A U.S. lawmaker delegation arrived in Taiwan on Sunday for a two-day visit during which they will meet President Tsai Ing-wen, the second high-level group to come amid continued military tensions with the island's giant neighbour China.
Beijing, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has been holding military drills around the island to express its anger at this month's visit to Taipei by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei said the delegation is being led by Senator Ed Markey, who is being accompanied by four other lawmakers on what it described as part of a larger visit to the Indo-Pacific region.
Taiwan's presidential office said the group would meet Tsai on Monday morning.
"Especially at a time when China is raising tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the region with military exercises, Markey leading a delegation to visit Taiwan once again demonstrates the United States Congress' firm support for Taiwan," it said in a statement.
Taiwan's Foreign Ministry published pictures of the group being met at Taipei's downtown Songshan airport having arrived on a U.S. air force transport jet.
Israel is poised to send troops into Rafah, the Gazan city it sees as the last bastion of Hamas, Israeli media reported on Wednesday, saying preparations were under way to evacuate war-displaced Palestinian civilians who have been sheltering there.
A Russian court on Wednesday ordered one of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu's deputies be kept in custody on suspicion of taking bribes, the highest-profile corruption case since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in 2022.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, a senior figure in the country's ruling party, met with Donald Trump on Tuesday, becoming the latest US ally seeking to establish ties with the Republican presidential candidate.
Russian missiles damaged residential buildings and injured six people in Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, early on Wednesday, Governor Oleh Synehubov said on Telegram.
Five migrants died in an attempt to cross the English Channel from France to Britain in an overcrowded small boat on Tuesday, hours after Britain passed a bill to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda in a move to deter the dangerous journeys.