Five Things to Know, Feb. 12, 2024
1. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for symptoms that point to a bladder problem, the Pentagon said. Austin was transported at about 2:20 p.m. to the hospital in Bethesda, Md., Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson, said in a statement. At approximately 4:55 p.m., Austin transferred the functions and duties of the office to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. Air Force Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the White House and Congress have been notified.
2. President Joe Biden is hosting Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Washington Monday and the two leaders are expected to discuss the ongoing effort to free hostages held in Gaza, and growing concern over a possible Israeli military operation in the port city of Rafah. It is the first meeting between the allies since three American troops were killed last month in a drone strike against a U.S. base in Jordan. Biden blamed Iran-backed militias for the fatalities, the first for the U.S. after months of strikes by such groups against American forces across the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
3. Egypt is threatening to suspend its peace treaty with Israel if Israeli troops are sent into the densely populated Gaza border town of Rafah, and says fighting there could force the closure of the territory's main aid supply route, two Egyptian officials and a Western diplomat said Sunday. The threat to suspend the Camp David Accords, a cornerstone of regional stability for nearly a half-century, came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said sending troops into Rafah was necessary to win the four-month-old war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
4. Russian forces launched 45 drones over Ukraine Sunday in a five-and-a-half-hour barrage, officials said, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continued the reshuffle of his war cabinet as the war enters its third year. In a statement, the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 40 of the Iranian-made Shahed drones over nine different regions, including on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Kyiv.
5. The head of the NATO military alliance warned Sunday that Donald Trump was putting the safety of U.S. troops and their allies at risk after the Republican presidential front-runner said Russia should be able to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who don’t meet their defense spending targets. “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement. Speaking Saturday at a rally in Conway, South Carolina, Trump recalled how as president he told an unidentified NATO member that he would “encourage” Russia to do as it wishes in cases of NATO allies who are “delinquent.”