ith the Trump administration warning of a possible war with North
Korea, US allies in Asia are sounding the alarm on another risk: a
clash with China in the western Pacific.
is stuck in port in Montreal, Canada, by ice.
Hartwick College Campus Safety Officer Casey Cole, of Tully, N.Y., was recently recognized by the United States Navy for her exemplary service. On October 15, 2017, the Secretary of the Navy awarded Cole the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal as the Reserve Junior Sailor of the Year.
US Marine Chief Warrant Officer 2 Juan Rodriguez, an explosive
ordnance disposal officer with Task Force Al Asad, and brigade-level
leaders of the Iraqi Army, have walked through an improvised explosive device
training lane aboard Al Asad Air Base, Iraq.
US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, a retired general who entered the Marine Corps during Vietnam but did not serve there, arrived in Indonesia yesterday. Following that visit, Mattis will be in Hanoi tomorrow and Thursday.
And retired Marine Corps Master Sgt. Catherine G. Murray was laid to rest
at Arlington National Cemetery yesterday. Murray was recognized
on Nov. 30, 1962, as the first enlisted female Marine to retire from
active duty after serving honorably for nearly 20 years. Murray passed away with dignity and peace at her home in Fort
Lauderdale, Fla., on Dec. 20, 2017. She is survived by her companion and
caregiver of 22 years, Mark Adkins, along with her many dear friends. Murray enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1943 and was assigned
to motor transport duties until 1946 where she drove both sedans and
five-ton trucks for the Marine Corps during her service in World War II. When the armed forces demobilized their "Force of Women" at the end
of the war, Murray was retained on active duty with the Marine Corps.
In 1948, she was authorized to integrate into the regular service. During her enlistment, Murray was stationed overseas in London and
Hawaii and even spent some time in Quantico, Va., where she was
instrumental in the planning and writing many of the military
examinations used by female Marines at the time. Murray’s decorations included the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal
(six awards), the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign
Medal, the World War II Victory Medal and National Defense Service Medal.
A 15-year-old girl was hospitalized after a shooting in a cafeteria at a
Texas school on Monday morning, local officials said. The suspect, a
16-year-old male student, is in custody after the incident at Italy High
School in Italy, Texas, located about 45 miles south of Dallas.
Fake news is a problem, but a Michigan man
went too far in his zeal to correct the issue, making violent threats
against CNN and its employees, according to CBS 46 in Atlanta, Ga. Court documents show that a Detroit-area man
called CNN 22 times last week, first accusing the network of “fake news” and escalating to death threats.
Some of his threats: "Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down"; I’m smarter than you. More powerful than you. I have more
guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a
matter of hours"; and "I am coming to Georgia right now to go to the CNN headquarters to f***ing gun every single last one of you." It’s unclear whether the man had the intentions or the means to follow through on his threats, but police took no chances. FBI investigators traced the calls and arrested him.
Three leaders of USA Gymnastics, the national governing body for
the Olympic sport, resigned under pressure on Monday after months of
criticism stemming from the sex-abuse scandal over former team doctor
Larry Nassar.
US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has told an audience at the
Sundance Film Festival about experiencing sexual harassment and
discrimination as an undergraduate student and early in her career.
A German nurse serving a life sentence for murdering two patients is
suspected of killing another 97 people by lethal injection. If
convicted, Niels Högel would become Germany's most deadly serial killer
ever.
The brutal rape and killing of Zainab Ansari, a 7-year-old girl whose
body was left in a garbage dump, has unleashed a wave of revulsion
around Pakistan, revealing a string of child abductions and killings by a
suspected serial killer.
An undercover television report that showed members of a Polish neo-Nazi
group celebrating Adolf Hitler's birthday and burning a swastika has
prompted a criminal investigation.
Crime in Houston, Texas, overall continued to trend downward and fell slightly
in 2017, Chief Art Acevedo said on Monday, as he continued to insist the
department is severely understaffed and needs to grow by as many as
2,000 more officers.
A British man who was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail for
sexually abusing a young boy was found dead in his prison cell on
Jan. 12th. Daniel Davey, 22, was discovered in his cell at HMP Bullingdon in Oxfordshire, England, after being sentenced on Dec. 1st. The
former McDonald's employee was found guilty of sexually abusing a boy
he babysat over a period of 18 months while the child was between 5 and 6
years old. The victim apparently asked his mother if he
could tell her "something dirty" before admitting that Davey had
performed oral sex on him on multiple occasions.After the mother notified police, investigators found Davey's DNA on the child's underwear.
founder
Julian Assange as an "inherited problem" that has created "more than a
nuisance" for his government.
Pope Francis has apologized to the Catholic Church's sexual abuse victims, but still doubts them. For years, victims of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church and
their advocates have asked when Pope Francis would adjust his blind spot
on an issue that has caused enormous damage to Catholics and the
reputations of the church and the pontiffs.
Jamaica's bustling tourism destination St. James Parish - home to popular
Montego Bay - has been placed under a state of emergency due to an uptick
in violent crime in the area.
