An undated picture shows a member of Iran's revolutionary guard pointing at the US RQ-170 unmanned spy plane at an unknown location in Iran. Sepah News.ir/ Handout/Reuters
An undated picture shows a member of Iran's revolutionary guard pointing at the US RQ-170 unmanned spy plane at an unknown location in Iran. Sepah News.ir/ Handout/Reuters
An undated picture shows a member of Iran's revolutionary guard pointing at the US RQ-170 unmanned spy plane at an unknown location in Iran. Sepah News.ir/ Handout/Reuters
An undated picture shows a member of Iran's revolutionary guard pointing at the US RQ-170 unmanned spy plane at an unknown location in Iran. Sepah News.ir/ Handout/Reuters

Iran claims successful test-run of drone based on captured US RQ-170


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TEHRAN // Iran said Monday that it has successfully tested its own version of a US-made drone based on one it captured in 2011.

State TV quoted General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the aerospace division of the elite Revolutionary Guard, as saying the test was carried out earlier Monday.

“As we promised earlier this year, a test flight of the Iranian version of the RQ-170 was carried out and a video will be released soon,” he said. Iran had displayed the drone earlier this year.

Iran has said it managed to reverse-engineer the RQ-170 Sentinel, seized in December 2011 after it entered Iranian airspace from neighbouring Afghanistan, and that it’s capable of launching its own production line for the unmanned aircraft.

Iran said it has captured several American drones in recent years, including a Boeing-designed ScanEagle drone — a less sophisticated aircraft — after it entered Iranian airspace over the Arabian Gulf.

Tehran said it is also reverse engineering the ScanEagle and plans to put its version into service.

Iran has accused the US of using drones to spy on the country’s nuclear programme. The US and other Western nations have long suspected Iran is secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons capability alongside its civilian programme. Tehran insists its nuclear programme is entirely focused on peaceful applications like power generation and the production of medical isotopes.

The two sides are currently struggling to reach an agreement under which Tehran would curb its nuclear activities in exchange for relief from crippling international sanctions.

Iran began a self-sufficiency military programme in 1992, under which it has produced everything from mortars and torpedoes to military tanks, jet fighters and light submarines.

* Associated Press

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

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MATCH INFO

Tottenham Hotspur 0 Everton 1 (Calvert-Lewin 55')

Man of the Match Allan (Everton)