Missile Tests, Nuclear Weapon | featured news

It remains unclear just when, if ever, North Korea will attempt their controversial third nuclear test, but there are growing signs that the reclusive nation's biggest political ally is growing weary of its behavior.

North Korea's missile tests and menacing rhetoric have disappointed U.S. expectations that young leader Kim Jong-un would be different than his father but Washington still hopes to persuade Pyongyang to change course, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday.

India announced plans Wednesday to test launch a new long-range missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as far as the Chinese capital Beijing for the first time. Officials and defense experts said if the tests of the Agni-V missile proved successful, it would mark a significant improvement in India’s nuclear deterrent capability, and would strengthen its hand in a hostile neighborhood, sandwiched between nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and China.

A joke circulating among officials in Beijing pretty much underlines the bind China is in over North Korea's plans to send a satellite into space. North Korea's young ruler Kim Jong-un phones a Chinese leader to tell him about timing of the planned rocket launch. "When will it be?" asks the Chinese leader. Kim replies: "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four..."

North Korea could carry out a controversial rocket launch this week, straining further the ties between the nuclear-armed state and other countries in the region.

South Korean news outlets quoted anonymous government sources as saying that satellite images of a growing pile of earth at a nuclear site might signal plans for a test.

The United States announces that it is suspending food aid to North Korea in light of Pyongyang's plans for a missile launch next month.

Pakistan has test-fired two ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, the military said Saturday.

The missile could easily reach Israel. Coupled with suspicions about Tehran's nuclear program, it stokes international concerns.

South Korean officials have detected "brisk" activity at a North Korean nuclear test site, a news report said Thursday, days after the communist country threatened to conduct nuclear and missile tests.