News of the Force: Wednesday, January 4, 2016 - Page 1

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Wednesday, January 4, 2016 - Today is Ogoni Day in Nigeria

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 News of the Force was not published yesterday due to systems maintenance.

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Trump threatens North Korea

    

    The tweeter-in-chief waded into the fray over Kim Jong Un's remarks on his country's nuclear capabilities. President-elect Donald Trump refuted Kim Jong Un's implied message that his military may soon test an intercontinental ballistic Missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the U.S. mainland that the North Korean leader made during his New Year's Day address.

 

Russia's navy announces military drills with the Philippines

    The Russian navy says it is planning to hold maritime drills with the Philippines to help the Southeast Asian country fight terrorism and piracy.

 

China uses its aircraft carrier in the South China Sea

    China has used its sole aircraft carrier during take-off and landing drills in the South China Sea.

 

Turkey arrests two foreigners at Istanbul's airport

    Turkish authorities arrested two foreign nationals at Istanbul's Ataturk airport yesterday in connection with the nightclub terror attack early on New Year's Day that left 39 people dead. ISIS claimed responsibility for the New Year's attack at the Reina nightclub, but authorities are still scrambling to find the killer.

    Turkey's Parliament has voted to extend by a further three months a state of emergency that was declared in the aftermath of the failed July 15th coup.

    Given public anger over the economic fallout from the violence, President Erdogan's dream of creating an all-powerful presidential system may now hang in the balance.

 

Coalition service member killed in Iraq

     

    A service member in the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) died on Monday, the U.S. military said. The Operation Inherent Resolve service member died in Iraq in "a non-combat related incident," the command said. The British soldier was killed in Iraq under questionable circumstances, according to a news report published Monday afternoon. Details were scarce, but the "incident" is under investigation.

    Iraqi journalist Afrah Shawqi was released yesterday a week after being abducted from her Baghdad home by gunmen, her sister and security officials said.

    And U.S. and Coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. Attack, bomber, fighter and remotely-piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted six strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government: Near Beiji, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit; Near Huwayjah, two strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit, destroyed a pickup truck and a vehicle bomb storage facility; and near Mosul, three strikes engaged two ISIL tactical units; destroyed two mortars, a tactical vehicle and two command and control nodes, damaged two supply routes, and suppressed nine mortar teams and an ISIL tactical unit.

 

Moise confirmed as Haiti's new president

    

    Jovenel Moise won Haiti's presidential elections with 55.6 percent of the first round vote held on Nov. 20th, according to official results.

 

The daughter who broke a president

    She's the beautiful equestrian champion and the only child of a powerful family. Chung Yoo-ra is at the center of the dramatic downfall of her nation's president with South Korean authorities keen to speak with her over the scandal.

 

India announces its new fighter jets will be domestically produced

    Indian Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar said at a news conference yesterday that New Delhi is inviting global bids for a foreign-designed single-engine fighter that would be assembled in India. According to Parrikar, a western partner for the fighter will be chosen based on pricing and terms for the transfer of the technology.

 

Muslim rebels storm jail in the Philippines

    Nearly 160 inmates escaped after suspected Muslim rebels attacked a jail in the southern Philippines before dawn today, and at least six people were shot dead as pursuing government forces traded fire with the gunmen.

    The manhunt continues after the armed raid led to a mass prison escape. As many as 158 inmates fled the North Cotabato District Jail, in Kidapawan City, in the southern Philippines, early today.

 

Terrorists said retaliating against Turkey's government

By Lisa Levine, News of the Force Tel Aviv

    

    Terrorists are retaliating against the Turkish government for changing its strategy in Syria, a move Ankara has made largely due to Russian pressure, Gregory Copley, the editor of Defense and Foreign Affairs has said.

    Leanne Nasser begged her parents to let her go to Istanbul. She had never been abroad and never left Israel. Her three friends were going to the city on the Bosporus to celebrate New Year's Eve, and she wanted to go with them. She did, and she was killed in the nightclub attack there.

    Syrian rebels are suspending talks in the lead-up to planned peace negotiations due to what they call "Syrian regime violations" of a four-day-old nationwide cease-fire agreement.

