North Korea test fires new ICBM
North Korea said today it successfully
tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can reach
all of the U.S. mainland. In a broadcast on state TV, North Korea said the new,
powerful missile reached an altitude of about 2,780 miles - more than 10 times
the height of the International Space Station - and flew 600 miles during its 53
minute flight.
The U.S. Defense Department
detected and tracked a single North Korea missile launch yesterday at about 1:17
p.m., EST, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Robert Manning said in a statement.
The initial assessment indicates that this missile was an
intercontinental ballistic missile, he said. This is North Korea’s third ICBM
test this year, following two in July, and the first missile launch of any kind
since Sept. 15th, when they tested an intermediate range missile.
The ICBM was launched from Sain Ni, North Korea, north of
Pyongyang, and traveled east about 1,000 kilometers - about 620 miles - before
splashing down in the Sea of Japan, within Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone, an
area that extends 200 nautical miles from its coast. "We are working with our
interagency partners on a more detailed assessment of the launch,"
Col. Manning said. The North American Aerospace Defense
Command (NORAD) determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose
a threat to North America or U.S. territories and allies, the colonel said.
South Korea’s news agency reported that its army staged its own
"precision strike" missile exercise in response. The United States’
commitment to the defense of its allies, including South Korea and Japan, in the
face of these threats, remains ironclad, Col. Manning said. "We remain prepared
to defend ourselves and our allies from any attack or provocation," he
said.
Australia arrests man for plotting New Year's Eve
attack
The Australian Federal Police have
arrested a 20-year-old man suspected of planning to use an automatic rifle for a
mass shooting on New Year's Eve in downtown Melbourne, Australia's second
largest city.
Saudis launch anti-terror
coalition
A Saudi-led Muslim military coalition,
commanded by a former Pakistan army chief, was officially launched in Riyadh
where defense ministers of the participating nations met for the inaugural
meeting.
Lebanon did not attend the
Saudi-led anti-terrorism alliance summit held in Riyadh as part of the
government's effort to dissociate from regional conflicts, an official source
said.
And senior Saudi Prince Miteb bin
Abdullah, once seen as a leading contender to the throne, was freed after
reaching an "acceptable settlement agreement" with authorities paying more than
$1 billion, a Saudi official said today.
Chinese army general commits
suicide
A former top Chinese general under
investigation for major corruption has killed himself, official media reported
yesterday, denouncing his death as a "despicable" act to escape
punishment.
Meanwhile, a Chinese court
sentenced a human rights activist from Taiwan to five years in prison yesterday
for "state subversion," the first time China has convicted a Taiwanese citizen
of that crime.
Bali volcano stops flights
Indonesia shut the airport on its
holiday island of Bali for a third consecutive day today as the erupting Mount
Agung volcano spewed ash that blocked flight paths and spurred authorities to
hasten evacuations.
In New Zealand, mobile telephones didn't get
emergency alert
The new Civil Defense alert system,
tested across the country on Sunday evening, doesn't reach most mobile phones,
but that will change, the government says.
Top U.S. general says Taliban 'living in comfort in
Pakistan
It's been nearly 100 days since
President Donald Trump announced his new strategy for Afghanistan and the wider
region, a strategy that demanded Pakistan do more to fight the Taliban, but
Pakistan has yet to take significant action.
Kenyatta sworn in as Kenya's
president
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was
sworn in for a second term yesterday amid the thunderous applause of supporters
even as pro-government forces fired on protesters angered by the contentious
election process that kept him in power.
German mayor attacked with knife
A German mayor has been "attacked with a
knife in a kebab shop in an attempted assassination," according to reports.
Detailed information on the incident is unclear but the mayor of the city of
Altena, Andreas Hollstein, was reportedly targeted.
Pentagon 'taking a look' at halting weapons for
Syria's Kurds
By Lisa Levine, News of the Force Tel Aviv
The U.S. Defense Department has
said it is reviewing the process it uses to provide equipment and weapons to
Kurdish fighters with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), but has not
yet halted sending them weapons.
The Palestinians are furious after Saudi
Arabia downplayed the importance of Jerusalem, and Saudis fed up with
Palestinian Arabs' intransigence are posting taunts on media.
Is "Wonder Woman" also a spy? A leading
Arab newspaper has outed Wonder Woman actress and proud Israeli Gal
Gadot, saying that she's also a Mossad spy.
And Israel thrives today, despite the
same hatred of Jews and vows of destruction it has faced since its inception in
1947.
FBI failed to notify targets of Russian
hackers
The FBI failed to notify scores of U.S.
officials that Russian hackers were trying to break into their personal Gmail
accounts despite having evidence for at least a year that the targets were in
the Kremlin's crosshairs.
U.S. Navy and Marine Corps
USS Fitzgerald, a Navy
destroyer that was damaged in June after a deadly collision with a cargo ship
off the coast of Japan, suffered two punctures to its hull while being loaded
onto a transport ship destined for the U.S.
University of California-Davis Mail
Services is once again helping out the Marine Corps Reserve on its annual
toy drive, so you know it's easy: Just bring new, unwrapped toys for ages up to
16, and leave the toys with your outgoing mail or in the blue bins around
campus.
