News of the Force: Friday, October 27, 2017 - Page 1

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Friday, October 27, 2017 - Today is Navy Day in the USA

and the birthday of the United States Navy

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Catalan's Parliament declares independence from Spain

     

    Catalonia's Parliament declared independence from Spain today in a disputed vote that is now likely to be deemed illegal by the Spanish government.

 

'The U.S. is not seeking war, defense secretary says

    

    U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said today during his visit to the inter-Korean border that the goal of the United States is not a war with North Korea, but complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

 

The Islamic State's fall in Iraq

    

    The Islamic State has been routed in Iraq. On Oct. 5th, the militant group lost the northern town of Hawija - its last urban stronghold after Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul and Tal Afar earlier this year.

    Sunni Arab fighters joined a militia to help liberate the city of Mosul, Iraq, this year. Fourteen years after the American invasion ended decades of Sunni dominance, Iraq's Sunni Arabs are struggling to reclaim influence.

    Meanwhile, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, believes Baghdad should accept the Kurdistan Regional Government's offer to begin dialogue.

 

Saudi Arabia to invest $1 billion in Virgin Galactic

    

    Saudi Arabia is poised to invest $1 billion in entrepreneur Richard Branson's space-tourism and satellite-launching venture, which is seeking to show it is back on track three years after a fatal accident.

 

Russia prepares for nuclear conflict

    Russia flexed its muscles yesterday with multiple ballistic and cruise missile launches, putting its strategic nuclear forces to the test, according to the Russian defense ministry.

    Meanwhile, NATO accused Russia yesterday of misleading the alliance over the scope of its war games last month in violation of rules meant to reduce East-West tensions, but Moscow said NATO was stirring up anti-Russian propaganda.

 

Airport videos show four men also suspected in Kim's murder

    Prosecutors yesterday showed a Malaysian court airport security videos detailing the movements of four men suspected along with two women already on trial of having the intent to kill the estranged brother of North Korea's leader.

 

Ukrainian MP injured in assassination attempt

    

    A blast in Ukraine's capital city, Kiev, has killed a man and injured three others, including an Member of Parliament, in what officials say may have been an assassination attempt.

 

Australian court rules deputy PM not eligible to serve in Parliament

    

    Australia's High Court ruled today that Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is ineligible to remain in Parliament, a stunning decision that cost the government its one-seat parliamentary majority and forced a by-election.

 

Taiwan hoping to reduce dependence on China

    Taiwan is setting up overseas investment offices across a number of countries to its south. The island is also offering to suspend visa requirements for citizens of those nations.

 

New Zealand's new prime minister sworn in

    

    Jacinda Ardern, 37, was officially sworn in as the Prime Minister of New Zealand this morning, promising to form an "active" government that would be "focused, empathetic and strong."

 

Inside the Islamic State's 'prison of death'

By Lisa Levine, News of the Force Tel Aviv

    

    Members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have entered the Black Stadium following the liberation of Raqqa, Syria. The walls of the torture chamber bear the most devastating reminders of what that place once was.

    The Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad is to blame for a chemical attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed dozens of people last April, according to a report sent to the United Nations Security Council.

    Egyptian security forces suffered significant losses last week when they attempted to raid an alleged hideout belonging to the Islamic State.

    U.S. President Donald Trump's assertive new strategy toward Iran is already colliding with the reality of Tehran's vastly expanded influence in the Middle East as a result of the Islamic State war.

    And the U.S. House of Representatives has passed new sanctions in response to Iran's support for Hizbollah, part of a legislative package that stops short of addressing the Islamic Republic's compliance with the multi-national accord designed to curb its nuclear program.

 

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    Couzin Gym's Thought for the Day: The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

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McCarthy and Hoyer to lead delegation to hurricane-hit areas

    

    House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer are leading a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers to storm-devastated regions of the country, including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the Florida Keys.

    Meanwhile, bipartisan concern in Congress escalated for a second day yesterday over the slow pace of power restoration in Puerto Rico and a $300 million contract given to a small Montana energy firm to help repair the island's electrical grid.

 

Homeland insecurity

    

    For such a tiny document, the Irish passport certainly packs a lot of power, allowing you access to 154 of the 193 United Nations member states, as well as the Vatican, the Palestinian Territory, Kosovo, Macao and Taiwan.

