The Pentagon said no final decision has been made, but Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wanted U.S. forces to be ready “just in case” of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The pilot safely ejected from his aircraft during the failed landing, which, however, resulted in injuries to several sailors
Seven US Navy personnel were injured after a pilot suffered a “landing mishap” on a US supercarrier and was forced to eject from the aircraft while performing operations in the South China Sea.
The US Navy announced on Monday that one of its F-35C Lightning II stealth planes had a “landing mishap on deck while USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) was conducting routine flight operations in the South China Sea.”
The pilot ejected from the aircraft and was rescued by a military helicopter, however a total of seven sailors were injured during the incident, with three requiring a medical evacuation to the Philippines. The three sailors are reportedly in stable condition.
The other four injured sailors were treated on-board the ship and three have since been released.
Exactly what went wrong is currently being investigated by US Navy authorities.
Navy supercarriers USS Carl Vinson and USS Abraham Lincoln were performing a drill in the South China Sea at the time of the accident as tensions between the US and China continue.
Rear Admiral Dan Martin, the commander of Carrier Strike Group 1, boasted this week that the drill “highlights the U.S. Navy’s ability to deliver overwhelming maritime force, when called upon, to support a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
“We are committed to ensuring the lawful use of the sea and free flow of commerce while deterring those who challenge the shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific now and into the long-term future,” he continued.
Beijing has territorial claims to almost all of the South China Sea, and routinely denounces Washington’s operations in the area as a violation of its sovereignty. Several other nations, including Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines also claim various islands in the disputed waterway.
LIMA, Jan 24 (IPS) – It’s nine o’clock in the morning and Mauricia Rodríguez is already peeling garlic to season the day’s lunch at the Network of Organized Women of Villa Torreblanca, one of more than 2,400 solidarity-based soup kitchens that have emerged in the Peruvian capital in response to the worsening poverty caused by the partial or total halt of economic activities in the country due to COVID-19.
Taliban representatives will be certain to press their demand that nearly $10 billion frozen by the United States be released as Afghanistan faces a precarious humanitarian situation.
The leading figures in science jointly expressed their outrage over ‘scientific racism’ accusations
Dozens of leading UK scientists called on Imperial College London not to demonize 19th century biologist Thomas Huxley, blasting accusations against him of ‘scientific racism’ as unfair and underlining that the key supporter of Darwin was “an ardent abolitionist.”
The group of 39 academics, which includes Prof. Richard Dawkins and Nobel laureate Prof. Paul Nurse, wrote a letter to The Telegraph explaining why Huxley cannot be considered as racist.
The letter has become a response to a report by an independent history group, tasked, in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, with analyzing Imperial College’s “links to the British Empire” which allegedly prevented the university from becoming a “fully inclusive organization.” They came to the conclusion that Huxley, despite being an abolitionist, had fallen “far short of Imperial’s modern values” and “might now be called racist,” as his essay ‘Emancipation – Black and White’ espoused “a racial hierarchy of intelligence.” Therefore, the group recommended renaming a university building, which carries the name of one of Imperial College’s founders, and to remove a bust of Huxley.
The accusations and recommendations have been condemned in a letter to The Telegraph, signed by, among others, 17 Imperial College academics.
“Huxley was an ardent abolitionist who fought the virulent pro-slavery scientific racism of his day and publicly welcomed the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865,” they wrote.
Admitting that the anthropologist believed in a hierarchy of races at the beginning of his career, they say that, with age, “he became skeptical of racial stereotypes.”
Huxley’s defenders underlined that the scientist “reformed London’s schools, was a principal of a working men’s college, wrote volumes of journalism, gave lectures for working people and opened his classes to women,” while also being “instrumental in founding the Royal College of Science, later Imperial College, the very institution that now seeks to disown him.”
A spokesman for Imperial College said that the institution’s management will come up with its proposals on the course of action in February, The Telegraph has reported.