The Marines' Toys for Tots collection
will be conducted throughout the annual Broken Arrow (Okla.) Civitan Parade,
scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 2nd.
Penn State Shenango is sponsoring a toy
drive to benefit the Marine Corps Reserve's Toys for Tots Foundation. New,
unwrapped toys will be Christmas gifts for needy children in the
community.
Declassified files from the Cold War
reveal how Russian submarines were able to "sneak up" on enemy submarines
without using sonar.
The Navy's new destroyers could have
some killer weapons, including rail guns, lasers and advanced radar.
U.S. Navy aerial warfare experts are
surveying industry for companies able to provide simulations of enemy radio,
radar, and electronic warfare (EW) signals to help refine the airborne targeting
sensor suite on the F-35 joint strike fighter (JSF).
Submarine sonar experts at the Lockheed
Martin Corp. are moving forward to keep digital signal processing capability
aboard U.S. Navy submarines up-to-date through the year 2020.
Electro-optics experts at Arete
Associates in Tucson, Ariz., are increasing their support of a project to design
multispectral UAV sensor payloads to help military unmanned helicopters detect
and pinpoint mines and obstacles in beach surf zones to help keep Marines safe
during amphibious attacks.
Fareway Stores, Inc., is partnering with
the U.S. Marine Corps on their 2017 Toys for Tots campaign.
Ohio's oil and gas industry is
partnering with Toys for Tots in six counties in southeastern Ohio to
collect toys for distribution to those in need in early December.
Military avionics experts at Textron
Aviation Beechcraft in Wichita, Kansas, will provide 255 satellite-based air
navigation and tracking systems for the U.S. Navy and Army T-6 Texan II
high-performance turboprop trainer aircraft under the terms of an $8
million order.
A $5,000 fee may sound like a steep
price to pay for most ordinary deliveries. But it's a price the U.S. Marine
Corps Warfighting Laboratory would gladly pay for a disposable glider drone that
could deliver 320 kilograms (700 pounds) of supplies to ground troops at remote
outposts.
Jefferson County (Fla.) Sheriff David C.
Hobbs has died after being hospitalized on Monday. He was 59. Hobbs, who
served seven years working as a Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) trooper, eight
years as a Jefferson County sheriff's deputy and six years in the U.S. Marine
Corps Reserve, was first elected sheriff in 2004.
And each year the United States Marine
Corps Reserve's Toys for Tots Program collects new, unwrapped toys to be
distributed as Christmas presents to children in need. The mission goes beyond
just physical gift-giving, it unites communities and spreads the message of hope
for struggling families.
NOAA news
A NOAA study could redefine the "100
year storm" for the Houston, Texas, area. The final NOAA data will be published
in May 2018, the first statewide update to the federal agency's rainfall
estimates in nearly 50 years.
National Hurricane Center Hurricane
forecasters using NOAA's "workhouse" model made the most accurate track
predictions yet. During Hurricane Irma, they beat their average by 30 percent
with every forecast, according to University of Miami (UM) hurricane researcher
Brian McNoldy.
ECS Federal has received a potential
$9.1 million contract from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
to deliver environmental and professional support services to NOAA's Office of
Sustainable Fisheries.
Tornadoes accounted for seven
billion-dollar weather events in 2017, according to the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
And spacecraft designers at the Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., will build a
next-generation weather satellite with a passive microwave imaging radiometer
instrument to measure the direction and speed of ocean winds, as well as the
intensity of global hurricanes.
Homeland insecurity
Three employees in the inspector
general's office for the Department of Homeland Security stole a computer system
that contained sensitive personal information of more than 246,000 DHS
employees.
Agents from the Homeland Security
Investigations division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE), along with Skowhegan police officers, conducted a search at a
residence yesterday morning on Rowe Road in Skowhegan, Maine.
And in Detroit, Mich., the Little
Caesars Arena, home of the NHL's Detroit Red Wings and the NBA's Detroit
Pistons, has received SAFETY Act Certification, the highest level of protection
awarded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
U.S. Courts
A U.S. district judge has blocked an
Obama-era appointee's attempt to block President Trump from having Mick
Mulvaney head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP).
