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The Philippines will deploy additional naval ships to the disputed South China Sea, referred to as the West Philippine Sea by Manila, to step up maritime sovereignty patrols amid a fresh standoff with China, the official news agency PNA reported on Thursday.

Three B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, assigned to the 509th Bomb Wing, Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, along with more than 100 Airmen, civilians and contractors, arrived at Lajes Field to participate in a series of Bomber Task Force missions in the high Northern Europe region.

Alleged serious abuses and rights violations in Ethiopia's Tigray region are to be investigated by the UN, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on Thursday.

A U.S. senator whom President Joe Biden sent as an emissary to Ethiopia says he urged Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to declare a cease-fire in the embattled Tigray region, but his appeal was rejected.

Although U.S. Special Operations Command makes up just 3% of the joint force, it has suffered over half of all combat casualties over the past few years, said a Defense Department official.

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The Netherlands Minister of Defense Ank Bijleveld announced March 24 during a press conference at the Army Prepositioned Stock-2 Eygelshoven site that the Dutch government has agreed to provide 38 million euros toward facility upgrades and new construction at the U.S. Army's APS-2 site in the Netherlands.

President Joe Biden said the upcoming May 1 deadline to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan will be "hard to meet," during his first press conference today since taking office.

U.S. President Joe Biden admitted Thursday that some 2,500 U.S. troops could still be in Afghanistan after May 1, the agreed upon deadline for American forces to leave the country under a year-old deal with the Taliban.

President Joe Biden has said it will be "hard" to meet the May 1 deadline to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan as part of a deal signed with the Taliban last year.

China and India have agreed to maintain communication through military and diplomatic channels to promote the settlement of other issues in the west section of China-India boundary, said Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of National Defense, at a regular press conference on March 25.

Saudi Arabia claims that a distribution terminal for oil products has been struck with a projectile in the kingdom's southwestern region of Jizan, identifying the alleged target as one of the country's "vital installations."

US President Joe Biden held his first formal press conference in the White House on Thursday, addressing a number of issues ranging from China's trade practices to North Korea's ballistic missile tests to withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan among other things.

The spokesman for Yemen's Ansarullah movement says despite Saudi Arabia's claims, Iran does not interfere in Yemen's internal affairs and that missiles fired by Yemeni forces at Saudi targets operate on fuel produced inside the war-torn country.

The Philippine military said Thursday it had ordered navy ships deployed to the South China Sea, days after the coast guard reported that hundreds of Chinese boats, believed to be crewed by militia, were seen swarming near a contested reef.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has come under criticism for what the opposition says are lies and contradictory statements about why the Armenian military did not deploy fighter jets purchased from Russia during last year's war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Unidentified armed men have shot dead a Libyan commander, loyal to renegade General Khalifa Haftar, who was wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes in the country's eastern city of Benghazi.

No coalition secured a majority of the vote in Israel's fourth parliamentary elections in two years, according to the results of a 100-percent ballot count, as reported by local media on Thursday.

The report comes a month after an incident in the Gulf of Oman left another Israeli ship, MV Helios Ray, damaged - although not critically so - after two blasts at its hull. Tel Aviv alleged that Iran might be behind the attack, but Tehran strongly denies its involvement.

Multiple roadside bombs have separately struck five convoys of trucks carrying logistical equipment for the US-led coalition forces in Iraq.