military

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Gaza War has strained the relationship between Israel and Turkey, Israel’s closest Muslim ally. Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel as a state, and it has built up more than $3 billion in annual trade with Israel, far more than for any other Middle Eastern country. “It’s not a business-as-usual relationship anymore,” said Cengiz Candar, a columnist for Radikal, a Turkish daily. “It’s a very uneasy sort of cohabitation in this region now.”

Israel’s Arab allies stood behind it in the war, but Turkey, a NATO member whose mediating efforts last year brought Israel into indirect talks with Syria, protested every step of the way in a month of angry remarks capped when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stalked off the stage during a debate in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 29.

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Sometimes things, purely odd, happen. However the disaster on September 6, 1952, prompted the introduction of stringent safety measures to protect spectators at air shows and no member of the public has been killed at a British air show since.

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At the Farnborough Air Show in Hampshire on 6 September 1952, thousands of spectators watched as a De Havilland 110 aircraft broke the sound barrier and then disintegrated in the sky above them and fell to earth. The De Havilland 110 fighter had just broken the sound barrier when it broke up over the spectators, showering them with debris. Among the dead are the pilot, John Derry, and the flight test observer Anthony Richards. The two airmen had completed one fly-past in which they amazed 130, 000 spectators by breaking the sound barrier to produce a sonic boom.

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AFP - France spearheaded alarmed reaction from European nations as Israeli tanks and troops pushed into the Gaza Strip, revealing a sharp difference in tone from the official line in Washington.

At least 460 Palestinians have been killed and thousands wounded in an eight-day bombing campaign, according to Gaza medics, as Israeli tanks clashed overnight with Hamas fighters who fired back with mortars and rockets.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the decision to send ground forces into Gaza after a week of air strikes was a "dangerous military escalation", while Britain called for an immediate ceasefire.

The European Union's new Czech presidency said Israel did not have the right to take military actions "which largely affect civilians," though its launching of land operations in the Gaza Strip was no surprise.  read more »

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By December of 1957, Elvis Presley was twenty-three years old, healthy, rich, and more famous than he could ever dreamed. Everything he touched turned to gold. It was as if nothing could get in his way. That is, until December 10, 1957, when Elvis received a letter from the Memphis Draft Board notifying him that he was up for the next military draft. Army, Navy, and Air Force recruiters immediately called to offer him special enlistment opportunities if he signed up before being drafted. The Navy even offered to form an "Elvis Presley Company" that would include soldiers from the Memphis area. Elvis declined all the enlistment offers and decided to take his changes with the draft. On December 19, nine days after he received his initial draft notification, Elvis got final word from the Memphis Draft Board; he was to report for induction into the Army on January 20, 1958, the very same day he was scheduled to start filming King Creole.

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Soldier’s Engagement Ring
by LuCxeed

I’ll be gone to the battlefield
Don’t cry, my darling
Just return to me our engagement ring

I’ll be gone to the battlefield
Don’t cry. Don’t cry, my darling
Just return to me our engagement ring

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From pages 53 & 54 of the upcoming book: Love’s Footsteps ~ dedicated to a Bridge for Wisdom to Walk on