World News Random, Random

[ti-amie]

Ambassador to where? Milan?

Greece

[dryrunguy]

Recycling Lead for U.S. Car Batteries Is Poisoning People
By Peter S. Goodman, Will Fitzgibbon and Samuel Granados Visuals by Finbarr O’Reilly and Carmen Abd Ali Nov. 18, 2025

Synopsis: POISONOUS DUST falls from the sky over the town of Ogijo, near Lagos, Nigeria. It coats kitchen floors, vegetable gardens, churchyards and schoolyards.

The toxic soot billows from crude factories that recycle lead for American companies.

With every breath, people inhale invisible lead particles and absorb them into their bloodstream. The metal seeps into their brains, wreaking havoc on their nervous systems. It damages livers and kidneys. Toddlers ingest the dust by crawling across floors, playgrounds and backyards, then putting their hands in their mouths.

Lead is an essential element in car batteries. But mining and processing it is expensive. So companies have turned to recycling as a cheaper, seemingly sustainable source of this hazardous metal.

As the United States tightened regulations on lead processing to protect Americans over the past three decades, finding domestic lead became a challenge. So the auto industry looked overseas to supplement its supply. In doing so, car and battery manufacturers pushed the health consequences of lead recycling onto countries where enforcement is lax, testing is rare and workers are desperate for jobs.

Seventy people living near and working in factories around Ogijo volunteered to have their blood tested by The New York Times and The Examination, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates global health. Seven out of 10 had harmful levels of lead. Every worker had been poisoned.

More than half the children tested in Ogijo had levels that could cause lifelong brain damage.

Investigation Team Disclosure: This article was reported in collaboration with The Examination, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates global health. Fernanda Aguirre, Romina Colman and Mago Torres contributed research and data analysis. The videos of the lead recycling plants in Nigeria at the beginning of this article are by Finbarr O’Reilly, and the portraits are by Carmen Abd Ali.

FULL ARTICLE (link shared with permission as a subscriber): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... =url-share

[ponchi101]

What a conundrum. You don't recycle, bad environmental policy. Recycle, this happens.

[ti-amie]

Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all

As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors.
Updated
November 28, 2025 at 11:54 p.m. EST yesterday at 11:54 p.m. EST

By Alex Horton
and
Ellen Nakashima

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.


This report is based on interviews with and accounts from seven people with knowledge of the Sept. 2 strike and the overall operation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... at-strike/

[ti-amie]

Hong Kong begins three days of mourning after deadly apartment fires
Families are combing hospitals hoping to find their loved ones as about 200 people still listed as missing, and at least 128 killed

Reuters
Fri 28 Nov 2025 22.28 EST

An outpouring of grief was set to sweep Hong Kong on Saturday as an official, three-day mourning period began with a moment of silence for the 128 people killed in one of the city’s deadliest fires.

City leader John Lee, along with senior ministers and dozens of top civil servants, stood in silence for three minutes on Saturday morning outside the government headquarters, where the flags of China and Hong Kong were flown at half-mast.

Hours before that, citizens placed flowers near the charred shell of Wang Fuk Court, the residential complex that burned for more than 40 hours.

“May your spirits in heaven always keep the joy alive,” read a note of remembrance placed at the site.

Condolence points have been set up across Hong Kong for the public to sign condolence books, the government said.

Families have been combing hospitals and victim identification stations hoping to find their loved ones, with about 200 people still listed as missing and 89 bodies unidentified.

On Friday, the city’s anti-corruption watchdog arrested eight people in connection with the blaze, the world’s worst residential building fire since 1980.

Flames had spread quickly through the housing estate in the city’s northern Tai Po district on Wednesday afternoon, engulfing seven of the eight high-rises in the densely packed complex.

Authorities said the cause was yet to be determined, but preliminary investigations suggested the fire started on protective netting on the lower floors of one of the towers and that “highly flammable” foam boards, as well as bamboo scaffolding, had contributed to its spread.
Two firefighters walk in the foreground with the burning buildings behind him

The fire services chief, Andy Yeung, said they discovered that alarm systems in all eight apartment blocks “were malfunctioning”, and vowed action against the contractors.