    With millions of cybersecurity jobs expected to go unfilled across over the next several years because of a talent shortage, the Department of Homeland Security is hosting a cybersecurity expo at the University of West Florida.

    John Zangardi, the acting chief information officer at the Pentagon, will be the Department of Homeland Security's new CIO.

    Passengers aboard U.S.-bound flights now have to go through even more security screenings.

    And the prototypes for President Donald Trump's proposed border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border made their official debut today.

 

U.S. Army

    

    The U.S. Army's Kestrel Eye electro-optical (EO) micro satellite, which the service hopes can improve situational awareness for brigade combat teams, has been deployed in space.

    The Army has begun hunting for a replacement for its Patriot radar systems.

    Armored combat vehicles experts at Textron Systems will build as many as 255 Mobile Strike Force Vehicles (MSFV) and vetronics for use in Afghanistan under the terms of a $332.9 million contract.

    Inovio is collaborating with Dr. Connie Schmaljohn, the chief scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and her group, in an effort to develop a "DNA vaccine."

    Hollyanne Milley, the wife of Gen. Mark Milley, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, has visited U.S. Army Reserve families in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

    The South Carolina Army National Guard has 62 armories across the state, located in 41 of the state's 46 counties. But some of them are "leaky, outdated dumps," sources have said.

    Col. Isabel Smith, the chief of staff for the New York Army National Guard, has been featured in Latina Style Magazine.

    The Pennsylvania Army National Guard has sent additional aircraft and personnel to Puerto Rico.

    And U.S. Army armored vehicles experts are reaching out to industry to encourage additional companies involved in vetronics design to join an open-systems working group that develops industry standards for vetronics components, subsystems, and platforms interoperability.

 

U.S. Coast Guard

    

    U.S. Navy avionics experts are asking Astronics Ballard Technology in Everett, Wash., to upgrade avionics computers on U.S. Coast Guard C-27J Spartan maritime patrol aircraft. The upgraded computers will be aboard the first two Coast Guard C-27J aircraft, as well as in the Coast Guard in the Mission System Integration Lab (MSIL) at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md.

    The U.S. Coast Guard, in cooperation with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), began the tedious task yesterday of removing derelict and damaged boats damaged by Hurricane Irma.

    The Coast Guard has medevaced an injured mariner from a vessel in Duck, N.C.

    The U.S. Coast Guard has established a "safety zone" at Bubbly Creek, off the South Branch of the Chicago River, as of yesterday due to an oil spill. The oil spill has closed part of the Chicago River near Lake Michigan, and the EPA is looking for the offending vessel.

    A 44-year-old U.S. Coast Guard member who pleaded no contest to murder charges in a fatal crash while he was drunk and driving at 134 mph has been sentenced to 25 to 50 years in a state prison, in Bloomfield Township, Mich.

    The U.S. Coast Guard, along with  Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries and the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Office, are searching for a man who fell overboard in St. Bernard Parish.

    A veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard has been hired to oversee Michigan's Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

    Petty Officer 2nd Class Zachary Phelps, a Coast Guard Sector Humboldt Bay, Calif., flight mechanic, recently returned from assisting in hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico.

    Recruits from U.S. Coast Guard Training Center (TRACEN) Cape May, N.J., helped clear vegetation and debris from a courtyard on Oct. 21st in Lower Cape May.

    And U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 54 will conduct a boating safety class in Boynton Beach, Fla., tomorrow.

 

NOAA news

    

    A 250-mile long lightning bolt has been captured on video from a NOAA satellite. "A squall line is a group of storms arranged in a line, often accompanied by 'squalls' of high wind and heavy rain," NOAA wrote on their Facebook page.

    Ball Aerospace, along with NOAA, NASA, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman are preparing a polar-orbiting weather satellite for launch.

    NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP has provided a visible satellite image of Tropical Storm Saola in the Philippine Sea.

    And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) estimates that, since a moratorium on whales went into effect in 1986, their population has grown substantially.

 

Grambling State student from St. Louis charged in shooting

By Jim Corvey, News of the Force St. Louis

    

    First came the calls to Grambling State University's Police Chief, Gene Caviness, around midnight on Tuesday, with distraught students reporting shots fired on the campus in northern Louisiana. Then police found Earl Andrews, a 23-year-old Grambling senior, and his friend, Monquiarious Caldwell, also 23. They were on the ground in a residential courtyard, both dead from gunshot wounds.

