Thursday, August 27, 2009 NEW DELHI: India on Thursday scrambled a fighter jet to intercept a Bangkok-bound Air France passenger plane after the airliner failed to identify itself correctly, the air force said.A Russian-built MiG-29 took off to intercept Air France flight 164 from Paris after it transmitted incorrect identification codes upon entering Indian airspace, air force spokeswoman Flight Lieutenant Priya Joshi said. Joshi said the pilot of the Airbus-343 did not identify the airliner as a “friendly” aircraft, which prompted a military airbase in northern India to scramble the fighter. “It was only later that the aircraft started transmitting the correct secondary radar response code and was picked up and identified by air defence radar as a civil airliner of Air France,” Joshi said. The MiG-29 was then given instructions to “break off and return to base,” Joshi said, adding that the air force had filed a report with India’s civil aviation authorities
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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