Needle-exchange programs operate in a legal gray area,
advocates and Missouri lawmakers said on Monday. Proposed legislation seeks to
change that. The legislation would exempt programs that provide clean needles to people
with drug addiction from violating drug paraphernalia laws. Providing clean
needles is intended to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, such as
hepatitis C. Rep. Holly Rehder (R-Sikeston), who introduced the measure, said while
handing out needles is technically illegal, authorities tend to overlook it
because they understand the health benefits. "The problem is they're running in a somewhat gray area," Rehder said about
needle exchanges. The gray area also means the state can't access federal dollars, Rehder said,
a situation the bill would seek to change. "We're missing out on the federal dollars that can come down for this," she
said, "because we don't have it very clear that these are legal." Needles are readily available at stores or even online, said Chad Sobra, the
executive director of the Missouri Network for Opiate Reform and Recovery, a
harm reduction and outreach center in St. Louis. Exchanges are about more than
providing clean needles, he said. "It's not about that needle," he said. "It's
about that human
connection." The hope is human interaction then leads to people seeking help and getting
into recovery. Rep. Clem Smith (D-Velda Village Hills), who was on the committee hearing the
proposal, also voiced his support. "I wish this country would do a better job of stopping the flow of a lot of
these drugs, but we have do deal with how it is now," he said. "If this can help
people going forward and stop the spread of something, I think it's something we
need to get behind." The legislation was voted out of committee on Monday.
In the UK, the family of a teenage mother missing for 26 years have enlisted private investigators
in a last-ditch attempt to find her body. Relatives of Nicola Payne say
the search is their "last hope" after a catalogue of blunders by
British police. The 18-year-old vanished after saying goodbye to her boyfriend
and baby son.
Several Russian counterintelligence colonels are being charged with security contracts fraud. According to the investigation, Andrei Kuternin and Alexei Kostenkov
took money from the director general of one of the Moscow's private security companies
for aiding in concluding contracts for the security of facilities of
the Main Administration for Service to the Diplomatic Corps under the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Kenyan National Hospital's management board has approved the recruitment of more private security officers and urged the National Police Service to deploy more officers to the hospital after sexual assault claims by patients.
Do
you know the difference between open carry and constitutional carry?
This controversial topic is not one that all gun owners agree on. As it stands right now, 30 US states allow open carry without a permit, while only 12 states allow constitutional carry.
There's serious talk on Capitol Hill about the appointment of a
second special counsel amid several new bombshell revelations swirling
around the Trump/Russia probe. First, there are the allegations of shocking and substantial government surveillance abuses under President Obama outlined in
the FISA abuse memo. Secondly, the FBI lost five months of key text messages between the anti-Trump/pro-Clinton FBI officials Peter Strzok and his
mistress, Lisa Page. And now there’s talk of a "secret society" of
officials within the FBI that apparently met the day after the election
of Donald J. Trump to plot against the president-elect.
Top Republicans now believe there may be real grounds for a second special counsel, Fox News reported on Monday evening. According to Fox News, Nunes,
Gowdy and Goodlatte are in the process of going through the steps
necessary to release the four-page FISA memo and intend to see it
released to the public by early February.
Memorial arrangements have been made for a deputy US Marshal from
Northumberland County killed in the line of duty in Harrisburg, Pa., while
serving an arrest warrant in the city last week. Deputy US Marshal Christopher Hill is survived by his wife and two children.
In Concord, N.H., a convicted felon in possession of a firearm surrendered to the US Marshals yesterday afternoon after being outed as a Fugitive of the Week last week,
according to a press alert. Steven Sanders, 55, surrendered on a supervised release violation after being convicted on a felon in possession of a firearm charge.
The US Marshals have arrested 28-year-old Dijon Seales at
his home in Philadelphia, Pa. He's charged with a federal probation
violation for possession with intent to distribute meth. Seales
barricaded himself in a back bedroom and ended up getting into a
physical fight with the federal marshals. Seals was wanted by the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics.
A Colorado man wanted by the US Marshals for two counts
of attempted murder was arrested on Jan. 16th in the unincorporated
community of Meiners Oaks, in California's Ojai Valley. Greg Boren, 25, and his
passenger were arrested for drug-related offenses after being pulled
over during a traffic stop.
And the US Marshals have arrested a man in Memphis, Tenn., in connection with a Jan. 19th shooting in West Point, Miss.
US Air Force
SpaceX has kept the confidence of the US Air Force after the failed Zuma mission. Before the Zuma mission, which was launched for an undisclosed US agency other than the Air Force,
Northrop Grumman spokesman Lon Rains said the launch represented "a
cost-effective approach to space access for government missions."
Equipped with powerful scanning and staring infrared surveillance
sensors, SBIRS GEO Flight 4 is the latest satellite to join the Air Force's orbiting missile warning constellation.
The US Air Force has selected the Harris Corp. to
provide engineering support services for the electronic warfare (EW)
systems onboard the international variant of the F-16.
