WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden is nominating Army Lt. Gen. Michael Kurilla to lead the US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, the Pentagon announced Friday.
If confirmed by the Senate, General Kurilla will succeed Marine General Kenneth McKenzie at the head of Centcom, which oversees military operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen.
According to his official biography, Kurilla, 55, currently leads the 18th Airborne Corps, which groups the majority of the United States Army’s response forces at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
A West Point graduate, he fought in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, where he was seriously wounded by gunshot during an assault on Mosul in 2005. Kurilla also held responsibilities at the General Staff of the United States Army and commanded the prestigious 82nd Parachute Division, known for having participated in the Normandy landings in 1944.
The US army is organized in geographic commands like Africom for Africa or Eucom for Europe, but also by issues like the strategic command (Stratcom), in charge of the nuclear armament of the country, or Spacecom, which is in charge of space.
Biden names Kosovo, Iraq war veteran as Central Command chief
https://arab.news/59ymh
Biden names Kosovo, Iraq war veteran as Central Command chief
- General Kurilla will succeed Marine General Kenneth McKenzie at the head of Centcom, which oversees military operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen
Australia mushroom murder suspect fell sick from same meal: defense
- Erin Patterson has steadfastly maintained her innocence during her weeks-long trial
- The prosecution maintains Patterson did not consume the fatal fungi and faked her symptoms
Erin Patterson, 50, is charged with murdering her estranged husband’s parents and aunt in July 2023 by spiking their beef Wellington lunch with death cap mushrooms.
She is also accused of attempting to murder a fourth guest – her husband’s uncle – who survived the lunch after a long stay in hospital.
Patterson has steadfastly maintained her innocence during a seven-week-long trial that has made headlines from New York to New Delhi.
As the trial came to its closing stages, defense lawyer Colin Mandy poked holes in the prosecutor’s case, saying his client, too, fell ill after consuming the beef-and-pastry dish.
Patterson’s medical tests at the hospital revealed symptoms “that can’t be faked,” including low potassium and elevated hemoglobin, he said.
“She was not as sick as the other lunch guests, nor did she represent she was,” Mandy said.
The prosecution maintains Patterson did not consume the fatal fungi and faked her symptoms.
Mandy said his client lied in panic in the days after the lunch, trying to “conceal the fact that foraged mushrooms went into the meal.”
“If that was found out, she feared she would be held responsible,” her defense said.
“She panicked when confronted with the terrible possibility, the terrible realization, that her actions had caused the illness of people she liked.”
Mandy said he was not “making an excuse” for Patterson’s behavior after the lunch, but that it did not mean she meant to harm or kill her guests.
Patterson originally invited her estranged husband Simon to join the family lunch at her secluded home in the farming village of Leongatha in Victoria state.
But he turned down the invitation on the eve of the meal, saying he felt uncomfortable going, the court heard earlier.
The pair were long estranged but still legally married.
Simon Patterson’s parents Don and Gail, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, attended the lunch.
All three were dead within days. Heather Wilkinson’s husband Ian fell gravely ill but eventually recovered.
The trial in Morwell, southeast of Melbourne, is in its final stages.
Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi marks 80th birthday in junta jail
- She was the figurehead of Myanmar’s decade-long democratic thaw, becoming its de facto leader
- But the generals snatched back power in a 2021 coup, and she was locked up various on charges
Suu Kyi was the figurehead of Myanmar’s decade-long democratic thaw, becoming de facto leader as it opened up from military rule.
But as the generals snatched back power in a 2021 coup, she was locked up on charges ranging from corruption to breaching COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and is serving a 27-year sentence.
“It will be hard to be celebrating at the moment,” said her 47-year-old son Kim Aris from the UK.
“We’ve learned to endure when it’s been going on so long.”
He is running 80 kilometers (50 miles) over the eight days leading up to her birthday, and has collected over 80,000 well-wishing video messages for his mother.
But Suu Kyi will not see them, sequestered in Myanmar’s sprawling capital Naypyidaw from where the military directs a civil war against guerilla fighters.
Aris said he has heard from his mother only once via letter two years ago since she was imprisoned.
“We have no idea what condition she’s in,” he said, adding that he fears she is suffering from untreated medical problems with her heart, bones and gums.