    Yesterday, police arrested Jaylin M. Wayne, of St. Louis, Mo., after he turned himself in to law enforcement. He has been charged with first-degree murder. Wayne, 19, is a freshman at the historically black university, school officials said. Wayne was a graduate of Vashon High School, where he was a linebacker on the football team.

    The Lincoln Parish Sheriff's Department said the incident began with a disagreement between Wayne and Andrews. At some point during the fight, Wayne produced a firearm, shooting Andrews and Caldwell. Caldwell had been trying to help Andrews when he was shot, according to a sheriff's department news release.

    "I feel confident that our investigators have put together a strong case," Sheriff Mike Stone said in the release. Stone thanked the Grambling State University Police Department, the Grambling Police Department, the Monroe Police Department, the Ruston Police Department and the Louisiana State Police for their roles in the investigation.

    Richard J. Gallot, Jr., the university's president, thanked the authorities for "their around the clock effort in solving this case within the first 48 hours. Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the Andrews and the Caldwell families during this difficult time."

    The shooting had shaken the campus, a small community of 5,188 students, where the death of Andrews was "truly a loss of a member of a family," Gallot said in an interview. The shooting occurred during homecoming week, when the school, in the city of Grambling, sees a spike in visitors. "It's a horrible thing to happen on any day of the week, any week," said Will Sutton, the university's director of communications. "It's particularly unfortunate that it's homecoming week, an annual, joyful series of days, where we have people returning home to campus. Nobody wants to return to something like this."

    Students had received emergency text messages from the university after the shooting, urging them to stay in their rooms overnight, school officials said. About a third of the university's students live on campus.

    Caviness was alerted to the shooting after receiving several calls on his cell phone from students. University officials said he often gives his cell phone number to students at the beginning of the semester and encourages them to call him with any concerns, rather than go through the police department.

    It's just one example of the closeness of the Grambling State community, said Gallot, the university president. He told The Washington Post that he wasn't surprised by the outpouring of support for the victims' families so soon after the shooting, as dozens of students posted condolences on social media as early as 2 a.m. on Wednesday. He said that Andrews especially loved being part of the university's family and that even the cafeteria workers were fond of him, adopting the senior as "one of their own."

    "I honestly can't remember the last time there was a loss of life in this manner - the last time we had something of this magnitude," Gallot said. "We're not in the middle of a major metropolitan area. We're a small community. Something like this is not something that happens every day." In a statement to the campus community, he asked that the "GramFam" student body do what it has always done: Look out for one another. The university will move forward with academic and event schedules as planned this week, including all homecoming events. Students and staff should expect an increased police and security presence on campus, Gallot said.

    Andrews lived with his older brother, Ladarius Heard, in Ruston, La., a short distance from campus.

    Heard, a contractor for an industrial building company, had been staying in Shreveport for an extended job assignment last week - but drove back to Ruston on a whim last Friday night. "I don't know what it was," Heard told The Post. "Something that told me to drive back." He said he was sleeping when a friend called him around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday to alert him to the shooting on campus. Heard said he can't fathom why anyone would have wanted to harm his younger brother. "He was always smiling, dancing," Heard said. "He didn't bother nobody."

    Andrews was studying criminal justice at Grambling, Heard said, and had planned on moving to Texas after graduation. His mother, Juanita Augman, said he wanted to be a parole officer. "I just can't explain it," Augman said of her son's death. "It's just been the longest, longest day. He was a wonderful child." He played football at Patterson High School, about four hours south of Grambling, and wanted to play in college but couldn't because of an injury, she said. He enjoyed basketball as well, and often played at the campus gym with members of Grambling's basketball team. Andrews was also a runner and had earned more than 15 trophies during his time on the Patterson High School track team. He eventually moved, transferring to Farmerville High School, not far from Grambling. He graduated from that school in 2013. "He was a very active person. Everybody loved him," his mother told The Post. "And he was very respectable." She added: "I love all my kids, but he was just a special one - everybody loved him."

    Grambling State was founded in 1901 by a group of black farmers and has become well known for its marching band and its football dominance; about 200 players went on to the NFL during the tenure of a legendary coach.

 

UFO news

    

    Aidan Gillen, best known for his role as "Littlefinger" on "Game of Thrones" is set to star as astronomer and UFO expert Dr. J. Allen Hynek in an up-coming UFO-themed series on the History Channel called Blue Book.

 

 

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