President Donald Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and Russia said on Friday that he had held “extensive and positive discussions” with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the three-year war with Russia and praised the Ukrainian leader as an “embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war.”

Rwanda’s government on Friday asserted solidarity with a top official sanctioned by the U.S. over violence in eastern Congo, where Rwanda-backed rebels have captured two major cities in an armed conflict that now threatens the Congolese government.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was an attempt at “a chain of mass bus bombings” and said the IDF must “carry out an intensive operation” in the West Bank. He also said Hamas would pay “the full price” after a body it released on Thursday was not that of a mother taken hostage, as the militant group said it would be.

Political and military leaders in Europe are fleshing out details of a plan for European forces to help ensure Moscow does not attack Ukraine again once the guns fall silent.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that he will immediately begin shifting billions of dollars away from nonlethal programs in connection with a broader reorganization of military priorities.

Japanese police are investigating a bomb threat against Yokota Air Base, the U.S. military hub in western Tokyo that also serves as the headquarters of U.S. Forces Japan.

The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team is seeking more member countries.

More than 100 high school students — the children of Navy parents and Defense Department employees — staged a half-hour walkout Friday morning to protest Pentagon policies targeting diversity programs.

U.S. troops and other commuters in Japan will soon be able to purchase unregistered Suica and Pasmo smart cards again, following a nearly two-year pause due to a global semiconductor shortage.

Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is visiting troops along the U.S.-Mexico border Friday to assess the military’s progress in fortifying sections of the wall, coming as the Pentagon rapidly expands its border mission in line with President Donald Trump’s efforts to combat illegal immigration.

The Marine Corps reduced its active fleet of MV-22 Ospreys on Okinawa last year, trimming the number from 24 to 20 aircraft as part of its evolving aviation strategy, according to Marine Corps spokesmen.

A U.S. flight carrying 135 deportees, half of them minors from various countries, is set to land in Costa Rica, making the country the latest Latin American nation to serve as a stopover as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration steps up deportations. 

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency’s forensic lab in Hawaii has begun analyzing dozens of human remains retrieved from Laos and the Philippines in recent weeks in hopes of identifying U.S. service members who were killed in World War II and the Vietnam War.

Several government employee unions filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to rescind the firing of tens of thousands of new employees in a federal workforce reduction ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration that includes more than 1,000 workers terminated at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8% — or $50 billion — from the defense budget in each of the next five years.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that the U.S. is prepared to either ramp up or take down penalties based on the Kremlin’s willingness to negotiate.

A series of explosions Thursday on three parked buses rattled central Israel in what authorities suspected was a militant attack. No injuries were reported.

Nearly 200 Venezuelan immigrants to the U.S. have returned to their home country after being detained at Guantanamo Bay in a flurry of flights that forged an unprecedented pathway for U.S. deportations. U.S. and Venezuelan authorities confirmed the deportations Thursday that relied on a stopover in Honduras.

The coordinated patrols will occur with each country’s troops remaining on their respective sides of the Rio Grande. The changes stemmed from a recently held meeting between Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of U.S. Northern Command, and Mexico’s secretary of national defense.