    Abu Yousef al-Muhajir, a Syrian rebel leader and the official spokesman for the Islamic Movement of Ahrar al-Sham, said in an exclusive interview that their group is committed to the Turkish-Russian brokered cease-fire. Syria's main rebel groups say they are suspending participation in preliminary Russia-brokered peace talks later this month in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, in protest of frequent violations by the regime of a days-old truce.

    With their multi-week offensive against the major ISIS-held city of al-Bab going very slowly, Turkey has been courting international help, particularly from the U.S.-led Coalition forces, to get the job done.

    U.S. and Coalition forces attack, bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 21 strikes in Syria yesterday: Near Ayn Isa, three strikes engaged two ISIL tactical units, destroyed a fighting position and disabled an ISIL armored vehicle. Near Dayr Az Zawr, seven strikes destroyed two excavators, one bulldozer, two oil wellheads, 13 oil construction vehicles, four cranes, a piece of engineering equipment and seven front-end loaders. Near Raqqa, seven strikes engaged five ISIL tactical units, destroyed a vehicle bomb, a vehicle bomb storage facility, a weapons cache and 11 fighting positions, and suppressed an ISIL tactical unit. Near Shadaddi, three strikes engaged two ISIL tactical units, destroyed a vehicle bomb, a vehicle bomb storage facility and a fighting position, and damaged a repeater box and communications tower. And near Tanf, a strike destroyed an ISIL repeater box, two repeater antennas and two solar panels.

    Thirty-seven top U.S. scientists, including some of the world's leading experts in the fields of nuclear science and arms control, have written to President-elect Donald Trump calling on him to abide by the nuclear agreement with Iran when he takes office on Jan. 20th.

    A drone with a video camera which crashed in a wooded area on Mount Hevron has revealed a European Union (E.U.) espionage operation.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was interrogated on Monday night on suspicion of corruption in a criminal investigation authorized by the nation's attorney general.

    Hizbollah remains the most serious military threat facing Israel, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) said on Monday in a report.

    The Palestinians' "Christmas Tree of Terror" picturing photos of deceased terrorists drew crowds and praise from Arab Christian leaders. 

    And Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldier Elor Azaria, 19, has been convicted of manslaughter for killing a wounded Palestinian terrorist who had stabbed another Israeli soldier.

 

Rebuffing Trump, Obama likely to release more prisoners from Gitmo

    

    The White House says U.S. President Barack Obama plans to transfer abroad more suspected terrorists held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before he leaves office on Jan. 20th, rebuffing President-elect Donald Trump's call to end such releases.

    Checkpoints along blocked-off portions of public streets and sidewalks around the New York Stock Exchange are staffed by private security officers as New York City has also increased security around the Trump Tower.

    Former U.S. President George W. Bush, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, have announced that they will attend Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20th.  

    And President-elect Trump is already delivering on his promises. The Ford Motor Co. has announced that its canceling its construction of a $1.6 billion automobile assembly plant in Mexico.

 

Afghans protest Daesh's brutality

    People in western Afghanistan have staged a massive protest against growing sectarian attacks on Shia Muslims by the Takfiri Daesh terrorists.

 

Fifty-six inmates killed in Brazil prison riot

    An attack by members of one crime gang on rival inmates touched off a riot at a prison in the northern state of Amazonas, leaving at least 56 dead, including several who were beheaded or dismembered. The riot ended early Monday and was one of the bloodiest disasters ever in the country's crowded penitentiary system, officials said.

 

U.K.'s envoy to the European Union resigns

    

    The chances that the U.K. will make a disruptive break from its biggest market have grown with the resignation of the British envoy to the European Union, Sir Mark Ivan Rogers, an experienced Brussels insider who was reviled by leading Brexit supporters.

 

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    Couzin Gym's Thought for the Day: Knowledge is free at the library. Just bring your own container.

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U.S. Air Force

    

    In response to our inquiry to the Secretary of the Air Force's Public Affairs Office regarding the Civil Air Patrol's participation in the "Falcon Virgo" air defense exercises, we've received a response from Ms. Brooke L. Brzozowske, an Air Force civilian, as follows: "Civil Air Patrol provides a valuable service as the Air Force Auxiliary. Furthermore, the amount of time "volunteer airmen" donate significantly reduces the cost associated with supporting exercise missions. As a result of past successes, the Air Force has expanded CAP's support in other mission areas due to the cost effectiveness in employing the auxiliary force. In fact, the approximate monthly cost for the Falcon Virgo exercise is somewhere in the neighborhood of $12,000. This is incredibly efficient while providing a valuable resource. The Air Force Auxiliary continues to provide a significant contribution of volunteer time in support of Air Force missions."