No formal celebrations are planned in junta-held parts of Myanmar, but a gaggle of followers in military-controlled Mandalay city staged a spontaneous protest ahead of her birthday, local media said.
A few masked protesters showered a street with pamphlets reading “freedom from fear” and “happy birthday” as one member help up a portrait of Suu Kyi in shaky camera footage shared on social media.
“Do you still remember this great person?” asked one of the protesters in the video, which AFP has not been able to independently verify.
While Suu Kyi remains hugely popular in the majority Buddhist country, her status as a democracy icon abroad collapsed before the military takeover after she defended the generals in their crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority.
Hundreds of thousands were sent fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh under her rule, though some argued she was powerless against the lingering influence of Myanmar’s military.
Nonetheless institutions and figures that once showered Suu Kyi with awards rapidly distanced themselves, and her second round of imprisonment has received far less international attention.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar independence hero Aung San, became a champion of democracy almost by accident.
After spending much of her youth abroad, she returned in 1988 to nurse her sick mother but began leading anti-military protests crushed by a crackdown.
She was locked up for 15 years, most of it in her family’s Yangon lakeside mansion where she still drew crowds for speeches over the boundary wall.
The military offered freedom if she went into exile but her poised refusal thrust her into the spotlight and won her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Suu Kyi was released in 2010 and led her National League for Democracy party to electoral victory in 2015, never formally in charge as army-drafted rules kept her from the presidency.
If the octogenarian were released from her current incarceration, Aris predicts she would likely step back from a “frontline position” in Myanmar politics.
The military has promised new elections at the end of this year, but they are set to be boycotted by many groups comprised of former followers of Suu Kyi’s non-violent vision who have now taken up arms.
US resumes visas for foreign students but demands access to social media accounts
- The Trump administration last month temporarily halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in the US w
- Foreign students make up more than 15 percent of the total student body at almost 200 US universities
WASHINGTON: The US State Department said Wednesday it is restarting the suspended process for foreigners applying for student visas but all applicants will now be required to unlock their social media accounts for government review.
The department said consular officers will be on the lookout for posts and messages that could be deemed hostile to the United States, its government, culture, institutions or founding principles.
In a notice made public Wednesday, the department said it had rescinded its May suspension of student visa processing but said new applicants who refuse to set their social media accounts to “public” and allow them to be reviewed may be rejected. It said a refusal to do so could be a sign they are trying to evade the requirement or hide their online activity.
The Trump administration last month temporarily halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in the US while preparing to expand the screening of their activity on social media, officials said.
Students around the world have been waiting anxiously for US consulates to reopen appointments for visa interviews, as the window left to book their travel and make housing arrangements narrows ahead of the start of the school year.
On Wednesday afternoon, a 27-year-old Ph.D. student in Toronto was able to secure an appointment for a visa interview next week. The student, a Chinese national, hopes to travel to the US for a research internship that would start in late July. “I’m really relieved,” said the student, who spoke on condition of being identified only by his surname, Chen, because he was concerned about being targeted. “I’ve been refreshing the website couple of times every day.”
Students from China, India, Mexico and the Philippines have posted on social media sites that they have been monitoring visa booking websites and closely watching press briefings of the State Department to get any indication of when appointment scheduling might resume.
In reopening the visa process, the State Department also told consulates to prioritize students hoping to enroll at colleges where foreigners make up less than 15 percent of the student body, a US official familiar with the matter said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to detail information that has not been made public.
Foreign students make up more than 15 percent of the total student body at almost 200 US universities, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal education data from 2023. Most are private universities, including all eight Ivy League schools. But that criteria also includes 26 public universities, including the University of Illinois and Pennsylvania State University. Looking only at undergraduate students, foreign students make up more than 15 percent of the population at about 100 universities, almost all of them private.
International students in the US have been facing increased scrutiny on several fronts. In the spring, the Trump administration revoked permission to study in the US for thousands of students, including some involved only in traffic offenses, before abruptly reversing course. The government also expanded the grounds on which foreign students can have their legal status terminated.
As part of a pressure campaign targeting Harvard University, the Trump administration has moved to block foreign students from attending the Ivy League school, which counts on international students for tuition dollars and a quarter of its enrollment. Trump has said Harvard should cap its foreign enrollment at 15 percent.
