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The Russian Air Force scrambled three fighter jets to escort a U.S. Air Force bomber away from Russian airspace Sunday at an undisclosed location over the Pacific Ocean, Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency reported. “[A]ir defense radars on duty in the Eastern Military Region on Sunday spotted an air target over the Pacific Ocean that was approaching Russia’s airspace,” Russia’s National Defense Command Center told Russian media on September 26. “In order to identify and escort the foreign plane, three Sukhoi-35S fighter planes of the Eastern Military Region’s air defense were scrambled,” the command center said in a statement to...

Authorities in Belarus scrambled a fighter jet and flagged what turned out to be a false bomb alert to force a Ryanair plane to land on Sunday and then detained an opposition-minded journalist who was on board, drawing criticism from across Europe. In the dramatic incident, a Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jet escorted Ryanair-operated passenger plane flying from Athens to Lithuania. The plane was suddenly diverted to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where authorities detained journalist Roman Protasevich. Data from the flightradar24.com website showed the plane was diverted just two minutes before it was due to cross into Lithuanian airspace. After...

Australian official says since Ocean Shield vessel has reacquired signal he is 'optimistic' plane will be found soon The search area for the missing Malaysia airlines flight MH370 has been drastically reduced after two further detections of pings consistent with those of a black box from a plane late on Tuesday. The head of Australia’s Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre, Angus Houston, said on Wednesday the Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield had detected two further pings on Tuesday – one in the afternoon and one in the late evening – that had allowed the search area to be further refined to...

D.B. Cooper: 40 years later November 24th, 2011, marks the 40th anniversary of the legendary Cooper case, an unsolved crime that has baffled agents, detectives and amateur sleuths, and spurned one of the greatest manhunts in law enforcement history. The FBI’s case file on D.B. Cooper runs some forty feet long. It is located in the basement archives of the Bureau’s field office in Seattle, where for four decades agents have hunted for the man who ransomed a passenger jet for a small fortune and parachutes, then jumped out the back over the rural Northwest, during the middle of a...

After losing their jobs in a cost-cutting move Monday, employees at Berkeley's KPFA returned to the radio station studios Tuesday, taking over the airwaves with a renegade show. The unauthorized broadcast originated in a separate studio inside the station with the help of a remaining employee, said Pacifica Foundation Executive Director Arlene Engelhardt. The station had planned to broadcast a show from a sister station in Los Angeles to fill the time previously filled the morning show, but the staff member at the controls instead opened the microphones to the former employees who held their ground for two hours, Engelhardt...

ALERT - Sudanese plane hijacked: pirates want to go to Paris TRIPOLI - The hijackers who hijacked on Libya a Sudanese plane, with more than 100 people on board, require fuel to go to Paris, said in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday a Libyan airport source. ALERT - The hijackers claimed to belong to the SLA Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur TRIPOLI - The hijackers who hijacked on Libya a Sudanese plane, with more than 100 people on board, belonging to the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLA) Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur who lives in Paris, said on the night from...

Excerpt - ANKARA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - A Turkish passenger plane heading for Istanbul from northern Cyprus was hijacked on Saturday and forced to land for refuelling in southern Turkey, local media reported. It was not clear how many hijackers were on board, but they said they wanted to fly to Tehran, media said. ~ snip ~

MAURITANIAN PASSENGER PLANE HIJACKED TO WESTERN SAHARA - MAURITANIAN POLICE

SUDANESE PLANE HIJACKED AT KHARTOUM AIRPORT BY GUNMAN, DIVERTED TO CHAD'S CAPITAL N'DJAMENA - AN OFFICIAL SAYS

Patrick and Katherine Stethem have forsaken their quiet life in a Loudoun [Virginia] suburb to call for justice. They don't relish the spotlight. But they'll go there if it will get the job done. The job is to get the U.S. government to use its influence to get Mohammed Ali Hamadi into a U.S. courtroom. To get the Lebanese government to turn Hamadi over. To get Hezbollah to assume the mantle of a legitimate political party. It's been 20 years since Hezbollah terrorists – two on a hijacked plane and two on the ground -- murdered Patrick Stethem's older brother,...