The U.S. Supreme Court today took up a
major test of privacy rights in the digital age as it weighs whether police
must obtain warrants to get data on the past locations of criminal suspects
using cell phone data from wireless providers. The justices are due to hear an
appeal by a man named Timothy Carpenter convicted in a series of armed robberies
in Ohio and Michigan with the help of past cell phone location data that linked
him to the crime locations. His American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) lawyers argue that without a court-issued warrant such data amounts
to an unreasonable search and seizure under the U.S. Constitution's Fourth
Amendment. Law enforcement authorities routinely request and receive this
information from wireless providers during criminal investigations as they try
to link a suspect to a crime. Police helped establish that Carpenter was near
the scene of the robberies of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores by securing from
his cell phone carrier his past "cell site location information" tracking which
cell phone towers had relayed his calls. The legal fight has raised questions
about the degree to which companies protect their customers' privacy rights. The
big four wireless carriers, Verizon Communications, Inc., AT&T, Inc.,
T-Mobile US, Inc. and the Sprint Corp., receive tens of thousands of these
requests annually from law enforcement. Verizon was the only one of those four
companies to tell the Supreme Court that it favors strong privacy protections
for its customers, with the other three sitting on the sidelines. There is
growing scrutiny of the surveillance practices of U.S. law enforcement and
intelligence agencies amid concern among lawmakers across the political spectrum
about civil liberties and authorities evading warrant requirements. The Supreme
Court twice in recent years has ruled on major cases concerning how criminal law
applies to new technology, both times ruling against law enforcement. In 2012,
the court held that a warrant is required to place a GPS tracking device on a
vehicle. Two years later, the court said police need a warrant to search a cell
phone seized during an arrest. Carpenter's bid to suppress the evidence failed
and he was convicted of six robbery counts. On appeal, the Cincinnati-based 6th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his convictions, finding that no warrant
was required for the cell phone data. The ACLU said in court papers that police
need "probable cause," and therefore a warrant, in order to meet Fourth
Amendment requirements. Based on a provision of a 1986 federal law called the
Stored Communications Act, the Justice Department said probable cause is not
needed to obtain customer records. Instead, it argues, prosecutors must show
only that there are "reasonable grounds" for the records to be provided and that
they are "relevant and material" to an investigation. President Trump's
administration said in court papers the government has a "compelling interest"
in acquiring the data without a warrant because the information is particularly
useful at the early stages of a criminal investigation. Civil liberties groups
said the 1986 law did not anticipate the way mobile devices now contain a wealth
of data on each user. A ruling is due by the end of June.
U.S. Army
Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army
for Civil Works Ryan Fisher and Army Maj. Gen. Donald E. Jackson, deputy
commanding general, Civil and Emergency Operations, U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, provided testimony on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, and Related
Agencies, this morning in Room 2362-B, Rayburn House Office Building,
Washington, D.C.
Earlier this month, researchers at
UpGuard reported that U.S. Army military intelligence gathering data had
been stored on a misconfigured Amazon Web Services S3 server that wasn't
password protected and was publicly viewable.
The Cubic Corp. has announced that its
Cubic Global Defense (CGD) business division was awarded a contract worth more
than $61 million from the U.S. Army Contracting Command to support
rotational and pre-deployment training exercises at the U.S. Army's Joint
Readiness Training Center.
A Denton, Texas, funeral director
wants to provide a proper burial to a U.S. Army veteran whose body went
unclaimed for weeks after he died.
The U.S. Army All-American Bowl
Selection Committee announced its six finalists yesterday for the U.S. Army
Player of the Year award.
U.S. Army simulation and training
experts are releasing details to industry of a future immersive infantry
simulator to enable squad members to train together emphasizing movement,
communications, care for the wounded, protecting themselves, and using terrain
effectively to shoot and move.
U.S. Army aviation experts needed
bolt-on avionics mission modules to enhance capabilities of the C-130 cargo
plane and other aircraft, and they found their solution from Airdyne Aerospace,
Inc., in Spring Hill, Fla.
And a high-ranking U.S. Army
Reserve officer has received four years in a federal prison and must
forfeit $4.4 million for fraudulently supplying Chinese-produced baseball caps
to the U.S. Government.
News from the U.S. Marshals
Service
The U.S. Marshals have captured a
former Utah corrections officer in Hawaii after the man had been on the run
for almost 11 years and who was wanted for forcible sexual abuse. The
journey the fugitive took after he skipped his sentencing in Salt Lake
City wasn't immediately clear, but law enforcement officers recently
learned he had been using the alias "John Phillips." After that, it wasn't
hard to track him down.
The U.S. Marshals Service says a man
wanted for attempted murder and burglaries may be in Memphis, Tenn. Laddarrius
Deshan Brown, aka "LD," is wanted by several departments, including
the U.S. Marshals, the Memphis Police, and the Davidson County Sheriff's
Department.
The U.S. Marshals Museum in Fort Smith,
Ark., received more than $50,000 in donations on Giving Tuesday after an
anonymous donor matched a board member's contribution.
The U.S. Marshals
Violent Fugitive Task Force, which included officers from the U.S. Marshals
Service, N.C. State Probation and Parole, and the Fayetteville Police have
captured a man wanted for murder in Raeford, N.C.
In Florida, the Tallahassee Police and
the U.S. Marshals have arrested a man accused of injuring a
17-month-old baby in a shooting at the Sunrise Place Apartments.
And John Penn Bivins was found by the
U.S. Marshals Service on Sunday in San Leandro, Calif., nearly three weeks
after he fled from the Palo Alto courthouse.
UFO news
A British woman has finally broken her
silence 65 years after witnessing strange unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in
the skies of Yorkshire.
It was on a clear night in 1943 that the
crew of USS Williamson, a Navy destroyer, experienced an
unexpected close encounter with multiple UFOs.
And a black unidentified flying
object in the form of a disk with blue lights has made an appearance over
Ruidoso, N.M.
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