North Korea continues to build its nuclear weapons programme.

Kim Jong Un showed off ballistic missiles at a celebration of North Korea's founder.

Previously classified footage of nuclear explosions tested during the Cold War have been rescued from high-security vaults.

COMMENT: Could an American president start a nuclear war without going through the checks and balance of the American Congress? The short answer is yes.

A Doomsday Clock, which symbolises the current threat of global annihilation, is expected to be moved closer to midnight by scientists.

New CIA files lend weight to claims that in 1984 new PM David Lange was working on a loophole big enough for the United States to sail a non-nuclear warship through.

COMMENT: Over a summer beer, someone casually asked me what I wanted for 2017. I just as casually said "world peace."

Once again this year, the US retained its long-held place as the world's biggest spender on defence, with China in second place.

Of all the images emerging from this testing week, the sight of a military flotilla standing off Kaikoura counts among the most extraordinary.

Whether you're a superpower or a lone wolf, there have never been more deadly weapons available at any time in the world than right now.

US President Barack Obama has urged world leaders to do more to safeguard vulnerable nuclear facilities to prevent "madmen" from groups like Isis.

Mike Hosking says when it comes down to it, what country is a genuine nuclear threat right now? This doom and gloom attitude needs to stop.

For any rational military strategist, the risks of an armed response to North Korea's sanctions violations and pin-prick provocations are prohibitive, writes Benjamin Habib.

North Korea may have explained its announced hydrogen bomb test as a response to US "hostility", but experts say it may more accurately reflect deteriorating relations with China.

The risks posed to the world by nuclear weapons have increased since New Zealand was advancing its anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s, writes Sir Geoffrey Palmer.

The US is "an insurmountable obstacle" to disarmament, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev says in a wide-ranging recent interview published this week.

If there is one event that defines the modern world, it is the blinding, searing, radioactive explosion over the city of Hiroshima 70 years ago today.

Seventy years on, the feared nuclear Armageddon has been kept in check - but a new threat is mounting, writes Alexander Gillespie.

President Barack Obama has challenged his critics at home and abroad to back the Iran nuclear deal.

The deal to curb Iran's nuclear weapons programme came at the end of two years of an intricate ballet, involving United States President Barack Obama and leaders of six other countries.

Murray McCully said today the nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers was an “important” breakthrough.

Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday the United States and its negotiating partners "will not rush, and we will not be rushed" into finalising a nuclear deal with Iran.

The world's largest nuclear meeting, the five-yearly Review Conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has just closed at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

This month North Korea claimed to have launched a ballistic missile from a submerged submarine.

One of the biggest deals of the decade has just been concluded. Alexander Gillespie discusses Iran's nuclear concessions.

Pakistan has test-fired a ballistic missile able to carry a nuclear warhead to every part of India. Yesterday's test was another escalation in Islamabad's effort to keep pace with its neighbouring rival's formidable military advancements.

Veterans of British nuclear tests in the mid-Pacific in the 1950s, including New Zealand servicemen, have taken heart from a first victory in their long fight for compensation for illnesses linked to radioactive fallout.

US Secretary of State John Kerry says he knows New Zealand stands with America on Iraq - and he doesn’t need to ask to know that.