News of the Force: Sunday, October 23, 2016 - Page 1

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Sunday, October 23, 2016 - Today is National Day in Hungary

ISIS executes hundreds of Mosul residents

ISIS has executed 284 men and boys as Coalition forces closed in on Mosul, an Iraqi intelligence source has said. Those killed on Thursday and Friday had been rounded up near and in the city for use as human shields against attacks.

Iraqi forces fired mortar shells at Islamic State positions south of Mosul on Friday.

Not far from Mohamad Al Mawsily's "pirate" radio studio, fierce battles are raging to oust ISIS from the city of Mosul.

The Iraqi army gathered after the liberation of a Chrisitan village from Islamic State militants, south of Mosul, during an operation to attack the Islamic State militants in Iraq.

And the operation to liberate Mosul continues, and U.S., Iraqi government, Kurdish Peshmerga, Yezidi, Christian and local Sunni forces are on the move.

U.N. envoy urges 72-hour extension of cease-fire in Yemen

With the 72-hour cessation of hostilities in Yemen coming to an end, the United Nations envoy for Yemen today pressed for a 72-hour extension.

People of the Philippines love the United States

In the few months he has been in power in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has seemingly convulsed relations between his country and the United States, a longtime ally and former colonial ruler. But despite what the president says or does, the people of the Philippines say they love the U.S.

Cuzin Gym's Thought for the Day: If Noah had been truly wise, he would have swatted those two flies.

On the campaign trail

Donald Trump vowed yesterday to sue the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct in recent weeks.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s debate performance last week was full of fabrications, misinformation, and straight lies - and we’ve got the list. Here’s a list of the five biggest whoopers to come out of Clinton’s mouth: Clinton’s lie #1: "I don’t add a penny to the national debt." The truth: Not true at all. That’s according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which estimates her large increase in spending on infrastructure, more financial aid for college, and early childhood education would increase the national debt by $200 billion over 10 years. Clinton’s lie #2: She didn't call for open borders in a paid 2013 speech to a bank: "I was talking about energy." The truth: This is just a straight lie. She was actually talking about more than energy and her call for open borders is right there in the speech transcript released by WikiLeaks. Clinton said, "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, sometime in the future with energy that is as green as sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” The remarks suggest a broad interest in open trade of energy, yes, but clearly implies she would support free, open movement of people as rival Donald Trump had suggested. Clinton’s lie #3: "I want to make college debt free." The truth: Clinton is trying to capture Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ popularity with millennials, but she has only proposed making college tuition free for in-state students who go to a public college or university. Yes, Clinton’s plan would bill taxpayers an estimated $500 billion over 10 years for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities for students from families earning less than $125,000 a year. But it doesn't go as far as Sanders, whose promise for free college energized students. Under Clinton, college-goers would still need to foot the bill for housing and food, which makes up more than half of the average $18,943 sticker price at a four-year public university, according to the College Board. Clinton’s lie #4: "I didn't support the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal: It didn't meet my test." The truth: It definitely met her test when she was secretary of state. She promoted it worldwide and called it the gold standard of trade deals. Clinton claims she no longer backs the proposed trade deal as written because it does not provide enough protections for U.S. workers on wages, jobs and the country’s national security. Her campaign says otherwise.

Hacked e-mails from Clinton’s campaign, released on Wednesday by WikiLeaks, showed that Jake Sullivan, her top foreign policy adviser, called her a “big champion” of the deal and worried about how to handle the issue in the face of primary rival Sanders’ opposition. And Clinton’s lie #5: President Barack Obama's health care law “extended the solvency of the Medicare trust fund." and if America repeals Obamacare, "our Medicare problem gets worse." The truth: Wrong. Medicare’s funding problems are FAR more complicated than she implies. Obama’s unpopular 2010 Affordable Care Act was partly financed with cuts in future payments to hospitals, insurers and other Medicare service providers. Obama promised it would extend the solvency of the Medicare trust fund to 2029. It failed. Medicare still has significant financial problems. The trust fund is currently projected to be exhausted in 2028, and the program’s trustees have repeatedly warned Congress and the president that action is needed to sustain Medicare over the long haul.

Mr. Trump delivered an incredible performance at the final presidential debate, and we're seeing the results today. Internal polling shows a HUGE surge for his campaign, with undecided voters overwhelmingly breaking his way. You’ve seen how the liberal media is disgracefully trying to prop up Hillary Clinton - resorting to laughably biased polling and lying through their teeth about what’s really going on in this campaign. It’s been an all-out assault against Mr. Trump. But Donald Trump is a fighter and refuses to back down.
With just 16 days until Election Day, Trump has all of the momentum in this race, and the Clinton campaign machine and the liberal media are desperate to stop him.

