Antarctica — Long viewed as a frontier of science and exploration, Antarctica is now under international scrutiny for a darker reality: widespread reports of sexual harassment and assault at its remote research stations.

A new report from USAID’s inspector general reveals the agency did not monitor the locations or uses of 5,175 Starlink satellite internet terminals sent to Ukraine during the war. The terminals — 1,508 purchased by USAID and 3,667 donated by SpaceX — were intended to restore life-saving connectivity for civilian services like healthcare, emergency shelters, and local governance after Russia’s 2022 invasion.

“My plea is aimed at everyone and anyone who might potentially have the means to help us. To those that want to help but do not have the means, please share Gerco’s story far and wide so that we can have everyone make a noise to bring him home."

(POC) — Gerco was kidnapped on November 3, 2017 while on his way to the Awbari power plant where he was employed as an on-site emergency medical practitioner.

(POC) — A global building materials manufacturer and its subsidiary pleaded guilty today to a one-count criminal information charging them with conspiring to provide material support and resources in Northern Syria from 2013 to 2014 to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and the al-Nusrah Front (ANF), both U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations. Immediately following the defendants’ guilty pleas, U.S. District Judge sentenced the defendants to terms of probation and to pay financial penalties, including criminal fines and forfeiture, totaling $777.78 million.

Hundreds of Filipino workers are marooned at a U.S. military base on an island in the Indian Ocean because of a dispute between their employer, a major American contractor, and the Philippine government over their wages, according to employees and Philippine officials.

The Taliban has freed Mark Frerichs, an American engineer in exchange for an Afghan tribal leader linked to the group the US had held on drugs charges since 2005.

Frerichs is an engineer and U.S. Navy veteran from Lombard, Illinois, who worked in Afghanistan for a decade on development projects. He was kidnapped in February 2020.

On her very first day in Antarctica, one woman was warned to aviod a certain building as NSF McMurdo Station unless [she] wanted to be raped.

Another was so "freaked out"by the pervassive sexual harrassment that she began carrying around a hammer.

Sexual assault and sexual harassment "are a fact of life" in Antarctica, another woman said, "just like the fact that Antarctica is cold and the wind blows."

A defense contractor KBR, agreed to pay $13.67 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that its employees accepted kickbacks while providing logistics support to U.S. Army forces in the Middle East.

The lawsuit accused employees of the Houston-based Kellogg Brown & Root Services Inc., known to troops who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as KBR, of rigging contracts and overcharging the government, the Justice Department said in a statement last week.

Comprehensive Health Services LLC (CHS), located in Cape Canaveral, Florida, has agreed to pay $930,000 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by falsely representing to the State Department and the Air Force that it complied with contract requirements relating to the provision of medical services at State Department and Air Force facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the Department of Justice’s first resolution of a False Claims Act case involving cyber fraud since the launch of the department’s Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative, which aims to combine the department’s expertise in civil fraud enforcement, government procurement, and cybersecurity to combat new and emerging cyber threats to the security of sensitive information and critical systems.

After more than a one-year delay, the trial of five Navy officers in the “Fat Leonard” Navy bribery scandal is set to begin Monday with jury selection.

The trial, in San Diego federal court, will be a first in the sprawling prosecution that became public in 2013 with the arrest of Singapore-based military contractor Leonard Glenn Francis, also known as Fat Leonard.

A new bill proposed in Congress would make it so veterans dealing will illnesses related to military burn pit exposure would no longer be turned away by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Representatives Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) and Raul Ruiz, M.D. (D-CA) are backing the legislation that would provide those veterans with needed health care.

Fluor Federal Global Projects, Inc., Fluor Corporation, and Fluor Enterprises, Inc. (collectively “Fluor”), purported global leading provider of maintenance, procurement, engineering, and construction solutions to clients around the world, including the U.S. military, unlawfully terminated an employee because of his disability, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit it recently filed.

The defendants' Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke are accused of working as senior managers at a UAE-based company that conducted hacking operations on behalf of the government. Prosecutors say the men provided hacking and intelligence-gathering systems that were used to break into computers in the United State and elsewhere in the world.