This latest move to vet students’ social media, the State Department said Wednesday, “will ensure we are properly screening every single person attempting to visit our country.”
In internal guidance sent to consular officers, the department said they should be looking for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States.”
Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said the new policy evokes the ideological vetting of the Cold War, when prominent artists and intellectuals were excluded from the US
“This policy makes a censor of every consular officer, and it will inevitably chill legitimate political speech both inside and outside the United States,” Jaffer said.
The Trump administration also has called for 36 countries to commit to improving vetting of travelers or face a ban on their citizens visiting the United States. A weekend diplomatic cable sent by the State Department says the countries have 60 days to address US concerns or risk being added to a travel ban that now includes 12 nations.
Taiwan pursues homegrown Chinese spies as Beijing’s influence grows
- Alarm is growing in Taiwan over the extent of China’s infiltration on the self-ruled island
- The main targets of Chinese infiltration have been retired and active members of the military
TAIPEI: Taiwan is vetting hundreds of thousands of military service members, public school teachers and civil servants in a bid to root out potential homegrown Chinese sympathizers, as Beijing intensifies espionage on the island.
Alarm is growing in Taiwan over the extent of China’s infiltration on the self-ruled island, which Beijing claims is part of its territory and has threatened to seize by force.
Prosecutors last week charged four recently expelled members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party — including a former staffer in President Lai Ching-te’s office — for sharing state secrets with Beijing.
While Taipei and Beijing have spied on each other for decades, analysts warn the threat to Taiwan is more serious given the risk of a Chinese attack.
The main targets of Chinese infiltration have been retired and active members of the military, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology.
Lai, an outspoken defender of Taiwan’s sovereignty and loathed by Beijing, has branded China a “foreign hostile force” and sought to raise public awareness about Chinese actions he says threaten national security.
After a sharp rise in the number of people prosecuted for spying for China in recent years, the government is trying to identify people within its own departments, military and public schools with a possible allegiance to Beijing.
Anyone on the public service payroll found with Chinese residence or other identification cards risks losing their Taiwanese household registration, effectively their citizenship.
“The reason we started to survey (for Chinese IDs) is because China uses this way to coerce Taiwanese people, to penetrate our system, especially the public service,” DPP lawmaker Wang Ting-yu told AFP.
“The threat is getting worse and worse and we have to deal with that.”
In the first round held recently, 371,203 people, or nearly all of those surveyed, signed statements declaring they did not hold any Chinese ID documents prohibited by Taiwanese law.
Two people admitted having Chinese ID cards and 75 having residence permits, which were annulled, Taiwan’s top policy body on China, the Mainland Affairs Council, said.
The second round of vetting is underway, but the government has said the general public will not be targeted.
Concern over Taiwanese people holding Chinese ID documents flared after a YouTube video last year alleged there were tens of thousands of cases.
A senior Taiwanese security official said recently China was issuing ID papers to a growing number of people from Taiwan, but it was “difficult to estimate” how many or track down offenders without Beijing’s cooperation.
“The idea is to define Taiwanese citizens as Chinese citizens under their legal framework,” the official said.
Legal scholar Su Yen-tu said there were limits on the government’s “investigatory power” to find out who held Chinese ID cards in Taiwan.
If Taiwanese people did not voluntarily disclose the information, “there’s not much the government can do,” said Su, a research professor at Academia Sinica.
Collecting records was still “potentially useful,” Jamestown Foundation president Peter Mattis told AFP, particularly if someone under investigation in the future is found to have lied about their documents.
Taiwan has also asked around 10,000 Chinese spouses and their China-born children for proof they have given up their Chinese household registration, a decades-old requirement under Taiwanese law.
The notices sparked criticism that the government was being heavyhanded, but Wang said stricter enforcement was needed because some “new immigrants” from China had spied for Beijing and interfered in Taiwan’s elections.
“I personally feel that it’s a bit disturbing for the people,” said Li I-ching, a 23-year-old graduate student in Taipei, who was born in China to a Chinese mother and a Taiwanese father.
Like many others, Li has to obtain evidence from China that she no longer holds permanent residence status.
