Tom Lasseter

The fever pitch surrounding North Korea’s threats of hostile action began to ease Friday, as Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in South Korea to push a diplomatic track that would include China to defuse the tension.

The North Korean army warned the United States on Wednesday it has been cleared to wage nuclear war using “smaller, lighter and diversified weapons.”

An 80-year-old man accused of killing a local doctor during China’s Cultural Revolution 45 years ago has been sentenced to three years and six months, a punishment the court said was appropriately light in part because the crime took place during “a special historical period.”

North Korea on Monday canceled the armistice agreement that nearly 60 years ago brought a cease-fire to the Korean War, leaving a world of analysts wondering how far the secretive police state will go to show its displeasure with South Korea and its American ally, which still has 28,500 troops based here.

The blind Chinese activist at the center of a six-day diplomatic tussle between the U.S. and China said he fears for his family's lives and wants to leave China, hours after American officials announced an agreement with Beijing that was to guarantee his safety.

Seven years ago, a truck convoy rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who'd surrendered to an Afghan warlord. When the trucks arrived at a prison, they were filled with corpses.