    An Air Force Academy cadet and his father are among those killed in a Texas mid-air plane collision and crash on Saturday.

    "Our objective was to secure UAS missions for Grand Forks Air Force Base and the North Dakota Air National Guard in Fargo, and we were successful," U.S. Sen. John Hoeven has said.

    Enlisted performance reports have the power to affect an airman’s career, but for one airman, an EPR had the power to change how he saw his life. Air Force Staff Sgt. Preston Moten, an aerospace ground equipment schedule and training monitor with the 20th Equipment Maintenance Squadron at Shaw AFB, S.C., said the rating from his first EPR made him realize it was time to straighten up and listen to the positive people around him. Moten said his life before he joined the Air Force set the tone for his first year as an airman; there weren't many leaders or positive mentors around as he grew up. Instead, he was surrounded by toxic individuals. "They were all the wrong people, telling us kids to do all the wrong things," he said. Even at home, Moten could not escape the toxicity. He said the gifts he received as a child for the holidays would be taken to a pawn shop within a few days because his parents needed the money for something else. When he was about 16 years old, Moten’s grandparents discovered his parents’ addiction to crack cocaine and removed him completely from the situation. His grandmother attempted to guide his life in a more positive direction, but Moten was not yet ready to accept the advice. When his girlfriend became pregnant with his daughter, Moten said he took a good look around. He noticed that many of the children around him were not being raised by their fathers because the men were often in jail, in prison or dead. Then Moten thought about what he wanted for his daughter. "I know what it’s like,' he said, referencing his difficult youth. "I didn't want her to go through that." Moten realized he didn't want to be like those other fathers. Instead, he enlisted in the Air Force to be a better role model for his daughter and to get her away from the destructive environment he once grew up in.  Like his past, his first year in the Air Force was full of trouble. Air Force Staff Sgt. Trevor Smart, a craftsman with the 20th EMS AGE, said he remembered one distinct mistake Moten made while bringing in a piece of equipment off a maintenance line. "He knocked a bomb load truck off of jack stands and it spun toward me and another guy," said Smart. "That’s the day he found out everything in AGE is a potential hazard to a life." Moten said he was never taught to act professionally before, so his reactions to people were far from reflecting Air Force standards. "He did not have the attitude of an airman in the Air Force yet," Smart said. 'He had that thought process of ‘if I don’t get it right, somebody will pick up after me.’ When he reacted or talked to anybody, he responded the incorrect way." Immaturity led to discipline issues and paperwork. "The paperwork didn't set in with me," said Moten. "What did set in to me was my EPR." The rating Moten was given on his first EPR finally shocked him out of his stubborn attitude. It made him realize that compared to other airmen, he was not only far from the best, but did not reach the standard expected of him. Now he was ready to not only hear what the sergeants around him were saying, but to listen and act on it. He wouldn't let failure be an option. "People like them, the sergeants, worked on me," Moten said. 'They've got gray hairs because of me. They said ‘We see something in you.’ I didn't even see it in myself.' Moten changed the trajectory of his family with a new determination to be the best. "His attitude toward pretty much everything changed," Smart said. One step Moten took toward change was dis-associating with the negative people back in his hometown. He said he saw that many of those people were doing the same things year after year with nothing better in their future. By doing better, Moten said, he believed he could be an example that would encourage them to challenge themselves. Too many people doubted his capabilities when he was younger, telling him what he couldn’t become, Moten said. Now, he uses his past to help local youths realize their true potential. Moten coaches youth football and basket-ball to children he believes have the potential to become the next doctors, chief master sergeants or presidents. "I coach because I love it," he said. "I judge myself by how I help others reach their potential." Moten also helps the airmen around him. "His goal is to further his education and show his daughter that he can be a better role model," Smart said. "He’s been pushing all of our airmen to do the same. He likes to do counseling sessions with them and tell them the benefits of having an education." "I want to help them find their way quicker than I found mine," Moten said. "They can be just as effective as me, if not better. I want to get them to do great things." Currently pursuing his bachelors of science in computer information systems, Moten said he hopes to complete his master’s degree before he reaches 10 years in service. Although furthering his education is one of his goals, it’s not his only one. He said his ultimate goal is to own a clinic for troubled youth where they can gather to listen to speakers, find mentors and learn a trade. "I don’t see a limit on my future," Moten said. "I can be anything I want to be."

