All the available resources from the private sector needed to be exhausted before the Air Force could be called in to assist in dousing in the flames
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Sri Lankan government planes bombed three Tamil Tiger boats off the northern coast on Monday, the military said, after fighting since the weekend left 47 rebels dead. The fighting and the air raids were the latest in near daily land, sea and air battles that have left thousands dead in recent months.
At least four people were killed and seven missing after a plane crashed on Wednesday into the Atlantic Ocean off the Equatorial Guinea island of Annobon, the Malabo government announced. There was no confirmation of earlier reports that said that leaders of the ruling party were on board the plane when it crashed.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday proclaimed Iran was the ”most powerful nation” in the world as the country’s air force boasted of its prowess at a time of mounting tension with the West. ”Iran is the most powerful and independent nation in the world,” Ahmadinejad told a military parade outside Tehran.
The runway of the country’s most prominent air-force base has to be repaired ahead of next year’s election in South Africa to accommodate world leaders who will attend the inauguration of whomever is elected president. This was revealed at a visit on Tuesday of Public Works Minister Thoko Didiza to the Waterkloof Air Base in Pretoria.
Charlton Heston, the chisel-jawed Hollywood icon best remembered for his Oscar-winning performance in the 1959 epic <i>Ben Hur</i>, died on April 5 at his home, his family said. He was 84. Heston’s family said in a statement that the actor died with his wife of 64 years, Lydia, by his side.
Sri Lanka government troops on Wednesday captured a strip of land from Tamil Tigers after heavy fighting across the island’s north left 42 rebels and a soldier dead, the Defence Ministry said. Security forces killed the guerrillas from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in separate clashes in the Mannar, Weli Oya and Jaffna districts since Tuesday evening, the ministry said.
The Pentagon mistakenly shipped four electrical fuses for Minuteman nuclear missiles to Taiwan, officials said on Tuesday. The Taiwan shipment could have had international repercussions because of the sensitivity of United States arms sales to the island.
The sprawling prison complex at Guantánamo Bay looks from a distance like many of the hastily built resorts round the Caribbean, the camps occupying a narrow strip of sand by the palm-lined sea-shore, with fencing to keep the locals out. But through the military checkpoint, the grimness of the world’s most infamous prison becomes apparent.
Venezuela deployed tanks and its air and sea forces toward the Colombian border in its first major military mobilisation in a crisis with Colombia, the country’s defence minister said on Wednesday. The move escalates tensions in a dispute over a Colombian weekend raid inside another of its neighbours, Ecuador.
Sri Lankan troops captured stretches of Tamil Tiger-held terrain in the island’s north-west on Tuesday, killing seven rebels in clashes that took the two-day death toll to 23, the military said. Fighter jets bombed the Tigers’ de facto state for a second day running, hitting a rebel artillery position and an underground munitions store, the air force said.
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/ 22 February 2008
Tamil Tiger rebels said Sri Lankan government fighter jets killed five civilians in an air raid on their northern stronghold on Friday. Fighting between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has intensified since the government formally pulled out of a six-year-old ceasefire pact in January.
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/ 9 February 2008
A Russian strategic bomber briefly entered Japanese airspace over the Pacific south of Tokyo early on Saturday morning, prompting 24 Japanese military aircraft to scramble, officials said. Russia denied the incursion, but the Japanese Foreign Ministry said it lodged a strong protest with the Russian embassy in Tokyo.
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/ 20 January 2008
The presidential primaries have thrown up almost constant shocks and surprises. But there is one thing that stunned everyone in politics: the unexpected impact of Chuck Norris. Of course, as many TV villains can testify, no one ever sees Chuck Norris coming. Or at least not until it’s too late. Then he kicks you in the face.
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/ 8 December 2007
Senior Israeli officials warned on Friday that they were still considering a military strike against Iran, despite a fresh United States intelligence report that concluded Tehran was no longer developing nuclear weapons. Although Israel says it wants strong diplomatic pressure put on Iran, it is reluctant to rule out the threat of a unilateral attack.