U.S. lawmakers and security experts are praising Donald Trump's plans for national defense.
And were the presidential debates unbiased? Supporters of Donald Trump have - for weeks - vocally protested the debates were unfair to the Republican presidential candidate. They were right - and here’s how we know. With the final presidential debate under wraps, and polls flooding in declaring who the true winner was, it’s important to consider who is in charge of these so-called nonpartisan debates in the first place. The Commission on Presidential Debates has the responsibility of setting up the debate dates, rules, moderators, and providing "the best possible information to viewers and listeners." The Horn News reported in September, before the debates began, that although they claim to be nonpartisan, they were far from it. Now that the debates are finished, there’s no denying it - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was fighting a biased, uphill battle the whole time. We took a closer look at the commission members to decide if they are genuinely biased, and what we found is shocking. The commission's leadership is made up of 22 members, 2 of which are deceased honorary co-chairmen, former Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. The commission co-chairmen are Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr., who is 90 years old, and none other than Bill Clinton’s press secretary, who is just 62 and has donated thousands to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s previous campaigns. Of the remaining members, five have either endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton or donated to her campaigns. Not a single member of the committee has either endorsed or donated to Trump. Trump has zero allies on the debate commission to advocate for a nonpartisan debate. And many of the remaining 13 members are either closely aligned with the Democratic Party, or have publicly criticized Trump. For example, Co-Chairman Emeritus Paul G. Kirk, Jr., is the former chairman of the Democratic National Convention, so it’s safe to assume he would support the democratic candidate in a presidential election. Antonia Hernandez is a Scholar in Residence at the Clinton School of Public Service Center on Community Philanthropy and a former president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), which has been outspoken against Trump.

Even the commission’s so-called conservative members have publicly refused to support Trump’s campaign. John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator, said he wants Trump to leave the Republican Party, according to Newsmax.

Olympia Snowe, also a former Republican senator, said she believes Trump is hurting the Republican brand. Notre Dame President The Rev. John I. Jenkins gave a speech in Mexico in July, in which he said the "vitriol" aimed at Mexicans is "churlish, insulting political theater," and his aides acknowledged to The Washington Post that his comments were an attack at Trump. Perdue President Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., and a former Republican Indiana governor endorsed Romney in 2012, but has so far refused to endorse Trump, or even contribute to his campaign. When asked about Trump, he commented, "I don’t think he takes anyone’s advice." He invited Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson to speak at Perdue, without ever extending that invitation to the candidate of his own political party. It’s clear that a majority of these members do not have non-partisan mindsets and therefore the debates were definitely not executed in an unbiased way. Just more proof that the high-power establishment is working together to put Hillary in the Oval Office.

U.S. Coast Guard

Crews with the U.S. Coast Guard have medevaced two Royal Canadian Navy sailors from a military ship 200 miles south of Cape Fear, N.C.

The Coast Guard has rescued 4 people, including a child, after their boat took on water and capsized in the Gulf of Mexico,12 miles west of Johns Pass, Fla. Rescued were Joseph Fernandez, 55, Philip Fernandez, 42, Erick Quesada, 40, and Samantha Fernandez, 8, all from Clearwater, Fla.

The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search efforts for a 26-year-old Ohio native who went missing after his boat capsized near Hawaii's Big Island.

The Coast Guard says a Phillips 66 refinery is responsible for oil sheens on the water off the coast of Vallejo, Calif.

And a disabled boat that broke down in the Atlantic Ocean about 80 miles off the South Shore of Long Island, N.Y., was towed to safety on Friday morning by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Homeland insecurity

According to recently released data, the Department of Homeland Security released another 52,147 illegal alien kids into the United States in FY-2016.

Arizona conservation districts and others sued the Department of Homeland Security last week, claiming it is allowing immigrants into the county who are "environmentally ruinous."

A Wilkes-Barre man was arrested on Thursday in Hanover Township, Pa., after police said he used a stolen birth certificate and social security card in an attempt to obtain a "Real ID."

And the Department of Homeland Security is still investigating the widespread service disruption last week affecting major online players such as Twitter and Netflix.

Airlines' on-time rates about to drop

By Jim Corvey, News of the Force St. Louis

In recent years, big U.S. airlines have touted their operational improve-ments to curb delays and make flight schedules more reliable. Yet this crowing comes with a big caveat: Most of the monthly stats the large carriers report don’t include their regional operations, mostly smaller, 50- to 90-seat jets that funnel travelers to and from hubs. Regional flying now constitutes almost half of U.S. domestic air routes - and when bad weather strikes, those flights are often the first to be canceled.

Starting next year, the U.S. Department of Transportation is closing that gaping hole by requiring performance information on flights operated by a half-dozen regional airlines. Regulators are aiming to make monthly performance at the major carriers reflect how well their regional operations did.