    Tech. Sgt. Andy Hicks, an electro-environmental specialist with the Missouri Air National Guard's 131st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, was recently named the winner of a top EMT award.

    Major Kristi Schmitt has been named the officer in charge of "Task Force Broncbuster," a partnership between the Kansas Army and Air National Guard.

    The 165th Airlift Wing is set to perform a groundbreaking for its new multi-million dollar facility. The $8.5 million construction project will provide a brand new state-of-the-art facility for the Georgia Air National Guard.

    A sendoff ceremony was held yesterday morning for 19  Guam Air National Guard airmen who will be leaving on deployment next week.

    Westover Air Reserve Base, Mass., commander Col. Jay Jensen will be awarded a general's star in a pinning ceremony at the base in March.

    The Air Force will roll out a new civilian appraisal program in April that will link employee duties and performance to the organization's mission.

    Northrop Grumman has won a $62 million contract to overhaul air refueling tankers' engines. The Boeing, formerly McDonnell Douglas, KC-10 Extender is an aerial refueling tanker aircraft operated by the U.S. Air Force.

    The U.S. Air Force's six-year development of a guidance kit for the 1968-vintage B-61 thermonuclear bomb has entered the final stretch.

    The Air Force is going to modernize the Cold War-era B-52 strategic bombers. The aircraft will be equipped with new avionics and other upgrades.

    U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons from Aviano Air Base, Italy, have joined the Coalition forces and are supporting Turkish troops in Syria.

    The Civil Air Patrol, a program that has been around for teens and adults since World War II, has been relaunched at Stuart Powell Field Airport in Danville, Ky.

    Raytheon has been selected to provide upgrades to the U.S. Air Force's F-16 Modular Mission Computers; Cyber security experts at the Raytheon Co. will provide up-to-date cryptographic capabilities for military secure voice communications under the terms of a $459 million, five-year U.S. Air Force contract; and radar signal processing experts at the Raytheon Co. will upgrade a missile-defense radar system in Greenland in place to provide missile defense and early warning of enemy ballistic missile launches and potential threats in or from space.

    CAP Cadet Col. John Rogacki has joined two of his siblings - all members of the Civil Air Patrol's Curtiss-Wright Composite Squadron of the CAP's New Jersey Wing - are recipients of the CAP's highest cadet honor, the Spaatz Award.

    "Wreaths Across America," organized through the Oakhurst Cadet Squadron, a Civil Air Patrol unit in Seminole, Fla., was able to lay twice as many wreaths last month as it did the year before.

    U.S. Air Force Col. John Dorrian, the spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), briefed the media live from Baghdad this morning in the Pentagon Briefing Room (2E973), to provide an update on operations.

