The absence of Austin would have no doubt exacerbated the alarm within an already trigger-happy U.S. military machine. Combined with those concerns is the lack of confidence in Biden’s cognitive health as Commander-in-Chief.

It seems utterly bizarre that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin – the second-highest ranking civilian military commander in the United States – was absent from duty for several weeks without President Joe Biden or Congress knowing about it.

A charitable view would be to call the scandal a “comedy of errors”. More appropriately, however, are urgent concerns about the implications for global peace and security. The U.S. resembles a juggernaut out of control careening along a precipice.

Australia is moving forward with plans to scrap dozens of military helicopters which Ukraine and its supporters believe should be donated to Kiev, ABC News reported on Sunday.

The Australian Department of Defense retired the MRH-90 Taipan fleet last September, after an incident claimed the lives of four service members. The choppers were decommissioned 14 months ahead of schedule, with 38 remaining in service at the time. In December, the Ukrainian government made an official request to donate them for its war effort against Russia, according to the report, but Canberra is nevertheless moving forwards with its plans.

The Defense Department “will dispose of the remaining airframes and systems in an environmentally friendly and cost-effective manner,” the news outlet quoted a spokesperson as saying.

The former secretary of state and senator has spent the last three years liaising with other countries to up commitments on climate change, including at the most recent COP28 UN climate summit in Dubai.

The exhaustive 84-page brief submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) charging Israel with genocide is hard to refute. Israel’s campaign of indiscriminate killing, wholesale destruction of infrastructure, including housing, hospitals and water treatment plants, along with its use of starvation as a weapon, accompanied by genocidal rhetoric from its political and military leaders who speak of destroying Gaza and ethnically cleansing the 2.3 million Palestinians, makes a strong case against Israel for genocide. 

Former US President Donald Trump has used closing arguments in his civil fraud trial to attack New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump had sought to deliver Thursday’s full closing arguments, but permission was denied when he failed to sign off on restrictions stopping him from using the courtroom as an electioneering platform.

The former president is the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination to go against the current president, Joe Biden, in the November election.

Judge Arthur Engoron, who is ruling on what penalties to impose on Trump after an earlier decision that he and his company had manipulated property values fraudulently, allowed Trump to make brief additional comments after his lawyer had spoken.

Ukraine to defend UK 'within 24 hours' if attacked – PM
Under a new bilateral security accord, Kiev would have to protect UK in the face of a Russian military attack, Denis Shmygal has said

The security agreement recently concluded between Kiev and London is “bilateral” and will guarantee Ukraine’s military support to the UK if Russia were to attack the country, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal has said.

Shmygal was referring to the security cooperation agreement that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signed with Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky on Friday. The pact stipulates support for Ukraine’s future integration into NATO and guarantees “prevention and active deterrence of, and counter-measures against, any military escalation and/or a new aggression by the Russian Federation.”

As Australia approaches that time in January again, we see the unedifying picture of Peter Dutton’s team driving his post-referendum Base into a flag-waving orgy of aggrieved patriotism. Similarly in the USA, compulsory patriotism is part of the Atlas Network’s plan to control the future of America through directing the next administration.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron's experience of launching airstrikes against Libya, Syria and Iraq while he was prime minister helped him manage the UK's most recent attacks against the Houthis in Yemen on Thursday, iNews reported on Friday.

Cameron reportedly helped assemble the group that struck nearly 30 sites in Yemen, using over 150 bombs, along with Defense Secretary Grant Shapps and Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, a senior US official told the outlet.

The Foreign Secretary, once the UK's candidate to be head of NATO, reportedly took “full part” in meetings and coordinated with his US counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken “on a regular basis.” He was also said to have delivered “warnings” to Iran, considered the Houthis’ most powerful ally.

The conditions are ripe for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict and Italy will focus more on achieving this, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has said. The official added that this does not mean the suspension of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, describing the new approach as a “dual-track strategy.”

Addressing lawmakers in the Italian parliament on Wednesday, Crosetto stressed the importance of a balance between “deterrence and diplomacy” in the coming months. “We have two paths: that of aid without ‘ifs and buts’ – and that of attempting to build a diplomatic path that brings us to the end of the conflict,” the defense chief said.

About 120 members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg have signed a petition to strip Hungary of its voting powers in the European Union, an influential Finnish MEP announced on Friday.

Article 7 allows the bloc to suspend a member for “persistently breaching”the bloc’s values such as human rights, democracy, equality and the rule of law. If a third of the members of the European Commission and a two-thirds majority in the 705-member Parliament agree, a “qualified majority” can suspend a member’s rights, including the vote in the European Council.

MEP Petri Sarvamaa of Finland launched the petition earlier this week and has gathered 120 signatures so far, he said on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday.

Donald Trump’s potential election as US president in 2024 is “clearly a threat” to Europe, judging by the policies he pursued during his first term in office, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde has warned.

Lagarde’s comments, which were delivered in an interview with France 2 on Thursday, come amid growing anxiety among EU leaders over a potential Trump victory in November’s election.

“If we draw lessons from history, by which I mean to say the manner in which he [Trump] carried out the first four years of his mandate, it is clearly a threat,” Lagarde stated.

“It is enough to look at trade tariffs, the commitment to NATO, the fight against climate change,” she added, noting that “in these three areas alone, in the past, US interests were not aligned with those of Europe.” 

Climate scientists don’t like surprises [Gus: WHY NOT IF IT'S GOOD NEWS?]. It means our deep understanding of how the climate works isn’t quite as complete as we need. But unfortunately, as climate change worsens, surprises and unprecedented events keep happening.

In March 2022, Antarctica experienced an extraordinary heatwave. Large swathes of East Antarctica experienced temperatures up to 40°C (72°F) above normal, shattering temperature records. It was the most intense heatwave ever recorded anywhere in the world.

A recent article published by the Financial Times might have amused the government of Belarus. In it, a European Commission boss pleaded with giant U.S. firms who are linked to the internet in Belarus to be more supportive of opposition journalists’ articles. Presently, Google does not support the Belarusian language on its search platforms, which, the EU official claims, gives a distinct advantage to the incumbent government of Lukashenko.

Young Austrians are getting too fat to join the military, Defense Secretary Klaudia Tanner warned during a press conference on Thursday, attributing last year’s decrease in the number of military conscripts to growing obesity among the youth.

The year 2023 saw 45,565 conscripts – 217 fewer than 2022. Of these, just 31,516 were classified as fit, a decline of 528 from the previous year, while 3,421 were deemed temporarily unfit (359 more than in 2022) and 9,989 were deemed unfit (an increase of 71 over 2022).

In addition to the decline in physical fitness, Tanner pointed to psychological stress as a factor impeding military readiness.

“The young generation must become healthier and fitter again,” she insisted.

Britain did not strong-arm Ukraine into abandoning peace with Russia early on in the conflict, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said. His remarks came in reaction to the recent revelations about his April 2022 trip to Kiev by a top Ukrainian lawmaker, who has now also tried to walk back his story.

Johnson’s role in the scuttling of Istanbul peace talks between Moscow and Kiev was reported as early as May 2022 by the outlet Ukrainska Pravda. In late November, the leader of President Vladimir Zelensky’s party bloc in the Ukrainian parliament, David Arakhamia, spoke about the visit as well, prompting reactions from Russia.