Here is the latest update on the highly controversial Army Combat Fitness Test:
The Army could adjust how it scores its new Combat Fitness Test to account for the “biological differences” between men and women, a service spokeswoman said Friday.
The reevaluation of the ACFT comes weeks after Congress delayed its implementation over concerns the new test created an unfair disadvantage to female soldiers.
Army leaders are now looking at ways to apply scoring based on gender for the six-event, CrossFit-inspired fitness test, said Lt. Col. Peggy Kageleiry, a spokeswoman for the Army’s Center for Initial Military Training, which has led the ACFT’s development. The test was designed as a gender- and age-neutral fitness evaluation meant to simulate strength and conditioning challenges faced by soldiers in combat.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
This is either a motivated defector or an attempted infiltration:
South Korea’s military is scrutinizing how a presumed North Korean defector managed to get through a seaside drain and into the country early Tuesday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The man, intercepted at 7:20 a.m. by South Korean troops inside the civilian control line just south of the Demilitarized Zone, apparently swam some part of the way from North Korea in a dive suit before passing through a drain south of the border, according to a translated, text-message update from the joint chiefs Wednesday.
“The person is assumed to have gone up a beach in the vicinity of the Unification Observatory,” south of an observation post, wearing the dive suit and fins, “and then passed through a drain under iron fences along the coast,” the message said.
The incident occurred in the northeastern Gangwon province, a joint chiefs spokesman said. The site description matches the Goseong Unification Observatory near the DMZ on South Korea’s eastern coast. Another defector crossed there in early November.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but reportedly the South Korean military unit did not take appropriate action when security cameras spotted the defector.
The case of the missing Yokota Airbase substitute teacher just took a dark twist:
The body of a U.S. civilian reported missing more than two weeks ago was discovered Tuesday in the housing tower where he and his wife lived at Yokota, according to the Air Force.
Trevor Balint, 34, of Hubbard, Ohio, the spouse of a Defense Department computer programmer and analyst, disappeared suddenly Feb. 1, prompting a search of the base from the ground and the air. His face appears on fliers, fading now, posted everywhere at Yokota, the headquarters in western Tokyo of U.S. Forces Japan.
His body was found in the east side housing area around 11 a.m. Tuesday, according to a statement on the base website Wednesday. Balint, a former substitute teacher at Defense Department schools, was pronounced dead at the scene by medical personnel, according to the base.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but the authorities claim they searched the building and for some reason did not spot his body. The family is obviously pretty upset about this. Condolences to his family and friends.
How come this governor isn’t advocating for the Russian vaccine to be given to South Koreans and instead wants to ship it to North Korea first?:
Gangwon Province Governor Choi Moon-soon’s proposal of manufacturing Russian COVID-19 vaccines in South Korea and providing them to North Korea is a feasible way to help normalize inter-Korean ties, according to Pyongyang watchers, Tuesday.
Korea Times
However, they added that Seoul needs to come up with a creative and bold strategy to make such “vaccine diplomacy” happen, as the North is seeking to reduce dependence on its southern neighbor for humanitarian support and economic cooperation, as evidenced by its snubbing of the government’s repeated calls for inter-Korean economic and public health cooperation amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can read more at the link.
Did anyone expect anything other than a sham investigation by this WHO team?:
The White House on Saturday called on China to make available data from the earliest days of the COVID-19 outbreak, saying it has “deep concerns” about the way the findings of the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 report were communicated.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement that it is imperative that the report be independent and free from “alteration by the Chinese government”, echoing concerns raised by the administration of former President Donald Trump, who also moved to quit the WHO over the issue.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy fired back with a strongly-worded statement, saying the United States had damaged multilateral cooperation and the WHO in recent years, and should not be “pointing fingers” at China and other countries that supported the WHO during the COVID-19 pandemic. (……)The team had requested raw patient data on 174 cases that China had identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the city of Wuhan in December 2019, as well as other cases, but were only provided with a summary, Dominic Dwyer, an Australian infectious diseases expert and member of the WHO team, told Reuters.
Korea Times
“It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government,” Sullivan said.
You can read more at the link, but if this team was never going to get all the information it needed from the Chinese government it should have never went. Now the Chinese government can repeat the talking point that an independent WHO team found no evidence that the virus was released from the Wuhan lab even though that is not true considering they never received all the data they needed. At least one of the WHO scientists on the trip is not ruling out the lab theory.
Considering how hard it is for Koreans with advanced degrees to land good paying jobs in the current Korean market, it should be no surprise that foreigners are having a hard time as well:
Foreigners who obtained an advanced degree in Korea are having difficulties finding work due to insufficient employment information and a lack of Korean language skills, according to the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training.
Korea Times
The institute released a report, Sunday, on the career preferences of international graduates with a master’s degree and above, and their perceptions on the domestic labor market.
The study found that around 25 percent of the 8,427 foreign nationals who had completed a master’s course in the country between 2016 and 2018 were currently working here, and 53 percent of the 2,647 of those who completed their doctoral degrees here between 2017 and 2019 were employed in the country.
The vast majority of working foreign nationals with a master’s degree were employed by private companies, while 70 percent of doctorate holders in employment were working in universities and research centers.
The study also included a survey conducted among 650 foreign residents who had finished a postgraduate course between 2015 and 2019 on the difficulties they had faced when looking for jobs after graduation.
You can read more at the link,