Residents had told Agence France-Presse they did not hear any fire alarms and went door-to-door to alert neighbours to the danger.

A man surnamed Fung said he was visiting the housing estate daily to look for his 80-year-old mother-in-law.

“She is on antibiotics ... so she is always sleeping. There was no fire alarm, so she might not have known there was a fire,” he said.

The city’s anti-corruption watchdog said the eight people it arrested on Friday included “consultants, scaffolding subcontractors and [a] middleman of the project”.

On Thursday, police said they arrested three men on suspicion of negligently leaving foam packaging at the fire site.

On Friday, dozens were still in hospital, with 11 in critical condition, and 21 listed as “serious”.

“We do not rule out the possibility that police will find more charred remains when entering [the building] for detailed investigation and evidence collection,” the security chief, Chris Tang, said.

At one hospital, a woman surnamed Wong was looking for her sister-in-law and her sister-in-law’s twin, with no luck.

“We still cannot find them,” the 38-year-old said. “So we are going to different hospitals to ask if they have good news.”

The government said police have activated a specialist disaster victim identification system to help locate the missing.

“One building went up in flames and it spread to two more blocks in less than 15 minutes,” a 77-year-old eyewitness surnamed Mui told AFP.

“It was burning red, I shudder to think about it.”

The blaze was Hong Kong’s deadliest since 1948, when an explosion followed by a fire killed at least 135 people.

Lethal fires were once a regular scourge in densely populated Hong Kong, especially in poorer neighbourhoods, but improved safety measures have made them far less common.

Tang said the full investigation into the fire’s causes could take up to four weeks.

Authorities had found temporary accommodation for around 800 people, the government said on Friday.

Nine emergency shelters were also in operation, accommodating about 720 people overnight.

A spontaneous community effort to help firefighters and those displaced has become a well-oiled machine. Separate supply stations for clothes, food and household goods were set up at a public square near the towers, as well as booths providing medical and psychological care.

So much was donated that organisers put out a call on social media saying no more was needed.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/n ... ment-fires

[ti-amie]

It'$ okay to blow up fi$hing boat$ but like the leader$ of $ome cartel$ if you make donation$ to the building fund, well, here we are.

The Ex-President Whom Trump Plans to Pardon Flooded America With Cocaine

Juan Orlando Hernández, whom Mr. Trump called a victim of persecution, helped orchestrate a decades-long trafficking conspiracy. It ravaged his Central American country.


When Juan Orlando Hernández was extradited to the United States, his own country erupted in celebration.Credit...Getty Images/Getty Images

By Santul NerkarAnnie Correal and Colin Moynihan
Nov. 29, 2025, 7:16 p.m. ET

He once boasted that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.” He accepted a $1 million bribe from El Chapo to allow cocaine shipments to pass through Honduras. A man was killed in prison to protect him.

At the federal trial of Juan Orlando Hernández in New York, testimony and evidence showed how the former president maintained Honduras as a bastion of the global drug trade. He orchestrated a vast trafficking conspiracy that prosecutors said raked in millions for cartels while keeping Honduras one of Central America’s poorest, most violent and most corrupt countries.

Last year, Mr. Hernández was convicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison. It was one of the most sweeping drug-trafficking cases to come before a U.S. court since the trial of the Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega three decades before.

But on Friday, President Trump announced that he would pardon Mr. Hernandez, 57, who he said was a victim of political persecution, though Mr. Trump offered no evidence to support that claim. It would be a head-spinning resolution to a case that for prosecutors was a pinnacle, striking at the heart of a narcostate.


Outside Manhattan’s federal courthouse, Hondurans celebrated the conviction of the former president.Credit...Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

The president’s two-week trial in Manhattan, and those of his associates before it, offered a glimpse into a world of corruption and drug running spanning several countries. Bags of cash, a machine gun with Mr. Hernández’s name emblazoned on it, and bribes from the drug lord Joaquín Guzmán, the Mexican kingpin known as El Chapo, featured heavily.

