DTN News - UKRAINE CRISIS: US Deploys Fighter Jets In Poland And Lithuania Amid Ukrainian Turmoil

Asia News Report: DTN News - UKRAINE CRISIS: US Deploys Fighter Jets In Poland And Lithuania Amid Ukrainian Turmoil

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources RT
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - March 11, 2014: The US is sending a dozen F-16 fighter jets and nearly 300 service personnel to Poland by Thursday as part of a training exercise in response to the crisis in neighboring Ukraine, the Polish defense ministry confirmed.

The agreement to deploy US military forces in Poland was made between US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and Poland’s Minister of National Defense Tomasz Siemoniak during a telephone conversation on Sunday, March 9, 2014, according to a statement on the official website of the Polish Ministry of National Defense.

"The squadron will number twelve F-16 planes and will transport 300 soldiers," Polish Defense Ministry spokesman, Jacek Sonta, confirmed to AFP.

Initially, the training exercise was planned to be smaller but was increased and pushed forward because of the “tense political situation” in neighboring Ukraine, added Sonta.

The ministry also said that the aim of sending the units is to “strengthen Polish - American cooperation.” Part of the preparation team of US Air Force has already arrived on Polish territory.

The fighters were sent on the initiative of the Polish government, an initiative immediately accepted by Washington.

On Monday, NATO also gave the go-ahead to Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) for reconnaissance flights over Poland and Romania in order help monitor the crisis in Ukraine.

Poland is a western neighbor of crisis-torn Ukraine - between the countries’ capitals, Warsaw and Kiev, there is less than 700 km.

Earlier, the Polish media reported that US fighter jets would be stationed at the Lask air force base in central Poland.

Washington is also sending four F-15 planes to Lithuania in response to “Russian aggression in Ukraine and increased military activity in Kaliningrad,” according to the Lithuanian Defense Ministry.

On Saturday, US Navy destroyer, the USS Truxtun, crossed Turkey's Bosphorus and entered the Black Sea. The ship, with around 300 crew, was heading to “previously planned” training exercises with the Bulgarian and Romanian navies. When the vessel appeared in the Black Sea, Fox News declared that NATO’s bolstering presence in the Black Sea is a “defensive” measure to counter “Russian military aggression” in Ukraine.

USS Truxton, one of the largest destroyers ever built for the US navy, will reportedly stay in the Black Sea till mid-March as the Montreux Convention allows a warship of any non-Black Sea country to stay in the region for 21 day only.

The situation in Ukraine is close to financial and humanitarian catastrophe after the armed coup which took place in February. There are mass protests in eastern and southern parts of the country against the self-proclaimed authorities in Kiev.

The Autonomous Republic of Crimea has scheduled a referendum for March 16 on whether it wants to remain part of Ukraine, or join Russia.

*Link for This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources RT
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DTN News - UKRAINE CRISIS: NATO To Fly AWACS Planes Over Poland, Romania To Monitor Ukraine Crisis

Asia News Report: DTN News - UKRAINE CRISIS: NATO To Fly AWACS Planes Over Poland, Romania To Monitor Ukraine Crisis

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources Reuters
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - March 11, 2014: NATO will start reconnaissance flights over Poland and Romania to monitor the situation in neighboring Ukraine where Russian forces have taken control of Crimea, the alliance said on Monday.

Ukraine is not a NATO member but Russia's intervention in Crimea has alarmed neighboring countries, including alliance members that used to be dominated by the Soviet Union.

Acting on a recommendation from the alliance's top military commander, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, NATO ambassadors gave the go-ahead to the AWACS flights, a NATO spokesman said.

AWACS (airborne early warning and control) planes will fly from their home airbases in Geilenkirchen, Germany, and Waddington in Britain, the spokesman said.

"These flights will enhance the alliance's situational awareness and all will take place solely over alliance territory," he said.

The flights will start soon and go on for as long as required, he added.

The Western military alliance announced a review of its cooperation with Moscow last week after Russian forces tightened their grip on Crimea, home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, following weeks of upheaval in Ukraine which culminated in the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovich.

