- The General in charge of the F-35 project criticized Trump for his Tweet saying the F-35 is too expensive. The General reports that the project only needs another half a billion dollars. The F-35 project will cost over $1 trillion dollars total. [Link]
- The US government is taking money from Social Security recipients checks to recover unpaid student loan debt. So far the government has collected $1.1 billion. [Link]
- 27 IRS agents who travel for more than half the year racked up $1.4 million in expenses. The taxpayers footed the bill for the IRS agents to stay in 5-star hotels and rent luxury apartments. [Link]
- The average life expectancy in the US decreased in 2015. Experts predicted that this would be an effect of Obamacare. [Link]
- Congressman Thomas Massie starts the Second Amendment Caucus. There are currently 14 members of the Caucus. [Link]
- The NSA Inspector General George Ellard has been fired for retaliating against a whistleblower. Ellard has been critical of Edward Snowden for leaking the documents proving the NSA’s illegal surveillance program and has insisted that if Snowden had come to him, he would not have been retaliated against. [Link]
- A professor at the University of Kentucky was reprimanded for singing the Beach Boys song California Girls. The school said singing the song was sexual misconduct. [Link]
- German police have released the man who was arrested and accused of being the terrorist who crashed a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin. That man was a 23-year-old refugee from Pakistan. Police say the driver of the truck is still at large. [Link]
- The US announced that its campaign in Libya to defeat ISIS is over. The campaign started in August, and the US used about 500 airstrikes against ISIS. In the statements, the US government did say that the US will continue to support the Libyan Unity Government’s fight ISIS. [Link]
- Egyptian police catch amateur journalists creating fake news. The journalists showed children in red paint in a soon to be demolished building. Egyptian police report the journalists were going to post the videos on social media and claim they were taken in East Aleppo. [Link]
- The evacuation of civilians from East Aleppo continues with about 37,500 civilians having already left the city. The rebels say they will leave after the civilians are all gone. The Syrian government is pushing the rebels to hurry up and leave. [Link]
