Free Republic

<p>A U.S. military charter aircraft flying from Afghanistan has been forced down in Iran by Iranian fighter jets, according to officials familiar with the incident.</p>

Wherever Hillary Clinton is going, she needs at least a Gulfstream G450 to get there. The once nearly “dead broke” former First Lady now makes steep demands when she gives speeches to corporations, groups and universities, according to emails between Clinton’s agent and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where Clinton will earn $225,000 for a 90-minute speech in October. The school received a bit of a break from the $300,000 Clinton requested during initial negotiations, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which obtained the emails that were sent last year. The correspondence showed that Clinton normally requires “round-trip transportation...

In an incident recalling the film "Snakes on a Plane," hundreds of reptiles took to the skies after being smuggled onto a passenger flight — only this time the route was not Honolulu-Los Angeles but Düsseldorf-St. Petersburg. The press service for the regional branch of the animal health watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor reported Tuesday that it had stopped a passenger, who was attempting to bring 180 exotic reptiles into Russia via St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport. The man, who had flown in from Germany's Düsseldorf, was carrying 180 live snakes, lizards, frogs and turtles in his rucksack and cabin baggage, Interfax reported, citing...

Air Algerie plane with 110 passengers and six crew loses contact with air traffic control and disappears from radar after taking off from Burkina Faso on flight to Algeria ...

Did you know Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was full of corpses when it took off from Amsterdam? Did you know that, for some darkly inexplicable reason, on July 17, MH17 moved off the standard flight path that it had taken every time before, and moved north, toward rebel-held areas outside Donetsk? Or that the dispatchers summoned the plane lower just before the crash? Or that the plane had been recently reinsured? Or that the Ukrainian army has air defense systems in the area? Or that it was the result of the Ukrainian military mistaking MH17 for Putin’s presidential plane, which...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States began building a case Friday that would pin the blame for the downing of the passenger jet over Ukraine on separatist forces supported by Russia, in a disaster that could dramatically escalate the crisis in Ukraine. President Barack Obama said one American was among the nearly 300 killed and called for an immediate cease-fire to allow for an unfettered investigation. Evidence indicates that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile from an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists, Obama said at the White House. He warned that the incident showed the...

If you look up 'shameless' in the dictionary... As a passenger liner with almost 300 people was shot-down, the Kremlin can see that this is the death for the underhanded crap they've been pulling in Ukraine, as for outside opinion anyway, they're toast. Vlad was trained how to lie, obfuscate, and deflect by the KGB, and he's usually pretty good at it. But this one really takes the cake: "This would not have happened if there were peace on this land ... and, certainly, the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility." Oh really? Not the lowlife GBU Colonel...

Today was the day we never wished we would ever see.The shooting down of a commercial passenger plane via ground to air missile attack.Could this be Barry's 9/11?And all he could say that it looks like a terrible tragedy?It's as if we are reliving the moment when Hillary said "What Difference Does It Make"?.The country is in utter shock! And then he's off to another fund-raiser right after Americans have been murdered in Ukraine.Can anyone take another two years of this?

Monarch is to introduce non-reclining seats across its entire fleet of planes. The light-weight design, to be rolled out this summer, has been launched to create more ‘living space’ for passengers after customer research showed the existing style was unpopular. It comes after surveys revealed that nine in ten travellers wanted reclining seats banned, and voted them one of the most common causes of mid-flight anger.

Searchers Focus on April 5 Signals as Confidence Fades Over April 8 Detections Searchers preparing to resume the underwater hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 increasingly suspect that some of the electronic signals detected last month didn't come from the jetliner's black-box flight recorders, a senior Australian naval officer said. The doubts—based on further acoustic analysis of the transmissions by Australian authorities over recent weeks—represent another potential setback in the two-month-old operation. An initial underwater search in the southern Indian Ocean has already failed to find any sign of the missing plane, while a costly air-and-ship search of the ocean's...