NATO allies met last Tuesday after Poland invoked a rule allowing any ally to consult with the others if it feels its security is under threat.

Soon after that meeting, U.S. officials said the Pentagon would more than double the number of U.S. fighter jets on a NATO air patrol mission in the Baltics and do more training with Poland's air force in an attempt to reassure allies.

The E-3 Sentry is an airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft that provides all-weather surveillance, command, control and communications needed by commanders of U.S. and NATO air defense forces. As proven in Desert Storm, it is the premier air battle command and control aircraft in the world today.

(Reporting by Adrian Croft; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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DTN News - AIRLINES NEWS: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Mystery

Asia News Report: DTN News - AIRLINES NEWS: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Mystery

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources Fox News
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - March 10, 2014: Vietnamese aircraft spotted what they suspected was one of the doors belonging to the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on Sunday, as troubling questions emerged about how two passengers managed to board the Boeing 777 using stolen passports.

The discovery comes as officials consider the possibility that the plane disintegrated mid-flight, a senior source told Reuters.

The state-run Thanh Nien newspaper cited Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of Vietnam's army, as saying searchers in a low-flying plane had spotted an object suspected of being a door from the missing jet. It was found in waters about 56 miles south of Tho Chu island, in the same area where oil slicks were spotted Saturday.

"From this object, hopefully (we) will find the missing plane," Tuan said. Thanh Nien said two ships from the maritime police were heading to the site.

An authority told Reuters that it was too dark to be certain the object was part of the missing plane, and that more aircraft would be dispatched to investigate the site in waters off southern Vietnam in the morning.

Rahman said that the search area has been increased to 50 nautical miles, from 20, and includes 34 aircraft and 40 ships. Aircraft are conducting 12-hour searches, until sundown, while ships are scheduled to continue the search throughout the night.

Meanwhile, Interpol says no country checked its database for information about stolen passports that were used to board the Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared with 239 people on board Saturday less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, bound for Beijing.

In a sharply worded criticism of shortcomings of national passport controls, the Lyon, France-based international police body said information about the thefts of an Austrian passport in 2012 and an Italian passport last year was entered into its database after they were stolen in Thailand.

Interpol said in a statement it was investigating all other passports used to board the flight and was working to determine the "true identities" of the passengers who used the stolen passports.

"I can confirm that we have the visuals of these two people on CCTV," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference late Sunday, adding that the footage was being examined. "We have intelligence agencies, both local and international, on board."

Hussein declined to give further details, saying it may jeopardize the investigation. Hussein said only two passengers had used stolen passports, and that earlier reports that the identities of two others were under investigation were not true.

European authorities on Saturday confirmed the names and nationalities of the two stolen passports: One was an Italian-issued document bearing the name Luigi Maraldi, the other Austrian under the name Christian Kozel. Police in Thailand said Maraldi's passport was stolen on the island of Phuket last July.

A telephone operator on a China-based KLM hotline on Sunday confirmed to The Associated Press that "Maraldi" and "Kozel" were both booked to leave Beijing on a KLM flight to Amsterdam on March 8. Maraldi was then to fly to Copenhagen, Denmark, on KLM on March 8, and Kozel to Frankfurt, Germany, on March 8.

She said since the pair booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines, she had no information on where they bought them. The ticket purchases reportedly took place almost simultaneously, and the tickets were numbered consecutively, according to the BBC.

A U.S. official told Fox News that a key priority is clarifying the status of the passports, whether they were lost or stolen, and determining through airport security screening and video who got on the flight under those names.

The statements came as officials said finding the wreckage of the flight is “the utmost priority."

“There is still no sign of the aircraft,” Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of the Department of Civil Aviation, said during a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.

The U.S. Navy sent a warship, the USS Pickney, which was conducting training and maritime security operations off the South China Sea, and a surveillance plane. Singapore said it would send a submarine and a plane. China and Vietnam were sending aircraft to help in the search.