Monthly on-time rankings "have a significant impact on a carrier’s image and brand identity, which in turn has a potential effect on the decision-making of many consumers when deciding to purchase air transportation," the Transportation Department said last week as it issued a final rule on the issue. The change also would more closely correlate the Big Three’s domestic on-time performance metrics with Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Virgin America, which do nearly all their own flying.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone is happy with this move toward greater transparency. "Regional airlines remain committed to delivering safe and high-quality air service to our customers - both our airline partners and our passengers - and caution against regulations imposing increased costs without a recognized public benefit," said Faye Black, the president of the Regional Airline Association, which represents 24 regional carriers.

The new mandate for a fuller picture of on-time performance encompasses carriers with at least 0.5 percent of domestic passenger revenue, instead of the prior 1 percent. This will cover six regional airlines that fly for the legacy carriers and the Allegiant Travel Co., the Las Vegas-based ultra-low-cost carrier. The change to a 0.5 percent revenue threshold will cover 99.68 percent of flight performance data for scheduled domestic service, the government said. Seven airlines - six of them regional - remain exempt.

Historically, regulators haven't required such data due to the time and cost of compiling and filing monthly records. But newer technology has largely rendered this concern moot, several interested parties told the department in comments about the rule.

As a result of the reporting gap, the Transportation Department’s monthly Air Travel Consumer Report portrayed on-time data for only 38 percent to 55 percent of domestic flights last year, the department said. This monthly release shows a variety of airline performance metrics, such as mishandled bags, flight delays, passengers who were "bumped" due to oversold flights, and pet injuries.

Amid poor weather or other constraints at an airport, regional flights are typically the first a carrier will sacrifice when it comes to deciding which to operate. One example cited by regulators: United Airlines’ on-time arrival rate at its San Francisco hub in July 2014 would have been 6 percent lower if code-share flights were included. That’s just one month and one airport - one in which fog and low clouds regularly befall numerous flights - but carried across the industry, this reporting change would likely dent the carriers’ current reliability measures. That also could pose some difficulties for the marketing at an airline such as Delta, which has been touting itself as "The On-Time Machine" given its strong performance in this metric relative to its large peers.

Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former American Airlines executive, explained how regional airlines are often at a disadvantage when it comes to maintaining good on-time rates. "The majors would move the larger mainline metal (accommodating more customers) and ‘command’ the cancellation or delay of smaller regional departures (fewer customers affected)," Mann said in an e-mail. Because of this, mainline and regional airlines show “a wide disparity” when it comes to on-time arrivals and completion.

On the bright side, this regulatory maneuver could spur the type of improvements in regional operations that would benefit passengers and make a 10 p.m. regional flight out of Chicago’s O’Hare potentially less dodgy for a business traveler desperate to get home.

Delta, the second-largest airline, says it has already begun addressing operational issues that can mar a regional carrier’s operations. In May, six airlines that fly under the Delta Connection brand "achieved nearly eight days without a single flight cancellation," Delta said in a statement. The company also touted 60 "brand perfect days" in 2016, or days when neither Delta nor any of its regional carriers canceled a flight.

"Brand perfect" or not, that’s just one airline, and it still pales beside the type of schedule reliability Delta has imposed on its mainline fleet of late. And there’s good reason to think that regionals will still be canceled before a larger aircraft flight, simply because of the number of customers affected by the smaller jet being scrubbed.

Last year, Delta promised corporate customers that they would see travel credits if the airline’s on-time and flight completion performance trailed its rivals, American and United. United followed with a similar pledge and included its United Express regional carriers. American, which has been working to complete its merger with US Airways, hasn’t made a similar pledge. The airline has also trailed Delta and United over the past 12 months, with only 79.6 percent of its flights arriving on time, compared with 86.5 percent at Delta and 82.2 percent at United.

A 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Transportation Department had insufficient data to make significant conclusions about flight delays. One finding: Smaller communities suffer far more flight delays and cancellations than their larger peers.

U.S. Army

After two years of hard work, the Great Falls Armed Reserve Center has finally been renamed to honor two fallen Montana soldiers.

And nearly 10,000 California Army National Guard soldiers have been told they'll have to pay back enlistment bonuses they received over ten years ago. The average amount of those bonuses is $15,000.

UFO news

According to Nigel Harris, Craig Roberts and Justin Everly, who were all pupils at the Aberconwy School in Conwy, North Wales, when they saw an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) over the school.

A UFO has been caught on video as it flew over Biel, Switzerland, on Oct. 20th.

Also on Oct. 20th, yet another UFO was caught on video as it passed close aboard to the International Space Station (ISS).

On Oct. 16th, a UFO was recorded on video as it flew over the state of Delaware.

And new video has just been posted of a UFO seen flying over Milwaukee, Wis., on Sept. 16th.