The last time the Russian "Doomsday Plane" was seen in the air doing its trademark loops at 27,000 feet telegraphing Vladimir Putin was somewhere nearby, was on March 31, just days after the formerly Ukrainian region was annexed by the Kremlin. Until today, when over the past 4 hours, the Tu-214 has been quietly circling in position just shy of Finland and the Baltics, where as it is known, NATO has been depositing hundreds of western soldiers in a "defensive" build up.

"Kid's lucky to be alive," FBI spokesman Tom Simon in Honolulu told The Associated Press.A 16-year-old boy stowed away in the wheel well of a flight from California to Hawaii on Sunday, surviving the trip halfway across the Pacific Ocean unharmed despite frigid temperatures at 38,000 feet and a lack of oxygen, FBI and airline officials said. Not only was he unharmed, but officials also said he wasn't even dirty.

A 16-year-old boy stowed away in the wheel well of a flight from California to Hawaii on Sunday, surviving the trip halfway across the Pacific Ocean unharmed despite frigid temperatures at 38,000 feet and a lack of oxygen, FBI and airline officials said. FBI spokesman Tom Simon in Honolulu told The Associated Press on Sunday night that the boy was questioned by the FBI after being discovered on the tarmac at the Maui airport with no identification. "Kid's lucky to be alive," Simon said. Simon said security footage from the San Jose airport verified that the boy from Santa Clara,...

The Times notes, however, that American, Australian, and other international officials are saying anonymously that China is a bigger nuisance to the search than Malaysia. The Chinese government, for example, announced early on that it had found debris matching the colors of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. The debris, sighted on satellites, turned out to be unrelated fishing equipment, and the search for those items took valuable time out of searching for clues related to the flight. Similarly, Chinese media announced earlier this month that the vessel Haixun 01 had found radar signals similar to those of a flight recorder...

Retired Lt. General Thomas McInerney was back on with Sean Hannity tonight and still stands by his original statements that missing MH370 landed and did not crash into the ocean. “I think those passengers have the potential to still being alive. And I believe that airplane landed. I believe the airplane has landed and I’ve listened to a lot of aviation experts and none of them know anything about radical Islam. And I think that was one of the major shortcomings to think that as well planned as this was, and you just went through it with Mr. Kay, on...

India has rejected a Chinese request to enter territorial waters in the Andaman Sea in an effort to search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 over concerns that the request might be an excuse for military snooping. “There was no need for anybody else to search the area,” Press Trust of India, the country’s largest news agency, quoted unidentified government sources as saying. India thus “politely rejected” the Chinese request to allow People’s Liberation Army Navy shifts enter waters near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The request was made on Wednesday and entailed the dispatch of four ships, including...

Some 83 aircraft have been declared “missing” since 1948

Frustration with the search for missing flight MH370 boiled over into chaotic scenes as Chinese relatives were dragged away from journalists. They were attempting to speak to Chinese journalists outside the daily press conference in Kuala Lumpur. A BBC reporter was pushed away from the relatives, who were carrying banners criticising the handling of the case. Teams from 26 countries are trying to find flight MH370, which went missing on 8 March with 239 people on board. One of the relatives, a middle-aged woman, cried: "They give different messages every day! Where´s the flight now? Find our relatives! Find the...

Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 is no closer to being found as the disappearance of the Boeing 777 carrying 239 people nears its two-week mark. Pilot suicide, terrorism and hijacking are some possibilities that are being theorized to the plane as the search area expanded to 7 million square miles. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said last week that “there are a number of possible scenarios that are being investigated as to what happened to the flight.” Rick Mathews, of the National Center for Security & Preparedness at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy of SUNY Albany, tells...

<p>MH370? The satellite image of a plane flying over the Andaman Island uncovered by an Indian IT expert who claims it is of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight. Asia US sanctions 11 in Putin's inner circle Missing plane: when something went wrong Pilot suicide - it's happened before 'Terror groups don't always own up' Malaysia Airlines co-pilot spoke last words Malaysia&ap...</p>