WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the House Select Committee on China said Saturday the U.S. must take seriously the threat posed to Taiwan, as Beijing launched military drills around the island in the aftermath of the Taiwanese president's meetings with American lawmakers.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., who attended the meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen in California last week, told The Associated Press that he plans to lead his committee in working to shore up the island government's defenses, encouraging Congress to expedite military aid to Taiwan.

“I think it all just points to what is obvious,” Gallagher told the AP, arguing that Chinese President Xi Jinping is intent on reunifying Taiwan with the mainland.

"We need to be moving heaven and earth to enhance our deterrence and denial posture, so that Xi Jinping concludes that he just can’t do it," Gallagher said

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg slammed top House Republicans mere hours after the lawmakers’ efforts to double down with its inquires into former President Donald Trump’s hush money case.

Bragg, who slammed the GOP leaders’ “unprecedented inquiry” in a letter earlier this week, took on a second co-authored letter about the case from Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), James Comer (R-Ky.) and Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) – three officials who lead the House Judiciary, Oversight and Administration committees, respectively.

Bragg, in his response on Saturday, asserted that his office evaluates cases “based on facts, the law and the evidence.”

“It is not appropriate for Congress to interfere with pending local investigations,” Bragg wrote.

WASHINGTON — Three House Republican committee chairmen on Monday called on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to testify before Congress "about what plainly appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision" in any potential indictment of former President Donald Trump in the prosecutor's hush-money probe, according to a letter sent to Bragg

"You are reportedly about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former president of the United States and current declared candidate for that office," the letter, obtained by NBC News, says. It comes ahead of a pending New York grand jury decision in the case.

"This indictment comes after years of your office searching for a basis — any basis — on which to bring charges, ultimately settling on a novel legal theory untested anywhere in the country and one that federal authorities declined to pursue," they continued. "If these reports are accurate, your actions will erode confidence in the evenhanded application of justice and unalterably interfere in the course of the 2024 presidential election."

The letter was signed by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.; and House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis.

SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea's foreign ministry on Sunday called on the United Nations to demand an immediate halt to combined military drills by the United States and South Korea, saying they were raising tensions that threaten to spiral out of control.

The drills and rhetoric from the allies are "irresponsibly raising the level of confrontation," Kim Son Gyong, vice foreign minister for international organisations, said in a statement carried by state news agency KCNA.

The United States and South Korea will conduct more than 10 days of large-scale military exercises in March, including amphibious landings, officials from the two countries said on Friday.

The U.S. and South Korea say the exercises are in self-defence and are necessary to counter the rising threats from North Korea's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes, which are banned by U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the U.S. ambassador on Tuesday over what it called “Washington’s expanding involvement” in the war in Ukraine, the Interfax news agency reported.

The Foreign Ministry served a notice to the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Lynne Tracy, accusing Washington of supplying weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine as well as sharing information on Russia’s military and civilian infrastructure with Kyiv.

“In this regard, the ambassador has been informed of the counter-productivity of the current aggressive U.S. course,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

The ministry also demanded the U.S. withdraw "soldiers and equipment" from Ukraine — a reference to Western military assistance to the country.