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Military  China's sole operational aircraft carrier passed through the Taiwan Strait Wednesday, the island's defence ministry said, as Beijing steps up pressure on its democratic rival. It comes weeks after Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen warned against what she called China's "military expansion" -- the increase of air and naval drills around the island since she came to power in May 2016. Beijing views the self-ruling island as part of its territory, to be reunified at some point. Cross-strait relations have become increasingly frosty as Tsai refuses to acknowledge Taiwan is part of "one China". The aircraft carrier -- a second-hand Soviet ship -- caused a stir in Taiwan when it first entered the strait in January last year, viewed as a symbolic show of strength by Beijing. The defence ministry said the Liaoning carrier and accompanying vessels entered Taiwan's air defence zone early Wednesday morning and left by noon. The fleet, which ...

Amid all its upgrades and advances, the US Navy's newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is lacking one feature: urinals. Every bathroom on the Ford is, for the first time,  gender-neutral , equipped with flush toilets and stalls, according to Navy Times. Bathroom-design  experts have said  sit-down toilets are less sanitary and take up more space, and most of the Ford's crew members are men. (Women are only about 18% of the Navy.) But the Navy has said getting rid of urinals has advantages for current and future operations. Making every bathroom accessible to all of the ship's sailors will also make things more convenient for sailors, the Navy has said. And bathrooms that can be used by either gender mean the Navy can reassign them without making any design changes, should the crew's makeup change. "This is designed to give the ship flexibility because there aren’t any berthing areas that are dedicated to one sex or the other," Operations Spe...

This photo provided by Yemen’s Joint Operations Command purportedly shows Saudi al-Madinah warship in waters off the coast of Hudaydah city, Yemen, on January 30, 2017. Yemeni naval forces, backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees, have targeted and torched a Saudi military vessel in a missile attack off the coast of the country’s western province of Hudaydah, military says. Yemen's official Saba news agency, citing an unnamed military source in the Navy, reported that the destruction of the Saudi-led coalition’s gunboat occurred on Monday, when Yemeni forces hit the intruding vessel with a missile. The military official further asserted that the Saudi vessel was carrying out radar jamming and deception against Yemeni army when it was targeted. On January 30, Yemeni army forces fired a guided missile at Saudi Arabia’s al-Madinah battleship in waters near the city of Hudaydah, and on June 25, another Saudi war boat was hit and destroyed by Yemeni forces on Yemen of...

'Admiral Kuznetsov' to get new cruise missiles, flight deck WIB SEA  April 26, 2017  Robert Beckhuse Russia’s rusty aircraft carrier  Admiral Kuznetsov  has been back at her home port near Murmansk since February following a 2016 combat deployment off the Syrian coast.  Kuznetsov  took a beating from heavy use and what’s next is a long-awaited refit, of which we now have a few details. First of all, the  Kuznetsov  is not technically an aircraft carrier—according to the Russian Navy’s definition—but a clumsily-titled “heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser” owing to her 12 Granit anti-ship cruise missiles. The retrofit will replace these with Kalibr-NK land-attack missiles, substantially boosting range, and fitted inside universal vertical launchers also capable of firing P-800 Oniks anti-ship missiles,  according to Tass . Russian warships have on several prior occasions fired Kalibr missiles at Syrian rebel and Islamic State targ...

China Image captionChinese state media released a picture of the launch showing the carrier bedecked in giant colourful streamers China has launched a new aircraft carrier, boosting its military presence amid rising tensions in the region. It is the country's second aircraft carrier, after the Liaoning, and the first to be made domestically. State media said the unnamed ship was "transferred from dry dock into the water" in the north-eastern port of Dalian. Previous reports said it would be operational by 2020. It comes amid heated rhetoric between the US and North Korea in recent days. China has had only one operational aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, which it bought from Ukraine and refitted. The US has deployed  warships and a submarine  to the Korean peninsula, prompting an angry reaction from North Korea. China has urged calm. There is also the ongoing issue of  competing territorial claims in the South China Sea . The new carrier will deploy Shenyang J-1...