Prosecutors said Mr. Hernández was key to a scheme that lasted more than 20 years and brought more than 500 tons of cocaine into the United States.

“The people of Honduras and the United States bore the consequences,” Merrick Garland, then the attorney general, said in 2024, after Mr. Hernández was sentenced.

Honduras, a country of around 10 million people, has long been linked to the United States — first as the home of sprawling banana plantations owned by the United Fruit Company, then as the location of a key base used for U.S.-backed counterinsurgency efforts and later as a military post for counternarcotics.
Editors’ Picks
What to Know About Pope Leo’s First Trip as Pontiff
Jason Schwartzman Finds Peace at the Library
5 Podcasts to Help You Savor Coffee

When drug-trafficking routes began shifting toward Central America in the 2000s, Honduras came to play a role in transshipment, moving cocaine from South America toward Mexico and the U.S. border. Over that decade, trafficking rose, along with the murder rate, and drug planes arrived with regularity. The June 2009 coup that ousted Manuel Zelaya, the country’s left-wing president, ushered in a golden age of drug corruption.

Mr. Hernández, unlike many Latin American politicians, rose from humble roots. One of more than a dozen siblings raised in a rural, coffee-growing region, he became a lawyer and entered congress. As president, Mr. Hernández told U.S. officials that he was doing his utmost to stamp out drug trafficking.

But prosecutors said his political career had been fueled by drug money as early as 2009, when he was still a lawmaker and vying to lead the Honduran legislature. At the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Mr. Hernández was photographed smiling and giving a thumbs up alongside a known Honduran cartel chief.

Mr. Hernández ran for president on the ticket of the conservative National Party and was elected in 2013. Prosecutors said Mr. Hernández relied on his connections to the world’s most powerful cartels to fund his campaign, including a $1 million bribe from El Chapo.

He used the weapons and power of the state for his own ends, according to prosecutors, jurors and the Hondurans who came to despise him. The threat of being extradited to the United States made drug traffickers eager to bribe anyone who could protect them, prosecutors said, and they came to know they could rely on Mr. Hernández.

Mr. Hernández directed the police and military to protect smugglers who paid him off, and he promised to shield them from extradition to the United States. Mr. Hernández once reassured a Honduran cocaine trafficker that “by the time the gringos find out, we will have eliminated extradition,” according to prosecutors.

Mr. Hernández even boasted, “We are going to stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses, and they’re never even going to know it,” according to a witness who testified at the 2021 trial of a drug trafficker.

Investigators said that Mr. Hernández went to pitiless lengths to cover his tracks. One accused co-conspirator was killed in a Honduran prison to protect the president, according to court documents. He used drug money to manipulate the vote in two elections, the documents said.

In 2017, Mr. Hernández again became president after an election so laced with allegations of fraud that days of violence ensued and about two dozen people were killed as the military cracked down.

Hondurans, long divided on political lines, united in disgust. The chant “Fuera J.O.H.” — “Out with J.O.H.” — could be heard not just at protests, but among huge migrant caravans marching north, filled with people fed up with poverty and rampant corruption.

Publicly, Mr. Hernández denied any involvement in drug trafficking. And his connections to the U.S. remained strong.

President Barack Obama called him one of the “excellent partners” helping to discourage children from coming to the United States. Mr. Trump recognized him as the winner of the disputed 2017 vote, counting on him to help curb the flow of people and drugs. The Biden administration regarded him as a key ally in Central America as it sought to control migration.

But the rot became evident when Mr. Hernández’s brother, Tony, was arrested in Miami in 2018 after being linked to a trafficking organization.

During the younger brother’s trial in 2019, a former Honduran mayor and major drug trafficker described how an associate of El Chapo had delivered the $1 million bribe — cash wrapped in plastic bundles of $50,000 and $100,000.

Prosecutors displayed the machine gun with Mr. Hernández’s name engraved on it.

