Miscellaneous News

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A 'secret war' between Turkey and Greece just turned deadly after a long history of dogfights over the Aegean Sea
Ben Brimelow

A Greek fighter jet crashed and the pilot was killed after intercepting two Turkish F-16 fighters that had intruded into Greek airspace.
While fatalities are unusual, Turkish jets have been violating Greek airspace for decades, and the incursions have increased over the years.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become more aggressive in his rhetoric towards the West, saying that he wants to renegotiate the treaty that defined Turkey's borders after its war of independence.

For decades, a secret air war has been waged over the skies of southeastern Europe between two NATO allies: Greece and Turkey.

Greek officials announced on Thursday that a Hellenic Air Force Mirage 2000-5 fighter jet crashed in the Aegean Sea, near the island of Skyros. The pilot, identified by the HAF as 33-year-old Capt. Giorgos Baltadoros, was returning from an aerial policing mission where he intercepted two Turkish Air Force F-16s.

"The mission had finished and it had been on its way back with another Greek plane," a Greek official told the New York Times. Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said that Baltadoros was a "hero who fell defending national sovereignty and territorial integrity."

It is not known exactly what caused the Greek fighter jet to crash, but AFP reported that "the pilot may have blacked out during a combat exercise on the return home." Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu quoted Turkish officials saying that there were no Turkish forces in the area.


While deaths from aerial interceptions over the Aegean are uncommon, violations of Greek airspace by Turkish aircraft happen with some frequency. Earlier this month, Greek troops fired tracer rounds at a Turkish helicopter that flew over the island of Ro with its navigation lights switched off.

The Greek military recorded 1,671 violations of its airspace by Turkish jets in 2016. To put that in perspective, NATO jets were scrambled 780 times to intercept Russian aircraft, the highest level since the Cold War.

A year later, the number of Turkish violations increased to 3,317, and 920 violations have already been recorded for 2018. The jets sometimes get into "dogfights" with one another — flying wildly in the sky while trying to get a missile lock before breaking off.

"Over the space of the past seventeen years, Turkish fighter jets - many of them equipped with combat arms - have been violating Greek airspace, resulting in interception attempts by Greek forces and, in many cases, dangerous air engagements and dogfights, even over inhabited islands of the Eastern Aegean," Panos Tasiopoulos, senior project manager at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, writes.

The dogfights can get quite intense, as this video from 2006 shows:


Despite being NATO allies, Greece and Turkey have had a rough history. Modern day Turkey came into existence after a war with Greece and other allied nations in the aftermath of WWI. Tensions were further inflamed during the Cyprus Crisis, and almost erupted into full-scale war after Turkey invaded the island in 1974.


At the heart of the tensions are territorial disputes. Greece and Turkey share a land border in the north, but the border disputes are centered on the hundreds of islands in the Aegean Sea. There is debate between the two countries over the extent those islands' airspace and territorial waters cover.

The disputes have gotten so intense, that war has almost broken out between the countries on three separate occasions — in 1976, 1987, and 1996.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said that he wants to revise the Treaty of Lausanne, the recognized the sovereignty of the Republic of Turkey and defined the borders after the Turkish War of Independence. Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos responded that the treaty was in need "neither of revision nor of updating."

Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said in February that Turkey was conducting "cowboy antics," and warned of escalations.

"We want peace, we are not looking for a fight or for trouble in the Aegean," he said. "But there won't be an aircraft which will not be intercepted."

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Former first lady Barbara Bush dies at age 92

Former first lady

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died Tuesday at her home in Houston, Texas. She was 92.

"A former first lady of the United States of America and relentless proponent of family literacy, Barbara Pierce Bush passed away Tuesday, April 17, 2018, at the age of 92," reads a statement from the office of former President George H.W. Bush.

Bush passed away shortly after deciding to forgo further medical treatments for her failing health.

Having been hospitalized numerous times while battling congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she decided Sunday that she wanted to be "surrounded by a family she adores," according to an earlier statement released by Mr. Bush's office.

"It will not surprise those who know her that Barbara Bush has been a rock in the face of her failing health, worrying not for herself -- thanks to her abiding faith -- but for others," the statement continued. "She is surrounded by a family she adores and appreciates the many kind messages and especially the prayers she is receiving."

In January 2017, Mrs. Bush and her husband were hospitalized at the same time. She was being treated for bronchitis and the nation's 41st president was being treated for pneumonia.

Barbara Bush served as the country's first lady from 1989 to 1993. She is the mother of George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States.

Mrs. Bush is one of only two first ladies in the history of the country who is also the mother of a president. Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, a founding father of the nation and its second president, was the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. president.

Mrs. Bush is also the mother of Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida who ran for president of the United States in 2016.

During her tenure as the nation's first lady, Mrs. Bush, the mother of six children, was a champion for global literacy and continued the work after she and her husband left the White House.

In 1989, she formed the

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, which encourages parents to read to their children.

"Literacy fits in with so many other things," she once told The Chicago Tribune. "If more people could read, fewer people would have AIDS. There would be less homelessness. I'm absolutely convinced of that."