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/ 23 November 2007
”In America a woman can be raped and if she has no health insurance then she can’t get help. That’s fucking ridiculous. So what are we doing here telling the rest of the world how to live? We have enough problems to sort out at home.” David Smith recalls a few of the sentiments expressed by United States troops during his stay in Baghdad.
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/ 11 November 2007
For four decades, residents of the tiny Pennsylvania town of Kecksburg have told their story of strange blue lights in the sky one winter’s evening and a fireball crashing into woods. In 1965, they say, they saw armed soldiers cordoning off the area and a large, metallic, acorn-shaped object driven off at speed on the back of a lorry.
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/ 1 November 2007
Paul Tibbets, the pilot and commander of the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, died on November 1, a spokesperson said. He was 92. Tibbets died at his Columbus home after a two-month decline in his health stemming from a variety of health problems, said Gerry Newhouse, a long-time friend.
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/ 1 November 2007
Sri Lankan troops killed 31 Tamil Tigers fighters in a series of clashes in the north of the island, as warplanes bombed rebel training camps on Thursday, the military said. Two soldiers were also killed and 17 wounded in the clashes with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
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/ 30 October 2007
Denmark scrambled two F-16 fighter jets on Tuesday to identify a Russian bomber detected on radar near the Nato member’s airspace, the Danish air force said in a statement. ”A visual contact was made at 6.02am [local time” with the Tupolev-160 bomber, the statement said.
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/ 22 October 2007
The Tamil Tigers air wing bombed a north Sri Lanka air force base before dawn on Monday, the military said, while the Tigers said suicide fighters mounted their biggest ground assault since the two-decade civil war began. The rebel air strike in the north-central district of Anuradhapura comes months after the Tigers’ first-ever air attacks using light aircraft.
It is highly unlikely that there could be a massive iceberg off St Francis Bay, a top South African Weather Service marine researcher said on Tuesday. On Monday, the crew of a fishing vessel, the Ntini, reported seeing a massive iceberg — estimated at 25m in length and 25m high.
After nearly a month of official silence, Israel confirmed on Tuesday that its air force carried out a strike inside Syrian territory on September 6. Israel had until now refused to confirm or deny that any air strike had taken place, though the incident was publicly confirmed by Syrian and Western officials.
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/ 21 September 2007
Sri Lankan fighter jets bombed a Tamil Tiger military base in the rebel-held far north on Friday, triggering multiple explosions, the air force said, while a suspected rebel roadside bomb killed one civilian in the east. The air strike targeted top leaders of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
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/ 17 September 2007
Israel has enforced a news blackout on what may be its air force’s most audacious raid since its jets destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor in 1981. The Israeli government has made no comment about the raid on what is believed to be a nuclear installation in Syria.
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/ 14 September 2007
Nigerian troops on Friday raided a community in the restive Niger Delta in a bid to dislodge armed gangs who have been terrorising the local population there, a military spokesperson said. The operation "began at 10am [local time]. The objective is to hunt down the militants from the creeks," Major Musa Sagir said.
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/ 6 September 2007
Syria accused Israel on Thursday of bombing its territory and warned it could respond, but Israel Radio carried a denial there had been an air strike. The official Syrian news agency said there were no casualties or damage and that Syrian air defences fired on the incoming planes shortly after midnight.
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/ 6 September 2007
Sudan has developed unmanned surveillance planes, is developing missiles, and is now ”self-sufficient” in conventional weapons, a Sudanese state news agency reported. The rare public announcement on Sudan’s military capability gave no details on how far missile development had progressed or where the surveillance drones might be used.
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/ 5 September 2007
A United States bomber mistakenly flew with nuclear warheads over the US last week, but the air force on Wednesday said the flight was not a threat to public safety. The air force has started an investigation into the incident and a review of all operational procedures.
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/ 3 September 2007
United States President George Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday, just a week before his top officials in Baghdad present pivotal testimony to Congress that could influence future policy on the war. The White House said Bush had arrived at the al-Asad Air Force base, west of Baghdad in Anbar province.