The Beijing-friendly main opposition Kuomintang party (KMT) has accused the government of conducting “loyalty” tests.
“At a time when our country is facing so many difficulties... the government is only thinking about how to cleanse the population,” said KMT lawmaker Chen Yu-jen.
The dispute between Taiwan and China dates back to 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s communist fighters and fled to the island.
China has vowed to annex Taiwan and in recent years has ramped up its military pressure on the island.
Taiwan says China also uses disinformation, cyberattacks and espionage to weaken its defenses.
“It’s a fight every day for the Taiwanese against this sort of stuff,” said Mark Harrison, a senior lecturer in Chinese studies at the University of Tasmania.
“I think their democracy has tremendous integrity, but it does have to be defended, and when you defend something, it certainly generates a lot of discourse, a lot of debate.”
Warning signs on climate flashing bright red: top scientists
- “The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen”
PARIS: From carbon pollution to sea-level rise to global heating, the pace and level of key climate change indicators are all in uncharted territory, more than 60 top scientists warned Thursday.
Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation hit a new high in 2024 and averaged, over the last decade, a record 53.6 billion tons per year — that is 100,000 tons per minute — of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, they reported in a peer-reviewed update.
Earth’s surface temperature last year breached 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time, and the additional CO2 humanity can emit with a two-thirds chance of staying under that threshold long-term — our 1.5C “carbon budget” — will be exhausted in a couple of years, they calculated.
Investment in clean energy outpaced investment in oil, gas and coal last year two-to-one, but fossil fuels account for more than 80 percent of global energy consumption, and growth in renewables still lags behind new demand.
Included in the 2015 Paris climate treaty as an aspirational goal, the 1.5C limit has since been validated by science as necessary for avoiding a catastrophically climate-addled world.
The hard cap on warming to which nearly 200 nations agreed was “well below” two degrees, commonly interpreted to mean 1.7C to 1.8C.
“We are already in crunch time for these higher levels of warming,” co-author Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, told journalists in a briefing.
“The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen.”
No less alarming than record heat and carbon emissions is the gathering pace at which these and other climate indicators are shifting, according to the study, published in Earth System Science Data.
Human-induced warming increased over the last decade at a rate “unprecedented in the instrumental record,” and well above the 2010-2019 average registered in the UN’s most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, in 2021.
The new findings — led by the same scientists using essentially the same methods — are intended as an authoritative albeit unofficial update of the benchmark IPCC reports underpinning global climate diplomacy.
They should be taken as a reality check by policymakers, the authors suggested.
“I tend to be an optimistic person,” said lead author Piers Forster, head of the University of Leed’s Priestley Center for Climate Futures.
“But if you look at this year’s update, things are all moving in the wrong direction.”
The rate at which sea levels have shot up in recent years is also alarming, the scientists said.
After creeping up, on average, well under two millimeters per year from 1901 to 2018, global oceans have risen 4.3 mm annually since 2019.
An increase in the ocean watermark of 23 centimeters — the width of a letter-sized sheet of paper — over the last 125 years has been enough to imperil many small island states and hugely amplify the destructive power of storm surges worldwide.
An additional 20 centimeters of sea level rise by 2050 would cause one trillion dollars in flood damage annually in the world’s 136 largest coastal cities, earlier research has shown.
Another indicator underlying all the changes in the climate system is Earth’s so-called energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere and the smaller amount leaving it.
So far, 91 percent of human-caused warming has been absorbed by oceans, sparing life on land.
But the planet’s energy imbalance has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, and scientists do not know how long oceans will continue to massively soak up this excess heat.
Dire future climate impacts worse than what the world has already experienced are already baked in over the next decade or two.
But beyond that, the future is in our hands, the scientists made clear.
“We will rapidly reach a level of global warming of 1.5C, but what happens next depends on the choices which will be made,” said co-author and former IPCC co-chair Valerie Masson-Delmotte.
The Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target allows for the possibility of ratcheting down global temperatures below that threshold before century’s end.
Ahead of a critical year-end climate summit in Brazil, international cooperation has been weakened by the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
President Donald Trump’s dismantling of domestic climate policies means the United States is likely to fall short on its emissions reduction targets, and could sap the resolve of other countries to deepen their own pledges, experts say.
