A day after a Russian fighter allegedly flew within 5 feet of a US reconnaissance plane traveling over the Baltic Sea, Reuters reports that a NATO F-16 fighter jet returned the favor when it tried to improperly approach a plane carrying the Russian defense minister. The plane was traveling to the city of Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave along the Baltic coast, where Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu was scheduled to discuss security issues with defense officials on Wednesday. The NATO aircraft was warded off by a Russian Su-27 jet, according to RT.
In an accounting of the incident, Reuters notes that one of the Russian fighter jets escorting Shoigu's plane had inserted itself between the defense minister's plane and the NATO fighter and "tilted its wings from side to side to show the weapons it was carrying, Russian agencies said." After that the F-16 promptly left the area.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that he has no information about the incident.
“It’s probably better to ask the Defense Ministry,” Peskov said in answer to journalists’ questions.
The latest provocative maneuver represents yet another escalation of tensions between the US and Russia. On Monday, Russia suspended cooperation with...
Republican Karen Handel Defeats Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia Special Election
SANDY SPRINGS, Georgia — Republican Karen Handel has won the special congressional election in Georgia, fending off a strong challenge from Democrat Jon Ossoff in the heavily Republican House district, according to a projection by NBC News.
Handel’s victory in the closely fought contest, which drew national interest and was the most expensive House race ever at over $50 million spent, comes as good news for President Donald Trump. Democrats had promoted the contest as a referendum on the president.
With over 80 percent of the vote counted, Handel lead Ossoff 52 percent to 48 percent in a race that many expected to be much closer. Handel had 116,182 votes to Ossoff's 105,170 ballots.
"Democrats from coast to coast threw everything they had at this race, and Karen would not be defeated," said House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Democrats will call the outcome a moral victory, and note they've exceeded expectations in every special election this year. But it doesn’t change the fact that they’re 0-4 for congressional races, even after spending millions of dollars and and whipping up a hyper-motivated base.
Rarely, if ever, has a single congressional race attracted this much attention or been freighted with so much meaning.
Breaking news out of Washington, D.C. where The Profiling Project — an “all-volunteer group of current and former George Washington University forensic psychology graduate students and instructors” has just released a report on the murder of Seth Rich. Here’s the executive summary with the bombshell suggestion that a “hired killer” was possibly behind the crime:
