Scientists charged with international nuclear safeguards now assume that North Korea has a cache of weapons-grade plutonium slightly larger than a basketball, or enough for about nine bombs - since North Korea, for technical reasons, had to reprocess the plutonium or lose it.
Chinese secrecy about their space program is hampering possible cooperation with the United States.
For the first time since 1945, Japan is openly planning a beefier military. Moreover, for a staunchly pacifist nation, home to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a debate about having nuclear weapons, unthinkable a few years ago, is now thinkable.