    And the Presidential Library System is a national network of 13 libraries hosting the many records and artifacts generated during the tenure of every president since Herbert Hoover, and a library in Chicago, Illinois, honoring the achievements of President Barack Obama will soon join the network. The items housed inside those libraries and museums aren't transferred from Washington like a typical household goods move. Specially formed teams from the military and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) have worked since late 2016 with White House staff to coordinate the transfer, with the final truckload expected to arrive in Chicago early this year. Air Force Lt. Col. Vianesa Vargas, the chief of Joint Team Records, is leading the charge for the more than 700-mile trek from Washington to Hoffman Estates, Illinois, just on the outskirts of Chicago. She’s the lead logistician in charge of a joint team of airmen and soldiers who have prepared tractor trailers full of artifacts. In all, more than 20 trucks are expected to make deliveries. Vargas described her team as the "muscle behind the move." The NARA team packages the items from the White House and then coordinates with Vargas and her team for shipment. "Our team will assist the NARA in going over to the White House, picking up the documents, records or gifts, and they bring it all to the National Archives and at that point it’s planned for onward movement," Vargas said. On the receiving end at Hoffman Estates is a team of sailors from Naval Station Great Lakes, Illinois. Vargas said the teams, despite being separated by 700 miles and two time zones, have been exceptional and among the best the NARA has said they've worked with. Vargas and her team are responsible for every record and artifact from the time it’s being loaded until it’s on the shelf at Hoffman Estates. She said her team has the ability to track the entire transit, including every stop along the route. Growing up just outside Sacramento, Calif., Vargas said she never envisioned being put in the position she’s currently in, with the responsibility of moving historical artifacts for one of the most prominent people on the planet. "When I left Sacramento I thought I was going to go to school and become a fitness trainer, one of the top fitness trainers in the nation, that was like my goal then - life has a way of kind of pointing you in the direction of where it needs you to go," Vargas said."“So joining the Air Force ROTC program, that opened up my mind and my heart to something much bigger than myself." Vargas, who has been in the Air Force for 18 years - her first 11 were active duty and the rest of her time served in the Air Force Reserve - said her various logistics jobs, including joint assignments, have prepared her well for her current assignment. Aside from working with the NARA and White House staff, Vargas has coordinated with multiple agencies from Joint Base Andrews, Md., and the Air Force District of Washington. "There’s all these different parts that we have to all work with, and being a logistician, that’s really where we excel - is being the integrator of all of that," she said. John Laster, the director of the Presidential Materials Division for the NARA, said Vargas and her team are very skilled and have been very efficient throughout the entire process thus far. He noted that the team has been very flexible and responsive when dealing with the challenges of moving an administration that is still hard at work running the country, making it difficult to plan very far ahead. "There’s a lot of decisions that are made very quickly and the military has been fantastic about understanding that," Laster said. Although the library isn't expected to open until sometime in 2021, Vargas said she can't wait to take her family to visit and tell them how she had a role in making it all happen.

 

NOAA news

    

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has awarded Atlas Space Operations a five-year contract that will boost satcom and data services for its Cosmic 2 Constellation.

    NOAA officials said that out of 60 strandings in South Carolina in 2016, only one dolphin survived after it was disentangled from a crab pot buoy line.

    Lockheed Martin has completed assembly of NOAA's GOES-S weather satellite and is now beginning critical mechanical and environmental testing.

    Tropical waters are still hot, record hot in some spots, according to NOAA observations, and, NOAA says, the Arctic Atlantic hasn't cooled like it should.

    NOAA is issuing new rules it says will crack down on illegal fishing and seafood fraud.

    And four people died after a tree fell on their mobile home in Alabama and a man drowned in Florida after severe weather there, NOAA says.

 

U.S. Army

    

    The Hon. Patrick Murphy, the undersecretary of the United States Army, and personal financial guru Suze Orman, conducted a joint media engagement this morning in the Pentagon Briefing Room (2E973) to announce a new partnership to help soldiers and their families take charge of their personal finances.

    United States Army administrators are implementing a new test for recruits which will help identify suitable jobs for them. The program began yesterday.

    With the Under Armour All-American Game out of the way, attention now turns to the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in San Antonio, Texas, which will be played on Saturday.

    Officials with the Illinois Army National Guard will meet soon with Delavan city officials to discuss the future of the Illinois Army National Guard armory there.

