Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday that the military would hold drills involving tactical nuclear weapons — the first time such an exercise has been publicly announced by Moscow.

A look at tactical nuclear weapons and the part they play in the Kremlin’s political messaging.

(April 30, 2024 / JNS) Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction has reiterated its desire to reconcile with Hamas, China’s Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday following talks in Beijing.

Representatives of Fatah and Hamas recently held negotiations in the Chinese capital with a view to forging a Palestinian unity government.

BEIJING (AP) — China on Wednesday blasted the latest package of U.S. military assistance to Taiwan on Wednesday, saying that such funding was pushing the self-governing island republic into a “dangerous situation.”

The U.S. Senate late Tuesday passed $95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars. China claims the entire island of Taiwan as its own territory and has threatened to take it by force if necessary.

Numerous world leaders warned against an escalation of the situation in the Middle East on Friday, after Israel struck an Iranian military site in the city of Isfahan earlier in the morning.

Fears of a regional escalation caused oil prices to surge by several percent following reports of the Israeli strike, while several markets in Asia dropped, and European stock exchanges like the German DAX started trade with significant drops on Friday.

China expressed "grave concern" on Thursday at the deployment of a U.S. missile system to the edge of the South China Sea, potentially putting Chinese territory within striking range.

The U.S. Army this month hailed the "historic first" arrival of a medium or mid-range capability launcher in the northern Philippines as part of an ongoing military exercise.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL — Prior to October 7, the future seemed so bright for Israel.

We had just signed our sixth Arab-Israeli peace and normalization agreement.

We seemed to be on track to sign a seventh agreement with Saudi Arabia.

Our economy was booming, tourism was hitting record levels, and Israel was building increasingly close and warm ties with nations and governments all over the globe.

The Palestinians’ long-dormant application for full United Nations membership will be given a fresh look on Monday.

The United Nations Security Council is set to meet, first in closed consultations, then in an open format, to consider the 2011 application—a move officially requested in a letter from Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad Mansour last Wednesday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia and NATO are now in "direct confrontation", the Kremlin said as the U.S.-led alliance marked its 75th anniversary on Thursday.

NATO's successive waves of eastern enlargement are a fixation of President Vladimir Putin, who went to war in Ukraine two years ago with the stated aim of preventing the alliance from coming closer to Russia's borders. Instead, the war has galvanised NATO, which has expanded again with the entry of Finland and Sweden.

China has deployed more than 20 fighter jets and eight warships towards Taiwan, the self-ruled island's defense ministry announced on Wednesday.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army sent 20 military aircraft and eight navy vessels around Taiwan in a 24-hour-window leading up to 6am local time Wednesday, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said.

The polar vortex circling the Arctic is swirling in the wrong direction after surprise warming in the upper atmosphere triggered a major reversal event earlier this month. It is one of the most extreme atmospheric U-turns seen in recent memory.

In the past, disruptions to the polar vortex — a rotating mass of cold air that circles the Arctic — have triggered extremely cold weather and storms across large parts of the U.S.

Seven Chinese naval vessels and five military aircraft were detected operating around Taiwan on Sunday, the country's Ministry of National Defence has claimed, as the threat of an invasion surges.

They described one Chinese aircraft entering Taiwan's Southwest Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) as Taipei's forces monitored its movement.

TOKYO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will agree next month to tighter military cooperation, including talks on the biggest potential change to Washington's East Asia command structure in decades, two sources said.

Washington will consider appointing a four-star commander to oversee its forces in Japan as a counterpart to the head of a proposed Japanese Self Defense Forces (SDF) headquarters overseeing all of the country's military operations, said the sources, who have direct knowledge of the plan.