In February 2022, weeks after he left office, Mr. Hernández was detained at the request of the United States; he was escorted onto a plane in handcuffs and extradited two months later.

Fireworks erupted in celebration in the country he once ruled.

His own trial showed in grisly detail how Mr. Hernández had promised to crack down on drug gangs, all the while partnering with them instead, according to statements by prosecutors and witnesses.

Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, a former leader of a gang called Los Cachiros, who admitted to being involved in the deaths of 78 people, testified that he had bribed Mr. Hernández with $250,000 delivered to the president’s sister, Hilda, in exchange for protection.

Another trafficker testified that he had personally delivered a payoff, saying: “I paid $250,000 as a bribe to Juan Orlando Hernández.”

Mr. Hernández was convicted of drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy in a room packed with Hondurans eager to see his downfall.

When he was sentenced in 2024, Mr. Hernández spoke for almost an hour in court, airing conspiracy theories and grievances as he portrayed himself as the victim of “political persecution.” In a lengthy letter, Mr. Hernández quoted Edmund Burke, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Bible.

“The investigation and trial against me is full of mistakes, of injustices that have become a lynching through the U.S. judicial system,” Mr. Hernández wrote. “The prosecutors and agents did not do the due diligence in the investigation to know the whole TRUTH.”

For many Hondurans, his conviction was a rare taste of justice. A woman in a crowd outside the courthouse celebrating his punishment had held a sign that read “No clemency for narcopolitics.”

But on Saturday, Mr. Trump said in a statement to The New York Times that “many friends” had asked him to pardon Mr. Hernández: “They gave him 45 years because he was the President of the Country — you could do this to any President.”

Jeff Ernst contributed reporting from Tegucigalpa and David C. Adams contributed reporting from Miami.

Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.

Annie Correal is a Times reporter covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.


https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/nyre ... -ios-share

[ponchi101]

BTW. On Friday, Tiny announced that "land operations will begin soon in Venezuela".
What that even means is up to interpretation.
But he really believes he can do anything anywhere. I have said it before: if he takes down Maduro, I will thank that. But bombing Venezuela is so illegal.
(My mother's apt is 650 Mts away from the military airport in Caracas. Time to buy a lot of duct tape).

[mick1303]

BTW. On Friday, Tiny announced that "land operations will begin soon in Venezuela".
What that even means is up to interpretation.
But he really believes he can do anything anywhere. I have said it before: if he takes down Maduro, I will thank that. But bombing Venezuela is so illegal.
(My mother's apt is 650 Mts away from the military airport in Caracas. Time to buy a lot of duct tape).

People say that creating an outer layer of bubble wrap increases the chances of windows survival. But it all depends on the distance of explosion. If it is too close, nothing helps ((

[mick1303]

I have to say that 650 m is too close. If there are no large buildings that shield your mother's apartment, you can say goodbye to windows. And being cut by window glass is the most common injury in our cases. So better leave the apartment if there is elsewhere to go...

[ti-amie]

Hegseth, with White House help, tries to distance himself from boat strike fallout

As Congress vows accountability, the Trump administration emphasized it was a top military commander — not the defense secretary — who directed the engagement.
Updated
December 1, 2025 at 8:31 p.m. EST today at 8:31 p.m. EST

By Noah Robertson
and
Tara Copp


Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, center, attends a ceremony at Fort Bragg in North Carolina last week. (US Army/Reuters)


Officials in Congress and the Pentagon said Monday they are increasingly concerned that the Trump administration intends to scapegoat the military officer who directed U.S. forces to kill two survivors of a targeted strike on suspected drug smugglers in Latin America, as lawmakers made initial moves to investigate whether the attack constituted a war crime.

The Washington Post reported exclusively Friday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill the entire crew of a vessel thought to be ferrying narcotics in the Caribbean Sea, the first of nearly 20 such strikes directed by the administration since early September.