    The Army has enlisted the help of personal finance expert Suze Orman to educate soldiers and their families on money matters so they don’t fall victim to predatory loans, mounting credit card debt and other financial issues. Orman, a best-selling author and television personality, plans to offer her services free of charge to soldiers, including a seven-step online course, normally $54, and an upcoming video detailing the military’s new retirement system. "If anybody deserves the best financial advice in the world, which I am more than capable of giving, it’s the men and women who are serving all of us," Orman said today at a Pentagon press conference. Orman also discussed her desire to visit military bases to speak to troops in-person during seminars. "Nothing would make me happier than to personally go to every single base in the entire world," she said. Having such a star in the finance world come on board for free has left many Army leaders thrilled about the future readiness of soldiers. "When our soldiers don’t have their hearts and minds on their job, it is not good for their security and for the team. And that’s why we're so excited to partner with Suze," said Undersecretary of the Army Patrick Murphy, who announced the partnership. According to Orman, she tries to simplify personal finance tips to make them easier to understand. For instance, she noted that if a 25-year-old soldier began to place $100 a month into a Roth Thrift Savings Plan, the account will grow to roughly $1 million by the age of 65. But if the soldier waited until 35 years old to invest the same amount, he or she would only get $300,000. "Those 10 years cost them $700,000," she said. "If you teach that to a 25-year-old, you can bet your bottom-dollar that they're going to start putting money away." Besides retirement planning, her free online course available to all U.S. troops covers more topics from learning how to live debt-free, tackling financial obstacles to purchasing big-ticket items like a home or car. Any military member can enroll in the course at Suzeu.com, using access code "USA." With Orman’s help, a video explaining the Blended Retirement System, which is set to be rolled out Army-wide in 2018, is also in the works as part of the partnership. As one of the biggest changes to military pay and benefits in 70 years, the BRS is expected to give some sort of portable retirement benefit to about 85 percent of the force, compared to only 19 percent today. "We love our troops and their families. They are the corps of who we are as a team," Murphy said. "We want to make sure that they get the best advice as possible." Murphy also hopes Orman’s advice will steer cash-strapped soldiers away from payday loan businesses that try to exploit them with high interest rates. "We’ve cracked down on some of that, but really that’s being reactive," he said. "What we're trying to do with Suze is to be proactive and let soldiers know the tools that are out there." This isn't the first time Orman has partnered with the Army. In May, she signed a four-year gratuitous services agreement with the Army Reserve to improve the financial readiness of reservists using informational videos, written material, town hall discussions and base visits. She said she’s looking to work on these partnerships full-time since she ended The Suze Orman Show on CNBC in 2015. One of her goals now is to be an impartial finance advisor to soldiers who may not be able to find one elsewhere. "It’s very difficult, in my opinion, to get true, honest, unbiased financial advice," Orman said. "It’s almost as if everybody who gives you financial advice who’s in the financial arena has something to gain from it. We need an unbiased source, which I will serve as."

    Russia and others now have "helicopter killer" mines, and the U.S. Army is worried enough about them that it wants some kind of countermeasure.

    Engineers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have produced a 3D-printed drone which could help advance the completion of missions carried out by soldiers on the ground.

    The 3rd Battalion, 319th Regiment, gathered for the last time with current service members, retired veterans of the unit, friends and family members as the U.S. Army Reserve unit was deactivated after nearly 100 years of service.

    U.S. Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Alex Ushomirsky wasn't born in the United States, but he comforts the families of the fallen at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J.

    The Pentagon will repay millions of dollars in California Army National Guard bonuses that were improperly recouped from its veterans. Defense Department officials met the goal Defense Secretary Ash Carter set for establishing a process to handle resolution of bonuses paid erroneously to thousands of California Army National Guard soldiers several years ago, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday. In October, Carter directed suspension of all efforts to recoup money from the soldiers, Cook said. "He also asked the department to come up with a streamlined, centralized process to ensure the fair and equitable treatment of our service members and the rapid resolution of cases by Jan. 1st," he added. Peter Levine, performing the duties of acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness, led the process team, and he updated reporters today on how the DOD is resolving cases with a new process involving some 17,500 California Army Guard members who could face recoupment. Levine emphasized that recoupment is a fact of life, and the Army averages 100,000 such cases at any given time. "Sometimes the member makes a mistake, sometimes the service does," he noted. Since the secretary's October announcement, Levine said, he has worked closely with the National Guard Bureau, the Army Audit Agency, the Army Review Boards Agency and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) to set up a process for the California cases. Levine said the process involves screening cases to see if sufficient information is available for resolution, and putting what he called the “hard cases” before the Army Board for Correction of Military Records for an individualized review in which the soldiers will have an opportunity to make their case. The 17,500 cases were put into two categories, Levine said. The first category includes about 1,400 cases in which the California National Guard established that a debt exists and referred them to DFAS for recoupment. The Army Audit Agency and the Army Review Board Agency reviewed those cases, Levine said, based on whether the service members fulfilled their service commitment and whether they had any obvious reason to believe they received an erroneous payment. "We think we can get rid of about half of the cases on that basis," he said. "So for half of the 1,400, we would expect to be notifying soldiers that they're being relieved of any debt." If they have already been subject to recoupment, he added, they'll be reimbursed. The California Army National Guard flagged the remaining cases for review. Guard officials notified many soldiers of the potential that they would be facing debt collection, but didn't take further action, Levine explained. "So [for] those 16,000, essentially the Sword of Damocles is hanging over the soldiers, but debt collection hadn't been started," he added. Because a debt has yet to be established in the remaining 16,000 cases, Levine said, he expects that the screening process will eliminate about 15,000 of them. Those that remain unresolved at that point will then go through the same process as the 1,400 for which a debt had been established before this effort began. "The bottom line is we expect several hundred cases - but in all likelihood, fewer than 1,000 - to go before the Board for Correction of Military Records," Levine said. In each of those cases, he explained, the soldier will have an opportunity to present his or her case and argue that even though there's enough doubt to put it before a records-correction board, there isn't enough to justify debt collection and that therefore, the debt should be forgiven. "We are well along in that process," Levine said. "We have established the process as the secretary directed. We think that we have the BCMR staffed up. They're prepared to hear the cases by the July deadline established by the secretary. We are very hopeful that we will not have any kind of similar problems going forward," Levine said. "The bottom line is we think we've met the secretary's goal of rapid, equitable treatment for our soldiers and that we have in place a process that will protect the taxpayers, but will also be fair to our soldiers in terms of collecting debts," he said.

