US Southern Command is working with the US Agency for International Development and the US Navy’s Project Handclasp to airlift more than $30,000 of emergency relief supplies to eastern Bolivia, where flooding has devastated the region. Airmen of Air Force Reserve Command’s 70th Aerial Port Squadron at Homestead ARB, Fla., helped load the supplies aboard a Puerto Rico Air National Guard C-130 Hercules from the 156th Airlift Wing. The C-130 landed at Trinidad on March 5 with 4,800 water containers, 2,300 hygiene kits, 20 rolls of plastic sheeting, and four water pumps, each capable of draining 25,000 gallons per hour.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.