It is not uncommon for it to take several days to find the wreckage of an aircraft floating on the ocean. Locating and then recovering the flight data recorders, vital to any investigation, can take months or even years.

When pressed on reports of fake passports used by at least two passengers on board the flight and the possibility of a terrorist attack, Rahman re-stated that the priority is to find the aircraft and that any probe investigating a terror link is independent of the search mission. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has also said it is “too early to make any conclusive remarks.”

Earlier, Malaysia’s air force chief told reporters that military radar indicated that the plane may have turned from its flight route before losing contact.

Rodzali Daud didn't say which direction the plane might have taken when it apparently went off route.

"We are trying to make sense of this," he told a media conference. "The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back and in some parts, this was corroborated by civilian radar."

Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said pilots were supposed to inform the airline and traffic control authorities if the plane does start to return. "From what we have, there was no such distress signal or distress call per se, so we are equally puzzled," he said.

Vietnamese air force planes spotted two large oil slicks late Saturday in the first sign that the aircraft had crashed. The slicks were each between 6 miles and 9 miles long, the Vietnamese government said in a statement.

But there was no confirmation that the slicks were related to the missing plane, but the statement said they were consistent with the kinds that would be produced by the two fuel tanks of a crashed jetliner.

The plane was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants and 12 crew members when it “lost all contact,” with Subang Air Traffic Control at 2:40 a.m., two hours into the flight, the airline said. The plane was expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. Saturday.

Around the time the plane vanished, the weather was fine and the plane was already at cruising altitude, making its disappearance all the more mysterious.

Just 9 percent of fatal accidents happen when a plane is at cruising altitude, according to a statistical summary of commercial jet accidents done by Boeing. The plane was last inspected 10 days ago and found to be "in proper condition," Ignatius Ong, CEO of Malaysia Airlines subsidiary Firefly airlines, said at a news conference.

The lack of a radio call "suggests something very sudden and very violent happened," said William Waldock, who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.

The plane "lost all contact and radar signal one minute before it entered Vietnam's air traffic control," Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army, said in a statement issued by the government.

U.S. officials said late Saturday that a team of safety experts had been dispatched to Southeast Asia to assist in the investigation. Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board told Fox News that the team, which includes investigators from the agency and technical experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, had been sent to the region despite the fact that the plane had not been located due to the lengthy travel time from the U.S. and the team's desire to be in a position to assist local authorities right away. The FBI is also assisting in the search.

Meanwhile, a former intelligence official told Fox News that the information about stolen passports from two adjacent European countries, combined with recent warnings for flights to the United States about the risk of possible shoe bomb attacks, is concerning.

The airline said onboard the plane, there were 152 passengers from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia, six from Australia, five from India and three from the U.S. and others from Indonesia, France, New Zealand, Canada, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan and the Netherlands.

The U.S. State Department later confirmed in a statement that three Americans were aboard the jetliner.

In the United States, a friend confirmed to the Associated Press that an IBM executive from North Texas named Philip Wood had been aboard the jet. Freescale Semiconductor, a company based in Texas, also confirmed Saturday that 20 of its employees -- 12 from Malaysia and eight from China -- were passengers.

The airline says the plane's pilot is Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old who has been with the airline for over 30 years. The plane's first officer is Fariq Ab.Hamid, a 27-year-old who joined the airline in 2007. Both are Malaysians.

At Beijing's airport, authorities posted a notice asking relatives and friends of passengers to gather at a hotel about nine miles from the airport to wait for further information, and provided a shuttle bus service.

Malaysia Airlines has 15 Boeing 777-200 jets in its fleet of about 100 planes.

The 777 had not had a fatal crash in its 20-year history until the Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco in July 2013.

Fox News' Catherine Herridge and Dan Gallo, as well as The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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DTN News - ROYAL FAMILY NEWS: Kate Middleton Will Celebrate Her 30th Birthday On January 9

Asia News Report: DTN News - ROYAL FAMILY NEWS: Kate Middleton Will Celebrate Her 30th Birthday On January 9

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Mirror -UK

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 8, 2012: Kate Middleton will celebrate her 30th birthday tomorrow quietly at home with William.