    The U.S. Army has recognized the Minnesota Army National Guard's work in 2014 with an environmental quality team award.

    PEO Soldier is fielding new equipment designed specifically for women, and the Army Reserve is training in low income communities near the Texas- Mexico border.

    Sensitive details of health workers employed by the U.S. Special Operations Command (Socom) have been exposed in a data breach, the Army says.

    The Military Diet is said to have been devised by leading U.S. Army dietitians to help to get soldiers in top shape quickly.

    And the mother of a South Jersey native and U.S. Army serviceman says her son was beaten by a mob after Sunday's Mummers Parade in Philadelphia, Pa., and was seriously injured.

 

Homeland insecurity

    

    In a wide-ranging request for documents and analysis, President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for its records on border barriers and surveillance.

    The Department of Homeland Security released a new report outlining the number of arrests of illegal immigrants during the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30th. According to numbers released by the Department of Homeland Security, the United States saw a 15% increase in illegal immigration in 2016; but the DHS says it deported nearly 500,000 illegal immigrants in 2016.

    U.S. Government officials have been notified of new cases of attempted or potentially successful cyber intrusions.

    And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has named Marlon Miller as the new special agent in charge of the three-state Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) office in Philadelphia, Pa.

 

U.S. Coast Guard

    

    A panel of women in the U.S. Coast Guard will be the guests at the next Mystic Seaport Adventure Series on Thursday, Jan. 12th.

    The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search for a possible downed aircraft off Molokai, Hawaii's Ilio Point.

    The U.S. Coast Guard assisted a disabled boat in Connecticut's Long Island Sound on Monday and later discovered that the vessel had numerous safety violations, including no warning signal and old, out-of-date signal flares.

    President-elect Donald Trump has indicated that he wants to revive ship-building in the United States, a presidential priority that could benefit the U.S. Coast Guard.

    The U.S. Coast Guard is searching for a French citizen who is suspected of falling overboard from a cruise ship in the waters north of Puerto Rico.

    Everyone is being reminded not to shine laser pointers at Coast Guard vessels and aircraft. A man in Washington state just last week was fined $9,500 for doing that.

    One person has died and two were rescued by the Coast Guard after a boating mishap off the coast of Mendocino, Calif. Their boat's propeller became tangled in crab pots and capsized in rough seas near Noyo Harbor on New Year's Eve, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

    A barge has spilled 500 gallons of diesel fuel into the Mississippi River during a fuel transfer at a facility in Reserve, La., according to officials with the United States Coast Guard and the St. Charles Parish Sheriff's Office. The U.S. Coast Guard said the spill was reported in the river near mile marker 137. A Custom Fuel Services tank barge spilled the diesel fuel.

    The U.S. Coast Guard and crews from Cleveland, Akron and Toledo, Ohio's Department of Natural Resources, and the New York State Police, say debris has been recovered consistent with the small plane carrying six passengers that disappeared after it left an airport in Cleveland last week.

    And the U.S. Coast Guard closed the Mississippi River to all vessel traffic yesterday, due to fog.

 

DARPA program helps fight human trafficking

    On Dec. 28, 2016, President Barack Obama published the annual proclamation of January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing next-generation search technologies to help investigators find the online perpetrators of those crimes.

    Wade Shen, a program manager in DARPA’s Information Innovation Office, said in a recent DOD News interview that the program, called Memex, is designed to help law enforcement officers and others perform online investigations to hunt down human traffickers.

    "Our goal is to understand the footprint of human trafficking in online spaces, whether that be the dark web or the open web," he explained, characterizing the dark web as the anonymous Internet, accessed through a system, among others, called Tor. "The term dark web is used to refer to the fact that crimes can be committed in those spaces because they're anonymous," Shen said, "and therefore, people can make use of them for nefarious activities."

    The approach he and his team have taken is to collect data from the Internet and make it accessible through search engines. "Typically, this is data that's hard for commercial search engines to get at, and it's typically the point of sale where sex trafficking is happening," Shen explained. "Victims of sex trafficking are often sold as prostitutes online, and a number of websites are the advertising point where people who want to buy and people who are selling can exchange information, or make deals. What we're looking for is online behavioral signals in the ads that occur in these spaces that help us detect whether or not a person is being trafficked."

    When a prostitute is advertised online as being "new in town" or by specific characteristics, those are hints that person might be trafficked. New in town means a person might be moving around, and the term "fresh" often means a person is underage, Shen explained. "Those kinds of things are indicators we can use to figure out whether or not a person is being pimped and trafficked," he added.

    Before the Memex program formally began in late 2014, Shen’s team was working with the district attorney of New York to determine if they could find signals associated with trafficking in prostitution ads on popular websites. "We found that lots of signals existed in the data, whether they be phone numbers used repeatedly by organizations that are selling multiple women online, or branding tattoos that exist in photos online, or signals in the text of the ads," Shen said. Shen’s team had been working on text-based exploitation programs for big data - extremely large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions. But they thought that if they extended the technology to understand images and networks of people, then they could apply it to detecting rings of traffickers and behaviors associated with trafficking online. "If we could do that," he said, "we could generate leads for investigators so they wouldn't have to sift through millions of ads in order to find the small number of ads that are associated with trafficking. So that's what we did."

    Early on, the team realized that search wasn't quite the right modality for doing such investigations and that there was a lot more work to do before the technology could be adapted to trafficking. That’s when the Memex program began, Shen said. "Since the beginning of the program, we've had a strong relationship with the district attorney of New York, but they're not the only user of the technology. Over time, we have engaged with many different law enforcement agencies, including 26 in the United Kingdom, the district attorney of San Francisco, and a number of others," he said.

    Investigators for the district attorney of New York were able to use Memex tools to find and prosecute perpetrators, and that resulted in an arrest and conviction in the program’s first year, he added. "Since then," Shen said, "there have been hundreds of arrests and other convictions by a variety of law enforcement agencies in the United States and abroad."

    Today, more than 33 agencies are using the tools, he added, and an increasing number of local law enforcement agencies are using the tools. "As word of mouth spreads about the tools and the fact that we give free access to the tools to law enforcement, more and more people are signing up to use it," he said.

    Shen said it's easy for his team to work with state, local and federal partners in the United States, but it’s harder to work with agencies abroad. "But we're committed to do that," he added, "so we are in the process of working out deals with a number of those agencies so they have access to the tools we currently deploy and to allow them, after we exit [when the program ends in a year] to continue to run their own versions of these tools."

    DARPA funds the Memex project, which, according to the agency’s budget office, has cost $67 million to date. But rather than do the work, as with its other projects, DARPA catalyzes commercial agents, universities and others to develop the technology, Shen said. "They are experts in their fields - image analysis, text analysis or web crawling and so on - and we engage the best of that community to work on this problem. What they've essentially done is form coalitions to build the tools needed to solve the problem, because no one of the entities that we call performers is able to do that on their own," he added.

    The Memex program has 17 different performers, and many of them also work with partners. "So all in all," Shen said, "we have hundreds of people who are working on this effort. All of them are very dedicated to this problem, because the problem of human trafficking is real."

    When Shen’s team started the program, one of the things they realized was that the cost of people in these spaces, the cost of slaves, is essentially zero, he added. "That means our lives are essentially worthless in some sense, and that just seems wrong," he said. "That motivated us and a lot of our performers to do something, especially when we build technology for all sorts of commercial applications for profit and for other motives. That's what a lot of our folks do on a day-to-day basis, and they felt the need to make use of their technology for a noble cause. We think Memex is one of these noble causes."

 

UFO news

    

    During a New Year's house party in Houston, Texas, party goers felt extremely scared after allegedly spotting a UFO.

 

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