When two survivors were detected, the military commander overseeing the operation, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, directed another strike to comply with Hegseth’s order that no one be left alive, people with direct knowledge of the matter told The Post. The Trump administration has said 11 people were killed as a result of the operation.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, acknowledged Monday that Hegseth had authorized Bradley to conduct the strikes on Sept. 2. Bradley, she added, “worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed.”

Her scripted remarks at a news briefing elicited a furious backlash within the Defense Department, where officials described feeling angry at the uncertainty over whether Hegseth would take responsibility for his alleged role in the operation — or leave the military and civilian staff under him to face the consequences.

“This is ‘protect Pete’ bulls---,” one military official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations, told The Post.

Leavitt’s statement “left it up to interpretation” who was responsible for the second strike that killed the two survivors, a separate military official said, imploring the White House to provide clarity on the issue.

One official said of Leavitt’s statement, “It’s throwing us, the service members, under the bus.” Another person said some of Hegseth’s top civilian staff appeared deeply alarmed about the revelations and were contemplating whether to leave the administration.

Hegseth, writing on social media Monday night, said he stands by the admiral “and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.” His statement is likely to deepen the sense of furor among military officials who suspect Hegseth is attempting to insulate himself from any legal recourse and leave Bradley — whom the secretary called “an American hero, a true professional” — to account for the fallout alone.

The Pentagon has declined The Post’s request to interview Hegseth about his role in the strikes. President Donald Trump told reporters Sunday that he had discussed the matter with Hegseth, who, Trump said, assured him he did not give an order to kill everyone aboard the boat. “And I believe him,” the president added, “100 percent.”

On Capitol Hill, key offices also were parsing Leavitt’s remarks for signs of the administration’s strategy as it seeks to quell unrest from members of Congress — including some top Republicans.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters that he had spoken to Hegseth and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Dan Caine, and that he expects to speak with Bradley also. Wicker, whose committee is one of two in Congress that over the weekend opened an inquiry into the Sept. 2 operation, said he is seeking video and audio recordings of the strikes, and that once those materials are received he will decide how to proceed.

“We’re going to find out what the true facts are,” Wicker said.

Bradley, who oversees U.S. Special Operations Command, is not widely known outside that community. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, he came up through the ranks as a Navy SEAL and was one of the very first troops deployed to Afghanistan to strike the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Before assuming his current assignment, Bradley led the shadowy Joint Special Operations Command, and oversaw Special Operations forces in the Middle East and the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly known as SEAL Team 6.

A U.S. official on Monday lamented that Bradley, who has kept a low profile throughout much of his career, was singled out by Leavitt in her statement at the White House earlier.

“Whether he takes the blame or not,” this official said, “his reputation has been marred by this forever, just by that statement.”

A spokesperson for Special Operations Command declined to comment.

Caine’s office issued a brief account of his exchange with lawmakers over the weekend, saying the conversation focused on the “intent and legality” of the Trump administration’s mission in Latin America. The general also expressed his “trust and confidence in the experienced commanders at every echelon” who are involved in the campaign, though the statement does not identify Bradley or any other military officials by name.

A spokesperson for Caine declined to comment beyond the statement issued by his office, saying the general’s communications with Congress are private.

The call included Wicker and Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, as well as Reps. Mike D. Rogers (R-Alabama) and Adam Smith (D-Washington), who head up the House Armed Services Committee.

Smith said he would meet with Bradley and other Defense Department leaders later this week. The congressman criticized what he said was a lack of information from the Pentagon. “I wouldn’t say they are cooperating,” he said in an interview. A spokesperson for the congressman said the meeting also would include Wicker, Reed and Rogers.

Leavitt suggested Monday that Hegseth had spoken with multiple lawmakers “who may have expressed some concerns over the weekend.” She did not identify them, though, and the Pentagon has not disclosed details of the secretary’s outreach to Capitol Hill.

The House and Senate committees have opened separate inquiries into the Sept. 2 strike, directing questions to the Pentagon and pledging a full accounting of what occurred.