There had been ­rumours Kate would have a lavish party in a teepee in her ­parents’ garden organised by her sister Pippa.

But a royal insider said: “It’s made up. Any celebration will be ­incredibly low-key and private.”
  
Tonight the couple will be guests of ­honour at the London premiere of Steven Spielberg’s War Horse. It’s thought they will then head home to ­Anglesey, N. Wales.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources  Mirror -UK
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DTN News - INDONESIA DEFENSE NEWS: Australian Surplus Hercules To Be Given To Indonesia

Asia News Report: DTN News - INDONESIA DEFENSE NEWS: Australian Surplus Hercules To Be Given To Indonesia

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources The Australian
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 5, 2012: AUSTRALIA will hand over four unneeded C-130 Hercules transport planes to Indonesia.

The Royal Australian Air Force transports are understood to have been in storage.

The RAAF's inventory has been boosted by the purchase of six giant C-17 Globemaster II transports, so the smaller and older Hercules are no longer needed. The C-130Hs that will go to Indonesia have been largely superseded in the RAAF by the more powerful J model.

According to the Jakarta Post, Indonesia's Defence Ministry confirmed this week that representatives from the two countries would meet later this month in Jakarta to discuss the handover.

Indonesian officials will visit Australia to examine the aircraft.

As the country of origin of the Hercules, the US has also approved the arrangement.

In 2009, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono promised to increase the military budget after the crash of a C-130 in East Java that killed more than 100 people.

That crash highlighted the urgent need for a boost to the military budget to enable more rigorous aircraft maintenance.

Western security analysts in Jakarta said at the time that the Indonesian Air Force had about 28 Hercules in the early 1980s, but no more than nine were in flying condition at the time of the crash.

Military commentator John Macbeth said: "It's a very small number and they were hugely embarrassed at the time of the 2004 tsunami because they couldn't provide the airlift capability to get aid into Aceh."


The four-engine Hercules has been in almost continuous production for more than 50 years.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources The Australian
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DTN News - IRAN NUCLEAR FACTORS: France Says Iran Still Developing Nuclear Arms

Asia News Report: DTN News - IRAN NUCLEAR FACTORS: France Says Iran Still Developing Nuclear Arms
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources AFP
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 3,  2012: French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Tuesday that Iran was continuing to develop nuclear weapons and called for stronger sanctions against Tehran.

"Iran is pursuing the development of its nuclear arms, I have no doubt about it," he told French television I-Tele. "The last report by the International Atomic Energy Agency is quite explicit on this point."

"This is why France, without closing the path of negotiation and dialogue with Iran, wants stricter sanctions," he added.

He said French President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed a freezing of assets of Iran's central bank and an embargo on exports of Iranian oil, a move also being considered by the European Union.

Tensions have risen in recent days after Iran -- which insists its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes -- test-fired a series of missiles near the key Gulf oil supply route of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has no long-range missiles, a Russian defence official said Tuesday in Moscow's first response to the series of missile tests conducted by Tehran.

"Iran does not have the technology to create intermediate or long-range inter-continental ballistic missiles," defence ministry spokesman Vadim Koval told the Interfax news agency.

"And it will not get such missiles any time soon," he added.

Iran reported testing three missiles close to the Gulf oil-transit waterway on Monday amid preparations by Western powers to impose more economic sanctions over Tehran's nuclear drive.

Two of the missiles can fly a maximum 200 kilometres (120 miles), generally considered short-range weapons, although the Iranian media and a navy spokesman described one of them as "long-range".

The other, a Nasr anti-ship missile, had a shorter range of 35 kilometres.

Russia has relatively close ties with Iran and built its first nuclear power station in the southern city of Bushehr. Moscow has also delivered the nuclear fuel for the reactor.

Moscow has echoed Western concerns about the nature of the Iranian nuclear programme but has stopped short of publicly accusing Tehran of seeking atomic weapons and always said that the standoff should be solved by diplomacy.

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