July 27, 2014 Military Aviation News
07/27/2014
Palestinian militant group Hamas has announced a 24-hour ceasefire after Israel ended its own truce amid continuing rocket fire from Gaza. All Palestinian militant factions would stop firing from 11:00 GMT, Hamas said. But Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas had already violated its own ceasefire and "Israel will do what it must do to defend its people".
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07/27/2014
Dutch experts have cancelled plans to head to the site of the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, international officials say. Fighting between pro-Russia separatists and government troops in the area has prevented access to the site, they add. Earlier, Malaysia said it had struck a deal with the rebels to allow international police at the site.
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07/27/2014
The number of civilians caught up in Israel's Operation Protective Edge offensive has raised international concern and condemnation. During the three weeks since air strikes against Hamas in Gaza began, more than 800 people have been killed on both sides. The UN says the vast majority of Palestinian deaths are civilian. But figures from previous operations in the densely populated Gaza Strip over the last six years show it is not the first time civilians have paid a heavy price.
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07/27/2014
Under intense diplomatic pressure, Israeli leaders decided late Saturday to extend a halt to hostilities in the Gaza Strip through midnight Sunday, but said their troops would maintain defensive positions and continue to ferret out tunnels from Gaza into Israeli territory. Hamas, the militant Palestinian faction that dominates Gaza, rejected the extension of the temporary cease-fire requested by the United Nations, after renewing rocket fire on Israel on Saturday evening.
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07/27/2014
The rescue workers have left, and their tents are gone. The peppermint-striped plastic cordon flutters uselessly in the breeze. Farmers are harvesting wheat in a field where bodies had lain. Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was blown out of the sky one week ago on Thursday, deepening tensions between Russia and the West and thrusting at least 10 countries whose citizens were on board into the middle of a war between Ukraine's government and pro-Russian rebels.
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07/27/2014
Europe will harden its line against Moscow after the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, but sniping between Britain and France shows that the road to political consensus will be long and hard, analysts said. The 28 European Union foreign ministers agreed July 22 to stiffen sanctions unless Russian President Vladimir Putin moves toward settling the Ukraine crisis.
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07/27/2014
The thinktank the China Strategic Culture Promotion Association (CSCPA) issued its "CSCPA Report on US Military Power 2013 and CSCPA Report on Japanese Military Power 2013" in Beijing on July 23, blaming the US for deploying more military strength in Asia-Pacific, reports Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po. The report said US military strength in the region increased by 6% in 2013 compared with 2012, reaching 154,100 personnel.
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07/27/2014
Knowing how and when to make a screen grab has suddenly become one of the basic skills of journalism. On the afternoon of July 23, a Russian soldier named Vadim Grigoriyev posted on the Russian social-networking site VKontakte that he'd "been shelling Ukraine all night." He added a couple of photos of artillery pieces and spent shells.
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07/27/2014
Mozambique recently revived its air force by shipping its eight MiG-21 fighters to Romania to be refurbished and upgraded. Some of these aircraft (six single seat fighters and two dual seat trainers) had not flown since the 1990s. Lack of maintenance, especially periodic refurbishment, is what left these aircraft grounded, baking in the tropical heat and rain for two decades.
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07/27/2014
The Republic of Singapore Air Force's (RSAF) F-15SG multirole fighter aircraft are participating in the Red Flag - Nellis multi-national training exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, US, for the first time. In addition to eight F-15SG fighters, RSAF has also deployed eight F-16C/D fighter aircraft, three CH-47 Chinook helicopters, and 290 personnel from its Peace Carvin II, Peace Carvin V, and Peace Prairie detachments for the air-to-air combat training exercise.
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07/27/2014
The awful crash of Malaysian Flight 17 in the Ukraine combat zone seems likely to have been caused by a long-range surface-to-air missile. At this writing, who launched the missile remains undetermined. Regardless of who’s guilty - why is a modern software-driven weapon capable of striking a civilian jet in the first place? All commercial airliners send out transponder signals that identify them as civilian.
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07/27/2014
After days of heavy combat among militias that highlights the chaos in Libya, the U.S. Embassy has been shut down and its staff taken to safety in neighboring Tunisia, the State Department said Saturday. It occurred under the protection of U.S. F-16 fighters and other aircraft, and there were no incidents.
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