The fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit planned by President Barack Obama to enhance international cooperation on the issue opens Thursday in Washington, D.C. Leaders from 56 countries and international organizations are expected to attend the two-day talks. Representatives last met in March 2014 in The Hague, Netherlands. At the close of that summit, Obama said the participants expected this week’s summit to be a “transition summit in which heads of state and government are still participating, but that we are shifting towards a more sustainable model that utilizes our ministers, our technical people, and we are building some sort of architecture that can effectively focus and implement on these issues and supplement the good work that is being done by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] and others.” Obama will host delegation heads at the White House Thursday night for a working dinner to start the summit.
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.