U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has asked Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George to step down and take immediate retirement amid the Iran war, CBS News reported citing sources familiar with the decision.

One of the sources told CBS News that Hegseth wants someone in the role who will implement President Trump and Hegseth’s vision for the Army. 

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement that George “will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately. The Department of War is grateful for General George’s decades of service to our nation. We wish him well in his retirement.”

A senior Defense Department official told CBS News, “We are grateful for his service, but it was time for a leadership change in the Army.”

Two other Army officers were removed from their roles, according to three sources familiar with the matter: Gen. David Hodne, who led the Army’s Transformation and Training Command, and Maj. Gen. William Green, who headed the Army’s Chaplain Corps. The Washington Post was first to report on Hodne and Green’s ouster.

More than 1 million people have been displaced in Lebanon over the past month following Israeli attacks, with one in every five people in the country currently displaced, according to the UNHCR.  

UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch told Anadolu that the humanitarian situation in Lebanon is “deepening day by day.”   

“We have seen it during the last one month that the Israeli evacuation orders, then the strikes and people have been on the move. Right now inside Lebanon we have more than a million people that have been displaced because of the escalating conflict inside the region and in Lebanon itself as well,” Baloch told Anadolu news agency.  

He stressed that one in five people inside Lebanon “currently is displaced and many of them are desperate, they’re traumatized,” adding that displacement is occurring across the country, with more than 130,000 people sheltering in over 600 collective centers.  

“The conflict intensifies and escalates and it does not stop, it keeps going on with the Lebanese people and Syrian refugees who live in Lebanon, affecting them but it also forces people to leave Lebanon and seek safety somewhere else,” he added.  

Families are sleeping in overcrowded shelters, often without adequate indoor conditions, he said. 

NASA astronaut and Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman photographed Earth from the window of the Orion spacecraft after completing the translunar injection maneuver.

The photograph taken by Reid Wiseman, which depicts the night side of Earth from space, has been published on NASA’s website.

“The image shows two auroras (top right and bottom left) and zodiacal light (bottom right) as the Earth eclipses the Sun.

This and another image of Earth are the first images photographed by the Artemis II astronauts,” the statement accompanying the photo says.

Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing was elected president on Friday after breezing through a parliamentary vote, formalising his grip on political power ‌in the war-torn nation five years after he ousted an elected government in a coup, Reuters reports.

On Friday, lawmakers from the dominant Union Solidarity and Development Party and the military’s quota ⁠of appointed armed forces legislators coalesced to back Min Aung Hlaing, with the former commander-in-chief winning the vote by a huge margin.

Despite initially trailing to Nyo Saw, a retired general and the junta’s prime minister, Min Aung Hlaing pulled ahead to win 429 votes to Nyo Saw’s 126.

Min Aung Hlaing’s ascent to the presidency – a position that analysts say he has long sought – followed a major reshuffle in the leadership of Myanmar’s armed forces, which he had led since 2011.

A coup d’état in Myanmar began on the morning of 1 February 2021, when democratically elected members of the country’s ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), were deposed by the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, which then vested power in a military junta. Acting President of Myanmar Myint Swe proclaimed a year-long state of emergency and declared power had been transferred to Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. It declared the results of the November 2020 general election invalid and stated its intent to hold a new election at the end of the state of emergency.

Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan has published the draft pre-election program of the Civil Contract party for the 2026 regular elections to the National Assembly.

The draft, published on Pashinyan’s Facebook page, states that the ideological basis of the Civil Contract party’s pre-election program is the ideology of “Real Armenia” and the doctrine of Armenia’s economic and institutional transformation.

The preface notes that opening an era of peaceful development for Armenia and the region is the greatest mission undertaken by the Government before the people after the results of the 2021 snap elections.

In his preface, as Prime Minister, Chairman of the Civil Contract party Board and prime ministerial candidate, Pashinyan, addressing citizens, stated that with their support the party has fulfilled its greatest mission, and peace has been established between Armenia and Azerbaijan, opening an era of peaceful development for Armenia.

“In the elections to be held on June 7, together with you, we have a problem to solve: we must stand up for peace, which is new, still vulnerable and in need of our daily care,” Pashinyan said, calling on citizens to go to polling stations and support the Civil Contract party.

Deputy Speaker of Parliament Ruben Rubinyan held a meeting on Friday with the Iranian Ambassador to Armenia, Khalil Shirgholami.

According to a readout issued by the Parliament’s press service, the meeting discussed issues related to Armenia-Iran relations.

Both sides emphasized the importance of inter-parliamentary cooperation. Deputy Speaker Rubinyan and Ambassador Shirgholami also exchanged views on regional developments.