Yemeni plane crashes with 154 aboard

A Yemeni jetliner with more than 150 people aboard has crashed in the Indian Ocean off the island nation of Comoros, aviation officials in Yemen said Tuesday. The jet was en route to Moroni, the capital of Comoros, from Yemen’s capital Sanaa when it crashed about an hour before reaching its destination, officials from the national airline Yemenia said

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Will Germany’s Army Ever Be Ready for Battle?

On June 15, the German army’s General Wolfgang Schneiderhan found himself in front of an audience of politicians and senior officers defending military policy — on sleeping bags. Many German soldiers “are whingeing to high heaven,” Schneiderhan said at a reception thrown by the parliamentary army ombudsman, complaining about everything from being sent on yet another overseas tour of duty to the “unsuitable” sleeping bags they are given for their deployment in the Congo. Then Schneiderhan did some complaining of his own, noting the tendency for his officers to delegate blame, with no-one taking responsibility for their actions.

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Time running out to find Air France 447’s ‘black boxes’

Investigators probing the deadly crash of Air France flight 447 over the Atlantic are running out of time to find the flight data recorders which could prove crucial to working out what caused the disaster. Although some debris and 50 bodies have been retrieved, air crash investigators remain in the dark about what caused the airliner to plunge into the sea off the coast of Brazil killing the 228 people onboard on June 1. The wreckage is believed to be about 15,000 feet (4,500 meters) deep, amid underwater mountains and mixed in with tons of sea trash

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Silence grows as tensions mount in Iran

As a tense Tehran awoke Wednesday bracing for more protests, residents in the capital city and elsewhere said they were too afraid to talk about the political crisis over the phone. Residents, worried the government was monitoring phone conversations, said the Internet was the best way to transmit information about the unrest.

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