Inside the rescue of the F-15E crew member, Israel claims to have killed head of Islamic intelligence agency, and Medal of Honor recipient completes gruelling recon course as reservist.
1. The U.S. Air Force colonel, badly injured after his F-15E was shot down in southern Iran, climbed some 7,000 feet up a ridgeline and armed with a handgun. Iranian forces had launched a massive manhunt, as his capture would have given Tehran leverage with the United States in negotiations to end the war, now in its sixth week. “This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour, but was never truly alone,” President Donald Trump said in a statement early Sunday after the rescue. For more than 24 hours, the colonel, whose name has not been released, hid in the rugged terrain with a bounty on his head, emitting an emergency beacon in the hope of guiding American special operators to his location, The New York Times reported. Fighter plane crews undergo extensive training on how to evade capture if their aircraft goes down in enemy territory. That training and the military’s mantra to “leave no man behind” were put to the ultimate test in the race to rescue the airman.
2. Israel said Monday that it assassinated Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Intelligence Organization, as it eliminates senior leaders of the powerful force that helps sustain Iran's ruling regime. The announcement from the Israel Defense Forces came hours after it announced the completion of another wave of airstrikes targeting infrastructure in Iran. Few specifics of the assault that killed Khademi were made public, but the IDF said in a statement that the Israeli Air Force was acting on "precise intelligence guidance from the Military Intelligence Directorate." "His killing joins that of dozens of commanders from the Iranian terror regime who have been eliminated during the operation, and constitutes another severe blow to the IRGC's command-and-control systems and its ability to direct terrorist activity against the State of Israel and countries around the world," the IDF said.
3. A Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa killed two women and a toddler, authorities said Monday, while Ukrainian long-range drones targeted Russia’s key Black Sea port for oil exports. The nighttime attack on Odesa heavily damaged an apartment block, killing the women and a 2-year-old child, officials said. Rescuers working under floodlights pulled four people from the rubble. Eleven people were hospitalized, including a pregnant woman and two children — the youngest less than a year old, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X. Russia has pounded civilian areas of Ukraine since it invaded its neighbor just over four years ago, killing more than 15,000 people, according to the United Nations. It has also taken aim at Ukraine’s power grid, and the Russia overnight barrages also hit energy infrastructure in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipro regions, Zelenskyy said.
4. A former active-duty Marine who was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2011 for heroism in Afghanistan is ready to shoulder a new challenge as a 37-year-old reservist: reconnaissance work. Sgt. Dakota Meyer completed the service’s grueling 12-week course and had his military occupational specialty redesignated from infantryman to reconnaissance Marine, according to a Facebook post Friday. The service’s senior enlisted leader, Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz, attended a ceremony the same day and shared the news of Meyer’s completion of the course. Meyer reposted the announcement of the accomplishment to his official Instagram page Friday with a caption reading: “No quit. No shortcuts.”
5. South Korea’s spy agency says it’s now fair to view the teenage daughter of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as his heir, its strongest assessment yet on the rising political status of the girl who it believes could extend her family’s rule into a fourth generation. The girl, dubbed by state media as Kim’s “most beloved” or “respected” child, has accompanied her father to numerous high-profile events since late 2022, sparking outside speculation that she’s being groomed as the North’s future leader. In a closed-door briefing at the National Assembly Monday, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service director Lee Jong-seok said the girl could be considered Kim’s successor, in response to questions by lawmakers about her political standing, according to Lee Seong Kweun, one of the lawmakers who attended the meeting.
- Security