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.
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 has used its sole aircraft
carrier during take-off and landing drills in the South China Sea.
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.
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.
Jovenel Moise won Haiti's presidential
elections with 55.6 percent of the first round vote held on Nov. 20th, according
to official results.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
People in western Afghanistan have
staged a massive protest against growing sectarian attacks on Shia Muslims by
the Takfiri Daesh terrorists.
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.
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.
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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