U.S., Australian forces prep for potential operations across Indo-Pacific; Russia launches strikes on Ukraine hours ahead of NATO meeting; and World War II veteran/TikTok star passes away.
1. U.S. Marines and Australian soldiers pushed deep into the Outback in recent days to practice seizing remote airstrips, part of preparations for potential operations across the vast Indo-Pacific. The training is part of Talisman Sabre, a biennial multinational exercise that began July 13 and runs through Aug. 4. More than 35,000 personnel from 19 nations are participating this year. Since the exercise began, the Marines and Australian troops have captured airstrips at Timber Creek and Nackeroo in the Northern Territory, and at Cloncurry in Queensland, said Capt. Johnny Fischer, a spokesman for the 2,500-strong Marine Rotational Force-Darwin. The airstrips are standing in for island facilities that the Marines could be tasked with seizing in a future contingency, Fischer told Stars and Stripes in Cloncurry on Sunday.
2. Russia unleashed one of its largest aerial assaults on Ukraine in recent months, only hours before the U.K. and Germany are to chair a meeting to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans for NATO allies to provide Ukraine with weapons. The attack killed two people and wounded 15, including a 12-year-old, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. In Kyiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district, a drone struck the entrance to a subway station where people had taken cover. Videos posted on social media showed the station platform engulfed by smoke, with dozens of people inside. Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said the station had to be ventilated in what he called an “enhanced mode.” The heaviest strikes hit Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, where a kindergarten, supermarket and warehouse facilities caught fire.
3. D-Day veteran ″Papa Jake″ Larson, who survived German gunfire on Normandy’s bluffs in 1944 and then garnered 1.2 million followers on TikTok late in life by sharing stories to commemorate World War II and his fallen comrades, has died at 102. An animated speaker who charmed strangers young and old with his quick smile and generous hugs, the self-described country boy from Minnesota was ‘’cracking jokes til the end,’' his granddaughter wrote in announcing his death. Tributes to him quickly filled his “Story Time with Papa Jake” TikTok account from across the United States, where he had been living in Lafayette, California. Towns around Normandy, still grateful to Allied forces who helped defeat the occupying Nazis in World War II, paid him homage too.
4. A U.S. envoy doubled down on Washington's support for the new government in Syria, saying Monday there is “no Plan B" to working with the current authorities to unite the country still reeling from a nearly 14-year civil war and now wracked by a new outbreak of sectarian violence. He took a critical tone toward Israel’s recent intervention in Syria, calling it poorly timed and saying that it complicated efforts to stabilize the region.Tom Barrack, who is ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria and also has a short-term mandate in Lebanon, made the comments in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press during a visit to Beirut. He spoke following more than a week of clashes in the southern province of Sweida between militias of the Druze religious minority and local Sunni Muslim Bedouin tribes.
5. Lt. Gen. David M. Hodne was nominated by President Donald Trump to lead a new Army command expected to stand up later this year through the merger of Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command, the Defense Department announced. Hodne was nominated for promotion to four-star general and the position of commander of the Army Transformation and Training Command, which will be headquartered in Austin. He has served as deputy commander of futures and concepts for a Futures Command office at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., since January 2024, which is also when he received his third star. The Army is expected to release full details of the command consolidation in August but the service has confirmed the headquarters for the four-star leading the Transformation and Training Command will be in Austin, where the four-star who leads Futures Command is now located.
- Security