to a brutal four-month-old civil war that has sparked dire warnings of genocide and famine.
European leaders are desperately pushing a new peace bid for Ukraine as the country slipped towards what its interim president warned Monday was already a "war" in the face of spreading violence.
More than 30 people were killed in a "criminal" blaze in Ukraine's southern city of Odessa, as violence spread across the country during the bloodiest day since Kiev's Western-backed government took power.
Syria's civil war has forced more than nine million people from their homes, creating the world's largest displaced population, the UN said on Friday, describing the continuing conflict as "unconscionable".
A group of 82 elderly, frail South Koreans, two of them in ambulances, left for the North Korean border Thursday to attend the first reunion in more than three years for families divided by the Korean War.
China and Taiwan will hold their first government-to-government talks Tuesday since they split 65 years ago after a brutal civil war -- a symbolic yet historic move between the former bitter rivals.
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Monday proposed fresh reunions of families separated by the Korean War after a previous bid was cancelled by Pyongyang, and promised increased humanitarian aid to the impoverished North.
South Sudan's warring parties were set to begin direct talks Saturday in a bid to end the conflict pushing the world's youngest nation towards civil war as fighting intensified for control of a key oil town.
Japan's nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe paid tribute at Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni war shrine on Thursday, in a move Beijing condemned as "absolutely unacceptable".
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has urged the country's military to bolster its combat readiness, saying a war could break out "without any prior notice", state media reported Wednesday.
The United Nations is warning that violence was spreading in South Sudan, as fierce fighting in the world's youngest nation prompted the US to evacuate Americans and other foreigners.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum took possession Tuesday of a Nazi war criminal's long-lost diary and posted it online to help researchers decipher the thinking behind Adolf Hitler's "final solution."