MOSCOW -- Russia has started flying jets again from its only operational aircraft carrier after a two-year break, state-run television reported yesterday in the latest show of the country's reviving military capability. "Aircraft are taking off and landing from the deck of the Kuznetsov after a gap of two years. To the pilots and crew [the gap] seemed enormous," Channel One television said in a report from on board the vessel. Last week, President Vladimir Putin announced Russia was returning to its Soviet-era practice of sending long-range bomber aircraft on regular patrols near to NATO airspace. Observers saw those sorties as a sign of Russia's growing assertiveness and ambitions to extend its global reach -- helped by a budget swelled by revenues from energy exports. Russia's other aircraft carriers have been decommissioned or sold. The television report did not say why flights from the Admiral Kuznetsov had been halted. (Reuters)
UNITED STATES
Bureau will train Palestinian guard
WASHINGTON -- US diplomatic security officials will begin training the Palestinian presidential guard this year in an effort to support the government of President Mahmoud Abbas, the State Department said yesterday. Under an agreement signed this month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, presidential guard officers would take course work and conduct VIP protection exercises under the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. The guards' training will run from autumn into early 2008 and is part of US and international efforts to bolster the Palestinian security sector and improve law and order, the State Department said in a statement. The program aims to help the Palestinian Authority "deliver security for the Palestinian people and fight terrorism, build confidence between the parties, and ultimately help to meet the security needs of Palestinians and Israelis alike," it said. (Reuters)
EGYPT
Sacks of explosives are seized by police
EL ARISH -- Egyptian police in north Sinai seized about 550 pounds of explosives they suspect were destined for smuggling into the Palestinian territories, a security source said yesterday. The source said police had received a tip-off that smugglers had stashed the high explosives in a mountainous area 1.8 miles south of the town of El Arish near Egypt's borders with the Gaza Strip. A search of the area turned up four plastic sacks loaded with the explosives, the source added. No arrests had been made in connection with the explosives, but police were searching the area for more explosive caches. (Reuters)
CANADA
Claim to Arctic expected at summit
MONTEBELLO, Quebec -- Canada's prime minister is expected to assert his nation's claim to the fabled Northwest Passage through the warming, resource-rich Arctic at talks with President Bush starting today. Canada claimed the passage in 1973 but competition to control the Arctic has intensified with global warming. Shrinking polar ice has raised the possibility of new shipping lanes and development of what one US study suggested could be as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas. The summit also involving President Felipe Calderon of Mexico is largely about expanding economic cooperation among the three nations. (AP)
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