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Defense
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Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank have built a religious school at a dismantled outpost. The announcement Monday comes after Israel’s far-right government in March repealed a 2005 act that dismantled four West Bank settlements and banned Israelis from reentering the areas. Homesh, the outpost where the seminary was built overnight Sunday, was one of those. Most of the international community consider Israeli settlements to be illegal and an obstacle to peace at a time of soaring tension. Also Monday, a Palestinian militant died after being shot by Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Jenin, Palestinian health officials said. The Israeli military said forces on an arrest raid came under heavy fire and fired back.
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The United States and Saudi Arabia called on warring sides in Sudan to extend a fragile cease-fire due to expire Monday, as weeks of fighting reached a stalemate in the capital and elsewhere in the African country. A joint statement early Sunday noted that the current cease-fire was “imperfect,” referring to repeated bouts of fighting since the cease-fire went into effect. The current truce will expire at 9:45 p.m. local time Monday. The statement asked for Sudan’s military government, as well as the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, to continue negotiations. Residents reported sporadic clashes Saturday in parts of Omdurman, Khartoum's adjoining city, where the army’s aircraft were seen flying over the city.
May 28, 2023 -
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Memorial Day is supposed to be about mourning the nation’s fallen service members. But it’s come to anchor the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of retail discounts. Memorial Day has long been a source of contention and contradiction, from its shifting origin stories to today’s mattress sales. Auto club AAA forecasts that this holiday weekend could be “one for the record books, especially at airports.” More than 42 million Americans are projected to travel 50 miles or more. Compared to last year, 2.7 million more people will travel for the unofficial start of summer. And that's despite inflation.
May 27, 2023 Serbia has condemned NATO-led peacekeepers stationed in neighboring Kosovo for their alleged failure to stop “brutal actions” by Kosovo police against ethnic Serbs. It said that its armed forces stationed near the border will remain on the highest state of alert until further notice. Serbia’s top political and security leadership, led by President Aleksandar Vucic, met in Belgrade on Saturday following violent clashes on Friday between Kosovo police and ethnic Serbs that injured more than a dozen people. In response to the clashes, Vucic on Friday put the army on the “highest state of alert” and ordered troops closer to the border with Kosovo.
May 27, 2023-
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The Air Force fighter pilot tapped to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff got his call sign by ejecting from a burning F-16 fighter jet high above the Florida Everglades and falling into the watery sludge below. It was January 1991, and then-Capt. CQ Brown Jr. had just enough time in his parachute above alligator-full wetlands. He landed in the muck, which coated his body. That's how the man nominated to be the country’s next top military officer got his call sign: “Swamp Thing.” President Joe Biden announced he was nominating Brown for the chairman's job during a Rose Garden event on Thursday.
May 25, 2023 -
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The South Korean and U.S. militaries have conducted large live-fire drills near the border with North Korea, despite the North's warning that it won’t tolerate what it calls an invasion rehearsal on its doorstep. South Korea says the drills involved fighter jets, attack helicopters, multiple rocket launch systems and other weapons. They mark 70 years since the establishment of the military alliance between Seoul and Washington. North Korea typically reacts to such major South Korean-U.S. exercises with missile tests. It has test-launched more than 100 missiles since the start of 2022, but none since it fired a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile in mid-April.
May 25, 2023 -
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President Joe Biden will announce Thursday that he is tapping Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., a history-making fighter pilot with deep knowledge of China, to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Brown’s confirmation would mean that, for the first time, both the Pentagon’s top military and civilian positions would be held by African Americans. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the first Black Pentagon chief, has been in the job since the beginning of the administration. If confirmed by the Senate, Brown would replace Army Gen. Mark Milley, whose term ends in October, as the nation’s next top military officer.
May 24, 2023 -
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Russia alleges that dozens of Ukrainian militants crossed into one of its border towns in its Belgorod region, striking targets and forcing an evacuation, before over 70 of the attackers were killed or pushed back by a counterterrorism operation. Ukraine denied any involvement in the battle, instead blaming two Russian groups that claim to be volunteers fighting alongside its forces in an uprising against the government of President Vladimir Putin. One group claiming responsibility for the strike, the Russian Volunteer Corps, denied it had lost any men. While neither version could be independently verified, whatever happened appears to have sent Moscow scrambling for a response in one of the most serious border incursions since Russia invaded Ukraine.
May 24, 2023 -
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The head of the Russian private military contractor Wagner returned to a familiar theme this week — bashing the country’s military leadership for failures in the war in Ukraine. That ’s something only a select few can do publicly without drawing retribution from the Kremlin. The comments by Yevgeny Prigozhin seemingly reignited his long-running feud with the Defense Ministry. He told a pro-Kremlin political strategist that Russia failed to “demilitarize” Ukraine, one of the goals stated by Putin at the start of the invasion. In one of the bloodiest battles of the war — the battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut — Prigozhin said he lost about 20,000 men.
May 24, 2023 Japan has held a ceremony marking its planned donation of about 100 military vehicles to Ukraine, as Tokyo seeks to provide equipment that can be of broader military use than its earlier shipments of helmets and hazmat suits. The donation, which also includes 30,000 food rations, comes as Japan’s government is seeking to ease its military equipment transfer policy under a new national security policy that allows its military a greater offensive role. While other countries have provided Ukraine with tanks, missiles and fighter jets, Japan has limited its donations to non-lethal equipment because the transfer policy prohibits the provision of lethal weapons to countries at war.
May 24, 2023Local officials say a Turkish strike in northern Iraq killed three Yazidi militiamen and wounded three others. The militia group, YBS, disputed that account saying none of its fighters were killed in the strike Tuesday, but that a shepherd died. According to the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdish government, the early morning strike in the district of Sinjar targeted a headquarters of the Shingal Resistance Units, or YBS. The head of the Sinjar Yazidi council, says the area targeted by Turkish drones was an abandoned Yazidi village where most of the houses had been previously destroyed by the militant Islamic State group.
May 23, 2023-
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President Joe Biden’s decision to allow allies to train Ukrainian forces on how to operate F-16 fighter jets — and eventually to provide the aircraft themselves — seemed like an abrupt change in position but was in fact one that came after months of internal debate and quiet talks with allies. Biden announced during last week’s Group of Seven summit in Japan that the U.S. would join the F-16 coalition. But over the past three months, administration officials shifted toward the view that it was time to provide Ukraine’s pilots with the training and aircraft needed for the country’s long-term security needs. This is according to two officials familiar with the deliberations.
May 22, 2023 -
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A Texas militia member has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for attacking police officers at the U.S. Capitol, seriously injuring one of them during a mob’s attack on Jan. 6, 2021. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss on Friday sentenced 44-year-old Donald Hazard to four years and nine months in prison followed by three months of supervised release for his role in the riot. Hazard pleaded guilty to an assault charge in February. He was a member of a militia called the Patriot Boys of North Texas. After marching to the Capitol, Hazard grabbed a Capitol police officer and pulled him down a set of concrete steps, knocking him unconscious.
May 19, 2023 The president and government of Austria are at odds over whether the country should offer Ukraine help with civilian demining, with the defense minister and a major opposition party pointing to concerns over the implications for Austrian military neutrality. President Alexander Van der Bellen, who is formally the military’s commander in chief but has no say over day-to-day policy, said he doesn’t understand why the government continues to hesitate on the issue. But the defense minister disagreed, saying that “the situation is currently so unclear that we are not in a position to be able to distinguish between humanitarian and military demining.”
May 18, 2023
