Scott Air Force Base winners announced in Biggest Loser! contest

Scott Air Force Base recently dealt with some weighty matters. The base’s Health Promotion program’s version of the Biggest Loser contest drew the participation of 226 people who weighed in. Of that number, 178 participants lost weight, with 46 them shedding more than 5 percent of their body weight. The individual winners were: first place, Chief Master Sgt. Benjamin Miranda, who lost 13.1 percent; second place, Elaine Fix, 10.7 percent; and third place, Master Sgt. Harley Rickets, 10.5 percent.

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The Air Force, like the U.S. Navy before it, is getting in line to update its tattoo policy in the next few months, according to Air Force Times.

“The Air Force has recently formed a working group to review the tattoo policy,” Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Brooke Brzozowske told Air Force Times on Tuesday. “Depending on the working group’s findings, we anticipate any policy change proposals to be ready for Air Force leadership consideration in the fall of 2016.”

Brzozowske did not say specifically what senior leadership is looking to change, but that its been in discussion for some time.

The news comes just a week after the Navy overhauled its tattoo policy, allowing sailors to sport neck tattoos, sleeves and even markings behind their ears, the most lenient policy of any military service.

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The Navy Times is reporting the days are numbered for women’s bucket cover, as women at Recruit Training Command Great Lakes, Illinois, were fitted for “Dixie cups” at uniform issue on Monday.

For the first time, Navy recruits will don the same covers, as part of a junior enlisted uniform overhaul led by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to promote gender equality in appearance.

“It’s really awesome how something as simple as our cover is so symbolic in regards to equality and the uniformity in the military,” Seaman Recruit Madeleine Bohnert said in the Navy release.

Similarly, female officers and senior enlisted are making the switch to new uniforms based on traditional men’s styles, with combination covers and mandarin-collar dress whites.

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The U.S. Defense Department’s relatively new Cyber Command has received its “first wartime assignment” in the fight against the Islamic State, the Pentagon’s top civilian said, according to Military.com.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter made the statement during a question-and-answer session after a speech Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a defense think tank in Washington, D.C.

“I have given the Cyber Command in the counter-ISIL fight really its first wartime assignment,” Carter said, referring to another name for the group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

“What that means is to bring the fight to ISIL in Syria and Iraq,” he added. “It means interrupting their ability to command and control their forces, interrupting their ability to plot including against us here and anywhere else against our friends and allies around the world, interrupting their finances, their ability to dominate the population on territory they have tried to establish this nasty ideology.”

Carter said, “All that, we can approach in part through cyber.”

This story was originally published April 6, 2016 at 12:15 PM with the headline "Scott Air Force Base winners announced in Biggest Loser! contest."