It was not immediately clear what those efforts will entail, though it is within Congress’s authority to seek witness interviews, subpoena evidence, hold closed-door meetings and conduct public hearings.

Legal experts have said that the survivors killed in the strike did not pose an imminent threat to U.S. personnel and thus were illegitimate targets — even under the Trump administration’s controversial legal defense of the strikes.

On Saturday, a group of former military lawyers and senior leaders who have scrutinized the Trump administration’s military activities in Latin America said in a statement that the targeting of defenseless people is prohibited — regardless of whether the United States is in an armed conflict, conducting law enforcement or other military operations.

Under the circumstances cited by The Post in its report Friday, “not only does international law prohibit targeting these survivors, but it also requires the attacking force to protect, rescue, and, if applicable, treat them as prisoners of war,” the group’s assessment says. “Violations of these obligations are war crimes, murder, or both. There are no other options.”

The Trump administration has sought to justify its military campaign by arguing that the boats being destroyed are supporting the illicit sale of narcotics responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans each year.

The administration also has designated as “terrorist organizations” several Latin American groups involved in the drug trade.

In a classified memo shared with Congress, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which issues binding legal arguments for the entire administration, has claimed the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with cartel groups funding campaigns of violence in America and allied countries, according to people familiar with the document. The memo also argues that U.S. service members involved in the attacks are immune from prosecution, The Post reported previously.

Still, the Defense Department has privately acknowledged to lawmakers that nearly all of the strikes have targeted suspected shipments of cocaine — rather than fentanyl, the leading cause of U.S. overdose deaths. Moreover, most of the narcotics moved through the Caribbean are headed toward Europe and Western Africa rather than the United States.

Lawmakers on the Armed Services committees — including top Republicans — have criticized the administration for withholding information related to the strikes and the legal arguments supporting them.

In October, Wicker and Reed published two letters they had sent to the Pentagon weeks earlier requesting the videos and orders documenting the boat strikes, which so far have killed more than 80 people. To date, the Pentagon has not complied — a delay that has surpassed the time required by law for the administration to respond to Congress, said a congressional aide.

Those materials would shed light on the Sept. 2 strike.

The aide said the inquiries being sought by lawmakers now mark the “culmination of the last three months of obfuscation” by the Defense Department.

Kadia Goba, Marianna Sotomayor, Theodoric Meyer, Alex Horton, Dan Lamothe and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... caribbean/

[ti-amie]

Remember this man?

Head of the U.S. Military’s Southern Command Is Stepping Down, Officials Say
Adm. Alvin Holsey is leaving less than a year into his tenure, and as the Pentagon escalates attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea.


Adm. Alvin Holsey, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, in Washington last year.Credit...Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, via Getty Images

Tyler Pager

By Eric Schmitt and Tyler Pager

Reporting from Washington
Oct. 16, 2025
Leer en español

The military commander overseeing the Pentagon’s escalating attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration says are smuggling drugs said on Thursday that he was stepping down.

The officer, Adm. Alvin Holsey, is leaving his job as head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America, even as the Pentagon has rapidly built up some 10,000 forces in the region in what it says is a major counterdrug and counterterrorism mission.

It was unclear why Admiral Holsey is suddenly departing, less than a year into what is typically a three-year job, and in the midst of the biggest operation in his 37-year career. But one current and one former U.S. official, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said that Admiral Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.

In a statement on social media, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made no mention of any friction with his four-star commander. “On behalf of the Department of War,” said Mr. Hegseth, using the name of the department he now prefers, “we extend our deepest gratitude to Admiral Alvin Holsey for his more than 37 years of distinguished service to our nation as he plans to retire at year’s end.”

Nor did Admiral Holsey publicly voice any policy objections, urging his command’s 1,200 military service members and civilians in a statement, “Keep Charging!!”

But other officials at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill said the praise masked real policy tensions concerning Venezuela that the admiral and his civilian boss were seeking to paper over.

“Prior to Trump, I can’t think of a combatant commander who left his or her post early, ever,” said Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/us/p ... -down.html

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Putting this here