U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday night despite threats from Beijing of serious consequences, becoming the highest-ranking American official in 25 years to visit the self-ruled island claimed by China.
foreign policy
China sent 30 military aircraft toward Taiwan on Monday in an ongoing campaign of regular flights. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it responded by scrambling jets, putting air defense missile systems on alert and issuing radio warnings.
The confusion is a reminder of Washington’s stance of “strategic ambiguity” when it comes to Taiwan — essentially, leaving China guessing about what exactly the U.S. would do if there was an invasion.
At President Biden’s direction, the Pentagon is putting about 8,500 U.S.-based troops on heightened alert for potential deployment to Europe amid rising fears of a possible Russian military move on Ukraine.
China dismissed the decision by Canada and the United Kingdom to join Washington’s diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games as a “farce.”
With tens of thousands of Russian troops massed on the Ukraine border, the highly anticipated call between the two leaders came amid growing worries by the U.S. and Western allies about Russia’s threat to its neighbor.
The dispute over Ukraine’s status and its growing alignment with U.S.-led NATO will be at the center of President Vladimir Putin’s video meeting Tuesday with President Joe Biden, whose administration says an extensive Russian military buildup near Ukraine points to a potential invasion.
Thousands of immigrant-rights advocates, including some with Illinois organizations, marched in Washington on Thursday to demand congressional leaders create a legal pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
President Joe Biden summoned the world’s nations to forcefully address the festering global issues of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and human rights abuses in his first address before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday.
The United States and Mexico restarted high-level economic talks Sept. 9 after a four-year pause as top advisers to presidents Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador expressed eagerness to make headway on issues important to both nations such as infrastructure, trade and migration.
The Biden administration on Wednesday began notifying governors and state refugee coordinators across the country about how many Afghan evacuees from among the first group of nearly 37,000 arrivals are slated to be resettled in their states.
Nearly 10,000 Afghan evacuees are staying at the base while they undergo medical and security checks before being resettled in the United States.
The U.S. has halted all U.S.-bound flights of Afghan evacuees from two main bases overseas after discovering a limited measles outbreak among Afghans arriving in the United States, a hitch that American officials warned will have a severe impact on an often-troubled U.S.-run evacuation.
An ardent U.S. ally, Kosovo, has agreed to take in Afghanistan evacuees who fail to clear initial rounds of screening and host them for up to a year, a U.S. official said Saturday.
At least 50,000 Afghans are expected to be admitted into the United States following the fall of Kabul as part of an “enduring commitment” to help people who aided the American war effort and others who are particularly vulnerable under Taliban rule, the secretary of homeland security said Friday.
As the final five U.S. military transport aircraft lifted off out of Afghanistan, they left behind up to 200 Americans and thousands of desperate Afghans who couldn't get out and now must rely on the Taliban to allow their departure.