The Pentagon has disavowed knowledge of a stranded US Air Force pilot after he successfully intercepted a missile near North Korea. A US Air Force pilot being shot down and now being reported as MIA after shooting a North Korean missile down is "fake news," Pentagon says.
The world's largest military aviation museum has reopened after a government shutdown shuttered the National Museum of the US Air Force.
C-130 crews are on standby to evacuate embassy personnel across Africa in the event of an emergency, according to the Air Force.
The deployment in support of "Operation New Normal" also will include
tactical airdrops, humanitarian efforts, and aeromedical evacuations for
US personnel in Africa.
The US Air Force is expanding the area they are testing for water contamination in the Spokane, Wash., suburb of Airway Heights.
The Air Force has created a new investigative team to research and
record ongoing hypoxia episodes in its aircraft in hopes of minimizing
future incidents, the service has announced. Brig. Gen. Bobbi Jo
Doorenbos, currently the special assistant to the director of the Air National Guard, will head the probe.
It may sound nosier in the skies over Oahu as dozens of fighter pilots
from several states duke it out in simulated air combat. Air crews are
coming in from as far away as California, Alaska, Oklahoma, Texas and
Iowa for the Sentry Aloha training exercises - all hosted by the Hawaii Air National Guard.
Since the eighth grade, Miami, Fla., Coral Reef High senior Jackson Ribler has been a part of the Civil Air Patrol.
He started out as a cadet airman basic and worked his way up to cadet major. Today, as a cadet major, he oversees the programs for the six
local squadrons in the area that reaches from Opa Locka to Key West, Fla.
And officials believe an aerial image taken in the Ruby Mountains near Elko, Nev., may
show the location of the wreckage of a plane missing since Jan. 11th. The pilot of that plane was 26-year-old Paul R. Graham, a Branson,
Miss., man who was flying from California to Salt Lake City. He was
reportedly the only person on the plane. The Elko County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO) reported the possible discovery late last week. "Assistance provided by the pilot’s employer, Air America/Eagle View,
has led investigators to believe the airplane reported missing the night
of January 11, 2018, has possibly been located near Pearl Peak in the
Ruby Mountains," the ECSO's statement says. "Although this possible sighting of the aircraft looks promising,
Undersheriff Ron Supp warns this information is thus far preliminary and
it will be some time before investigators will be able to access the
location due to terrain and weather." Photographs appear to reveal the wreckage of an aircraft resembling that
of the missing Piper aircraft with tail number N54857. It was reported
to be piloted by Graham. "The Sheriff’s Office would like to thank the pilot’s family for
their patience and understanding during a very trying time," the
statement says. "The Sheriff’s Office would also like to thank Air America/Eagle View,
the Nevada Division of Emergency Management, the Civil Air Patrol, US military agencies, the Elko County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue
volunteers and Utah Air Resources (a volunteer air search and rescue
organization) as well as other volunteers and government agencies
providing assistance."
VA news
Today, the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the US Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services (CMS) announced a partnership to share data, data analytics
tools and best practices for identifying and preventing fraud, waste and
abuse.
And VA’s TeleHealth service utilizes health informatics to care for veterans
and helps them live independently and stay out of the
hospital - essential for their overall health care and personal goals.
Homeland insecurity
A Trump administration report that claimed three-quarters of those
convicted of "international terrorism-related charges" were foreign
born was reportedly created without the input of Department of Homeland Security specialists and many experts believe it is misleading.
When it comes to protecting our homeland and ensuring the security of our country's citizens, borders and critical infrastructure, it is imperative for security
technologies to be seamlessly compatible with each other. This is one
of the many topics to be discussed at the 2018 Modular Open Systems
Summit
. A presentation from Homeland Security on Intelligence Oversight
Training appears to include a version of Anonymous' "man without a head"
logo that was modified to depict a surveillance state. Perhaps even
more interestingly, the image has a preexisting copyright.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has postponed a forum scheduled for tomorrow on the Department of Homeland Security reauthorization that was expected to include discussion on the DHS' cyber functions.
And while the US Senate was working toward an
agreement to end the government shutdown, some DACA recipients in
California tried to block a Disneyland entrance in protest, according to
The Los Angeles Times. A small group of about 15 "Dreamers" and their supporters
stood in the street on a crosswalk, blocking a vehicle entrance to the
park.
Before long, police had moved them from the crosswalk to the sidewalk, and after less than an hour, the protest was over. "The group is only about 20 people, who have been
peaceful," a Disneyland spokesperson said on Monday morning. "Disneyland is operating as normal today." The protesters arrived at 10 a.m. and were gone by 10:40. A primary reason for the government shutdown was
the Democrats insistence on the inclusion of a solution to protect the
DACA recipients to go along with spending legislation to fund the
government. The Disneyland protesters were reportedly chanting "No
dream! No deal!" expressing their desire for the Democrats to hold firm
until the Republicans conceded the issue.The Senate came to a deal to reopen the government shortly
after, pushing the issue of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
program into February.
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