Iain Marlow

A former White House National Security Council staffer and current State Department adviser has been arrested and charged with illegally keeping more than 1,000 pages of classified documents at his Northern Virginia home.

The State Department told Congress it has approved a possible $5.6 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to the Philippines, a move that would send US warplanes to a key ally in Southeast Asia that has clashed with China.

The US canceled two aid projects in Cambodia in late February — one to encourage child literacy and another to improve nutrition and development for kids under five. A week later, China’s aid agency announced funding for programs to achieve almost identical goals.

A US citizen detained by the Taliban in Afghanistan for more than two years has been released, as the Trump administration continues to exert pressure on foreign governments to release detained Americans, the State Department said Thursday.

Taiwan’s top envoy to Washington said the island democracy isn’t freeloading off the US for its defense against China and that it’s taking collaborative steps to bolster its security.

President Vladimir Putin refused to give Donald Trump the 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine he and his team had demanded on the path toward ending the three-year conflict. It was still good enough for the US president.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said South Africa’s ambassador to the US “is no longer welcome” in the country after the top envoy made comments about President Donald Trump, escalating a running feud between Washington and Pretoria.

The Trump administration has dismantled the United States Agency for International Development, eliminating the vast majority of the agency’s programs while preparing to fold the remainder into the State Department. The sweeping cuts will slash tens of billions of dollars in assistance that the US provides to developing nations, from efforts to combat malaria in Africa to farming assistance in Ukraine.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has proclaimed mission accomplished after canceling almost all programs run by USAID in a chaotic review that sometimes saw hundreds of international assistance projects terminated in a single day and thousands of staff meant to monitor or administer them fired or put on leave.

Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, says a summit will soon be held with real estate developers and planners from the region to discuss the administration’s controversial plan for Gaza.