Israel's first F-35 jets land as Trump blasts costs

December 13, 2016

Nevatim Air Base (Israel), Dec 13: The US F-35 stealth fighter programme suffered a dual blow today as President-elect Donald Trump blasted "out of control" costs and bad weather delayed delivery to Israel by six hours.Trump reuters1

With US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter in Israel for the arrival of the first two of 50 of the warplanes bought from aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, Trump lashed out on Twitter against the programme.

"The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th," Trump said, referring to his inauguration day.

Lockheed Martin's stock tumbled 4.3 per cent shortly after the tweet, which prompted a response from the company. With a current development and acquisition price tag of USD 379 billion for a total of 2,443 F-35 aircraft - most of them destined for the US Air Force - the plane is the most expensive in history.

Once servicing and maintenance costs are factored in over the aircraft's lifespan through 2070, overall programme costs are expected to soar to USD 1.5 trillion.

Speaking at the landing site in southern Israel, Jeff Babione, Lockheed's programme manager for the F-35s, told journalists the planes represented a good deal. "It's great value and I look forward to any questions that the president-elect may have," he said.

In Israel, the first two F-35s landed at Nevatim air base at around 8.15 pm (1845 GMT), around six hours late after being delayed by bad weather in Italy, believed to be fog.

Some 4,000 people had been expected to watch the landings but the crowds thinned as the landing was delayed, leaving only around half the seats full by nightfall.

The two planes came to a halt in front of the spectators, one on each side of the stage erected for speeches of welcome. "The aircraft landing here will change the rules of the game," President Reuven Rivlin said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to Israel's air force as the state's long arm. I want to tell the people of Israel today that this long arm today became longer, more powerful," he said.

"Anyone thinking of attacking us will be attacked," he added, in an apparent reference to arch-foe Iran. "Anyone thinking of destroying us places his own existence in danger."

A Lockheed official said the delivery delay was caused by Italian air safety regulations, rather than any limitation of the planes, but this did not stop jibes.

"Here's hoping we only go to war on sunny days..." one Israeli joked on Twitter. The Trump attack and the delay in the fighters' arrival threatened to overshadow what Israel had labelled a key day in its military's future.

While other countries have ordered the planes, Israel - which receives more than USD 3 billion a year in US defence aid - says it will be the first outside the US with an operational F-35 squadron.

Carter and Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman joined Netanyahu and Rivlin at the ceremony.

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News Network
June 24,2020

Jun 24: The coronavirus tally in Pakistan reached 188,926 with the detection of 3,892 new cases in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

Sixty more people died due to the viral infection, taking the death toll to 3,755.

As many as 3,337 patients are in critical condition across the country, the ministry said.

With the detection of 3,892 new cases in the last 24 hours, the coronavirus tally in the country now stands at 188,926, it said.

Sindh reported the maximum number of 72,656 cases, followed by 69,536 in Punjab, 23,388 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 11,483 in Islamabad, 9,634 in Balochistan, 1,337 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 892 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (Pok).

Health authorities have so far conducted 1,150,141 coronavirus tests, including 23,380 in the last 24 hours.

A total of 77,754 patients have recovered so far from the disease.

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News Network
June 9,2020

Jun 9: The World Health Organization says it still believes the spread of the coronavirus from people without symptoms is “rare,” despite warnings from numerous experts worldwide that such transmission is more frequent and likely explains why the pandemic has been so hard to contain.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO''s technical lead on COVID-19 said at a press briefing on Monday that many countries are reporting cases of spread from people who are asymptomatic, or those with no clinical symptoms.

But when questioned in more detail about these cases, Van Kerkhove said many of them turn out to have mild disease, or unusual symptoms.

Although health officials in countries including Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere have warned that COVID-19 is spreading from people without symptoms, WHO has maintained that this type of spread is not a driver of the pandemic and is probably accounts for about 6 per cent of spread, at most.

Numerous studies have suggested that the virus is spreading from people without symptoms, but many of those are either anecdotal reports or based on modeling.

Van Kerkhove said that based on data from countries, when people with no symptoms of COVID-19 are tracked over a long period to see if they spread the disease, there are very few cases of spread.

“We are constantly looking at this data and we''re trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question,” she said. “It still appears to be rare that asymptomatic individuals actually transmit onward.”

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Agencies
July 24,2020

The total number of global coronavirus cases has topped 15.4 million, while the deaths have increased to over 631,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

As of Friday morning, the total number of cases stood at 15,439,456, while the fatalities rose to 631,926, the University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed in its latest update.

The US accounted for the world's highest number of infections and fatalities at 4,034,831 and 144,242, respectively, according to the CSSE.

Brazil came in the second place with 2,287,475 infections and 84,082 deaths.

In terms of cases, India ranks third (1,238,798), and is followed by Russia (793,720), South Africa (408,052), Peru (371,096), Mexico (370,712), Chile (334,683), the UK (298,721), Iran (284,034), Spain (270,166), Pakistan (269,191), Saudi Arabia (260,394), Italy (245,338), Turkey (223,315), Colombia (218,428), France (216,667), Bangladesh (216,110), Germany (204,881), Argentina (148,027), Canada (114,398), Qatar (108,244) and Iraq (102,226), the CSSE figures showed.

The other countries with over 10,000 deaths are the UK (45,639), Mexico (41,908), Italy (35,092), France (30,185), India (29,861), Spain (28,429), Iran (15,074), Peru (17,654) and Russia (12,873).

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