Descendent of a president
Barbara Pierce Bush was born in New York City, New York, on June 8, 1925, to Marvin and Pauline Pierce. Her father, a magazine publishing executive, was a descendant of Franklin Pierce, a Democrat and the nation's 14th U.S. president who served from 1853 to 1857. Her mother was the daughter of an Ohio Supreme Court justice and was active in civic causes.

The third of four children, Bush later recalled a childhood where her parents would gather and read around the fireplace, fostering her early love of reading.

She graduated high school from the all-girls private Ashley Hall boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1940s, and enrolled in Smith College, a women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts.

At Smith, which was racially integrated, Mrs. Bush became captain of the freshman soccer team, but she dropped out of college in 1945 at the beginning of her sophomore year. She later admitted that she was more interested in her future husband than in her studies.

She had met George Herbert Walker Bush at age 16, while at a Christmastime dance at the Round Hill Country Club in Greenwich, Connecticut. The pair were immediately attracted to each other and began exchanging letters, even as Mr. Bush completed his training to become the then-youngest pilot in the Navy. He named his bomber plane "Barbara" in her honor.

The pair were engaged shortly before Mr. Bush left to fly in World War II, and they wed Jan. 6, 1945, while he was on leave.

Mr. and Mrs. Bush celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary on Jan. 6.

In an

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from Smith College, Mrs. Bush said the marriage has endured because of the couple's love for each other.

"I am still old and still in love with the man I married 72 years ago," she said in the interview published in "Smith Alumnae Quarterly" earlier this month.

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has given me the world," she also said in the magazine. "He is the best -- thoughtful and loving."

Family joys and sorrows
Mrs. Bush gave birth to their first child, future President George Walker Bush, on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut. As the family moved about in Texas and California, the couple had five more children, who would eventually deliver the Bushes more than a dozen grandkids. Mrs. Bush took great joy in her family and told Barbara Walters in 1994, "If you opt to have children, I feel very strongly that they should be your top priority."

The family was dealt a blow in October 1953, when daughter Pauline Robinson “Robin” Bush died of leukemia at age 3.

"Because of Robin, George and I love every living human more," said Mrs. Bush, who became increasingly active in cancer research -- notably, the Leukemia Society of America -- following her daughter's death.

After a failed senatorial bid, Mr. Bush was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966. He quit his job as an oil executive in Houston to relocate the family to Washington, D.C.

In the 1970s, Mrs. Bush followed her husband from Washington, D.C., to New York City, to Beijing as Mr. Bush filled a succession of appointed political posts: ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, head of the U.S. liaison office in Beijing and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mrs. Bush at that time volunteered at the Washington Home, a hospice where she bathed and fed the dying.

Popular first lady
Mr. Bush landed firmly in the public eye as he served as Ronald Reagan's vice president from 1980 to 1988, and he was elected as Reagan's successor and 41st president of the United States in 1988.

Mrs. Bush generated headlines herself in the 1984 Reagan-Bush re-election campaign by calling vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro -- the first female vice presidential candidate from a major party -- something that "rhymed with rich." She later phoned Ferraro and issued a public apology.

As first lady, Mrs. Bush pursued a passion to fight literacy and in 1989 formed the

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, which supported existing literacy programs to boost participant retention.

Mrs. Bush believed that tackling illiteracy would also solve social issues that went unaddressed, such as AIDS, homelessness and teenage pregnancy. Her crusade against illiteracy and learning disabilities stemmed from her tireless efforts with her son Neil's dyslexia.

"George Bush and I know the frustration of living with an undiagnosed or untreated learning problem, and we know the great joy and relief that comes when help is finally found," she wrote in a 1989 edition of "Their World," a publication of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. "I foresee the day when no American -- neither child nor adult -- will ever need to be limited on learning."

Always standing proudly beside the president, Mrs. Bush maintained high popularity -- partly, she once said, "Cause I'm fat and old and nobody feels threatened by me."

In 1990, Bush penned "Millie's Book", a best-seller attributed to the family's springer spaniel, Millie. It was her second book: in 1983, she published "C. Fred's Story", about the family's pampered cocker spaniel. The books reportedly generated more than substantial funds to Bush's literacy foundation.

In 1992, Democratic Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas defeated Bush in his re-election to a second presidential term.

The couple retreated to their estates in Houston and the family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine.

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Jura said:

Oct 13, 2017

while “Right now, we’ve got about 21.6 percent of that [power] up.”
Three-star: Puerto Rico is on the road to recovery, but still in emergency status
1 day ago

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has announced that the country will suspend nuclear and missile tests and shut down a nuclear test site in the northern area, state media said Saturday.

"From April 21, North Korea will stop nuclear tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles," the Korean Central News Agency said.

"The North will shut down a nuclear test site in the country's northern side to prove the vow to suspend nuclear test," it added.

The decision was made at a plenary meeting of the central committee of the ruling Worker's Party of Korea (WPK) Friday, according to the KCNA.

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更新：北朝鮮 核実験とミサイル発射を中止
国際 2 hours ago
北朝鮮は20日に開かれた朝鮮労働党の中央委員会総会で、21日から核実験と大陸間弾道ミサイル（ICBM）発射実験を中止し、北部の核実験場を廃棄すると決定した。

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