As Japan embarks on a major military build-up, it’s struggling to fill its ranks with the women that its forces need, and its policymakers have pledged to recruit. Following a wave of sexual harassment cases, the number of women applying to join the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) decreased by 12% in the year ending March 2023, after several years of steady …
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Two teachers met them with a smile at the steel door, and down the concrete staircase the mother and daughter clattered, hand in hand, through another blast door and into the bunker for the first day of school. Hundreds of children began lessons this week in Ukraine’s first purpose-built bunker school, 20 feet below the ground to protect them from …
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Residents of Ukraine’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv, remained defiant despite fierce fighting raging in the region after Russian forces launched an armored incursion on a new front that may presage a broader push into the area. As battles raged in the north and east of the Kharkiv region, the city itself enjoyed a rare moment of calm on Sunday, May 12. …
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A British climber and a Nepali guide have broken their own records for most climbs of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, hiking officials said on Sunday. Rakesh Gurung, director of Nepal’s Department of Tourism, said Britain’s Kenton Cool, 50, and Nepali guide Kami Rita Sherpa, 54, climbed the 29,032-foot peak for the 18th and 29th time, respectively. They were …
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A former owner of a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy whose mold-tainted drugs sparked a deadly U.S. fungal meningitis outbreak in 2012 was sentenced on Friday to at least 10 years in prison for his role in the deaths of 11 Michigan residents. Barry Cadden, the former president of New England Compounding Center (NECC), was sentenced by Judge Matthew McGivney in Howell, …
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Opposition leaders in India’s troubled Kashmir valley have accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration of denying or cancelling permissions to hold campaign events, to help his party’s “proxies”. Omar Abdullah, a leader of the largest regional political party, the National Conference, said Modi’s government was trying to sabotage his campaign ahead of voting in the first of Kashmir’s three seats …
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An upcoming Ukraine peace summit, ostensibly the most ambitious bid in years by neutral Switzerland to mediate a major conflict, is instead showing how Swiss economic and security interests increasingly align with Western Europe over Russia. This is the view of both Swiss advocates of closer cooperation with Western powers and nationalist opponents who say Switzerland is abandoning its neutral …
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It was “unacceptable” that the U.S. decision to withhold some weapons from Israel became public while the two governments still were discussing Israel’s planned offensive into the Gaza city of Rafah, the Israeli envoy to Washington said on Thursday. The U.S. pause on some arms supplies to Israel “sends the wrong message to Hamas and to our enemies in the …
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A U.S. congressional committee on China has asked leading research university Georgia Institute of Technology to detail its collaboration with a Chinese university facing U.S. government restrictions due to its alleged ties to the country’s military. Georgia Tech partnered with China’s northeastern Tianjin University on cutting edge technologies despite its documented ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), John Moolenaar, …
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that there was nothing unusual in a planned exercise involving the practice deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in southern Russia along with ally Belarus. Russia said on Monday it would practise the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons as part of a military exercise after what the Moscow said were threats from France, Britain …
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