News in brief

By The Associated Press

Change to West Point’s mission statement sparks controversy

WEST POINT, N.Y. | “Duty, Honor, Country” has been the motto of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point for 126 years. The motto isn’t changing, but a decision to take those words out of the school’s lesser-known mission statement is generating outrage

Conservative radio host Jeff Kuhner posted on X that West Point “is going woke.” Fox network host Rachel Campos-Duffy posted that the academy has gone “full globalist.”

Officials at the 222-year-old military academy 60 miles north of New York City say that while “Duty, Honor, Country” will always be the school’s motto, the mission statement is updated periodically.

Aid group: Sixty people died on trip from Libya

MILAN | A humanitarian rescue group says survivors aboard a deflating rubber dinghy rescued in the central Mediterranean Sea have reported that some 60 people who departed Libya with them more than a week ago perished during the journey.

SOS Mediterranee says its rescue ship Ocean Viking spotted the dinghy Wednesday with 25 people on board. Two were unconscious, and evacuated by an Italian Coast Guard helicopter for treatment. The other 23 were in serious condition, exhausted, dehydrated and with burns from fuel on board the boat.

SOS Mediterranee spokesman Francesco Creazzo said that the survivors were all male, 12 of them minors with two of those not yet teenagers. They were from Senegal, Mali and The Gambia.

—From AP reports