Germany will send two warships to the Indo-Pacific in 2024, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Sunday, amid rising tensions between China and Taiwan and over the disputed South China Sea.

A Chinese fighter jet swerved in front of a US reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea in an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver,” the Pentagon said, part of what a senior American official described as a pattern of more confrontational behavior in the region.

China had deployed three buoys of its own, positioning two near Manila’s beacons at Irving Reef and Whitsun Reef, to ensure “safety of navigation.” The tit-for-tat deployments signaled a new front in a long-running dispute over sovereignty of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea,

A Chinese fighter jet swerved in front of a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea in an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver,” the Pentagon said, part of what a senior American official described as a pattern of more confrontational behavior in the region.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Vietnamese counterpart met in Hanoi on Sunday to discuss a series of matters, from climate change to concerns over China's actions in the South China Sea.

SINGAPORE: The United States is the real driver of tension in the South China Sea and keeps hollowing out the one-China principle, said Lieutenant General Jing Jianfeng, deputy chief o