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Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says his military is gradually shifting its attention from Gaza to Israel's northern border with Lebanon, as Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants traded new cross-border attacks on Wednesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Middle East hoping to broker an elusive cease-fire deal aimed at ending Israel's devastating war in the Gaza Strip.

"Continuous" Israeli military evacuation orders in Gaza threaten already extremely vulnerable people in the enclave with further forced displacement, raising concerns that vital services could soon be cut off, UN humanitarians warned on Wednesday.

The Philippine Navy (PN) is focusing on protecting the country's vast exclusive economic zone (EEZ) with its available capital ships, a ranking naval official said on Tuesday.

United Nations-appointed special rapporteur Richard Bennett confirmed Wednesday that the Taliban, Afghanistan's de facto leaders, had prohibited him from entering the country.

The first WFP food supplies destined for desperate communities in Sudan's Darfur have crossed the Adre border from Chad, after it was reopened by the Sudanese authorities following a six-month closure.

Yuanjun Tang, 67, a naturalized citizen of the United States and resident of Queens, New York, was charged by criminal complaint with acting and conspiring to act in the United States as an unregistered agent of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and making materially false statements to the FBI. Tang was arrested today in Flushing, Queens, and will be presented this afternoon.

Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to deepen development ties with Fiji and support Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka's plan for an "ocean of peace," as the Pacific leader finished a 10-day visit to the Asian superpower before attending a major regional forum next week.

The Iranian parliament (Majlis) has ended the debate on nominees for the country's new cabinet and approved all of President Masoud Pezeshkian's 19 cabinet picks.

The General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces has rejected a media report saying that the helicopter crash in May in which Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died was caused by weather conditions and the aircraft's inability to handle the weight it was carrying.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday that Hamas' Rafah Division in Gaza has been "defeated" and signaled that the military was shifting its focus to the fighting against Hezbollah along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Taiwan's military will hold the Tien Ma Exercises next week in Pingtung County, during which a new generation of TOW missile launch platforms will be tested as part of night-time shooting drills for the first time, a military source said.

President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) on Wednesday called on democratic nations to take "concrete action" to address the threat of China's authoritarian expansion, noting that Taiwan was not the only target as Beijing sought to change the international order.

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te on Wednesday urged the world's democratic countries to come together and act to prevent China from expanding authoritarianism and changing the rules-based international order.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, making his first visit to Azerbaijan in six years, marveled at how Baku, the capital city, had developed. "It's an oasis, I would say, in the region," he said at an August 19 meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev.

Oleg Chistyakov, also known as Olegs Čitsjakovs, 55, of Latvia, made his initial appearance in a federal court in Kansas City, Kansas, today after being extradited from Latvia. Chistyakov is the third defendant in this case to face charges in connection with a years-long conspiracy to sell sophisticated avionics equipment to Russian companies, after Russia's unlawful invasion of Ukraine and despite heightened additional U.S.

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The Albanese Government will contribute up to $850 million in partnership with Kongsberg Defence Australia to manufacture and service missiles at Williamtown near Newcastle.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Wednesday co-chaired the 29th regular meeting between Chinese and Russian heads of government with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in Moscow and said China is ready to work with Russia to strengthen all-round practical cooperation between the two countries, and push the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era to a new level.

Chinese officials and industry representatives on Wednesday lashed out at the European Commission(EC) for its newly released draft definitive findings of the probe against Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), warning that the EU's wrong, protectionist action seriously undermines mutual trust and cooperation between China and the EU as it hurts Chinese firms' confidence in the EU market.