Russia reportedly appointing a new, controversial military commander, the Pentagon looking to the next medical crisis among today’s items.
1. A showdown looms in Ukraine after Russia appointed a new military commander and looked to concentrate its attacks in the east, while Ukraine’s president said his troops will hold their ground, urging Western leaders, in particular President Joe Biden, to do more.
2. With its COVID mission over, the Pentagon is planning for the next pandemic. The U.S. military mission is to use the experiences of units that were pressed into service against the COVID-19 pandemic to prepare for the next crisis threatening a large population, whatever its nature.
3. On the surface, all the familiar ceremonial trappings were in place for the event. The reading of proclamations announcing April 9 as Bataan Remembrance Day. The playing of taps. Speeches honoring the legacy of the New Mexicans who gave their lives fighting, struggling to survive, dying far from home in a campaign ringed with deprivation, starvation and torture. But Saturday morning’s commemoration of the April 4, 1942, fall of Bataan — the 80th anniversary — was missing something: Bataan survivors. For the first time since the New Mexico National Guard began hosting the Santa Fe event in the mid-1980s, none of them attended.
4. During President Donald Trump’s administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs began posting wait-time data online for all VA hospitals and clinics to provide more transparency into how long veterans have to wait for routine or specialty appointments. But in a report released late last week, the VA Inspector General’s office said much of that data remains confusing and misleading, causing VA Secretary Denis McDonough to acknowledge that he is “frustrated” with inconsistency in how medical appointment wait time data is calculated and recorded, and promised changes on the issue later this year.
5. Russian ally Serbia took the delivery of a sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system in a veiled operation this weekend, amid Western concerns that an arms buildup in the Balkans at the time of the war in Ukraine could threaten the fragile peace in the region.
- News