TAIPEI, April 8 (Reuters) - A senior U.S. lawmaker pledged on Saturday to help provide training for Taiwan's armed force and to speed up the delivery of weapons, as China began three days of military exercises around the island Beijing claims as its territory.
The United States and has long offered some degree of training on weapon systems, as well as detailed advice on ways to strengthen its military to guard against an invasion by China's People's Liberation Army.
Speaking at a lunch in Taipei hosted by Tsai for his bipartisan delegation, Michael McCaul, chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, said they were there in strong support of Taiwan and that it was important democracies stood together.
Video posted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty shows military ambulances driving through the Belarusian city of Homel in early March, with employees at the region's clinical hospital claiming more than 2,500 bodies have already been shipped back to Russia as of March 13.
The country's despot Alexander Lukashenko supports Putin's war and allowed a deployment of major Russian military units in the country. An unknown number of Russian troops moved south towards Ukraine's capital Kyiv from Homel.
The estimated Russian death toll is of a scale similar to that of the Battle of Iwo Jima, where 6,852 US troops were killed and 19,000 were wounded during five weeks of fighting Japanese forces in the most intense phase of the Pacific theatre of World War Two
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While a defence pact between Taiwan and the United States ended in 1979 when Washington severed formal diplomatic ties in favour of Beijing, a close military relationship endures and the United States is Taiwan's main foreign source of arms.
HANOI, April 8 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Vietnam next week, Senator Jeff Merkley told a news conference in Hanoi on Saturday, as part of Washington's efforts to move diplomatic relations with Hanoi on to a higher level this year.
military documents posted on social media that offer a partial, month-old snapshot of the war in Ukraine, language programs online three U.S. officials told Reuters on Friday, while the Justice Department said separately it was probing the leak.
* Ukraine's First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova is due to visit India on Monday and will seek humanitarian aid and equipment to repair energy infrastructure damaged during Russia's invasion, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
* More than 30 children were reunited with their families in Ukraine this weekend after a long operation to bring them back home from Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea, where they had been taken from areas occupied by Russian forces during the war.
April 8 (Reuters) - Russia is considering raising its base price for calculating the wheat export tax to 17,000 roubles ($212.23) per tonne from 15,000 roubles per tonne, the Vedomosti daily reported, citing two unnamed sources in exporting companies.
Video posted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty shows military ambulances driving through the Belarusian city of Homel, with employees at the region's clinical hospital alleging more than 2,500 bodies have been shipped back to Russia
Kyiv estimates nearly 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea since Moscow invaded, in what it condemns as illegal deportations. Moscow says they have been transported away for their own safety.
China describes Taiwan as the most sensitive and important issue in its relations with the United States, and the topic is a constant source of friction between Beijing and Washington. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Now Belarusian medical staff in Homel, in southeastern Belarus, have described ‘overflowing' morgues, with one resident of the city Mazyr claiming: ‘Passengers at the Mazyr train station were shocked by the number of corpses being loaded on the train. After people started shooting video, the military caught them and ordered them to remove it.'
* Pope Francis appeared to ask Russians to seek the truth about their country's invasion of Ukraine in his Easter message to the world on Sunday and appealed for dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians following recent violence.
* Russia threatened to bypass a U.N.-brokered grain deal unless obstacles to its agricultural exports were removed, while talks in Turkey agreed removing barriers was needed to extend the agreement beyond next month.
According to one US intelligence estimate, 7,000 Russian troops including four generals have already been killed - more than the number of American troops killed in either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars at 4,825 and 3,576 respectively - and between 14,000 and 21,000 troops have been injured in the fighting.