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22 Apr 13
A group of Russian Navy warships has docked at the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas after a long journey from the Pacific Ocean, Press TV reported. -The Russian warship entered the Iranian naval zone with the purpose of strengthening relations between Tehran and Moscow and promoting bilateral naval cooperation to maintain maritime security. Commanders of the Russian fleet are expected to hold talks with top Iranian naval officials.
Jews sitting in the Land of Israel today are nodding, perhaps scratching their heads, and saying to themselves, perhaps to their family members, maybe even to their friends: Three people were killed in Boston, and the Americans have lost their minds. They have turned the university city, with its millions of residents, into a large prison, turned routine life into complete chaos. And all because of three casualties.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday met Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and finalized the sale of an undisclosed number of Bell Boeing V-22 transport helicopters and other U.S. military equipment including Boeing KC-135 inflight refueling planes, advanced radar systems for fighter planes and anti-radiation missiles at a reported cost of $10 billion dollars.
China officially confirmed the occurrence of humans infected with H7N9 late last month. Since then 102 people have been infected resulting in 20 deaths and 82 patients being treated in hospitals. Twelve people had been discharged from hospitals as of Saturday, leaving 70 still in the hospital, CNN reported.
The town of Baga, on the border with Chad, has been largely devastated in hours-long fully-fledged urban combat between regular troops and Islamist insurgents that started on Friday, local government official Lawan Kole told AP on Sunday.
The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the Horsehead Nebula in stunning detail. The nebula, about 1,500 light years away in the constellation of Orion, was imaged in infrared wavelengths against the backdrop of the Milky Way. The pink cast is from hydrogen gas behind the nebula, which is being lit up by Sigma Orionis, a five-star system.
The rapid growth of sunspot AR1726 continues. Invisible when the weekend began, it is now a behemoth more than 150,000 km (a dozen Earth diameters) wide.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel held out hope Sunday for a nonmilitary way to ending the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, but he also emphasized Washington's willingness to let Israel decide whether and when it might strike Tehran in self-defense.
Thousands of gay marriage opponents waving pink and blue flags marched through Paris on Sunday in a last-ditch protest before a law allowing same-sex union and adoption is passed next week. Chanting "We don't want your law, Hollande!", some 50,000 protesters massed behind a banner reading: "All born of a Mum and a Dad" and said it was undemocratic to bring about such a fundamental social change without holding a referendum.
During the 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m. on Sunday, China confirmed six new cases of human H7N9 avian influenza, including five in Zhejiang and one in Jiangsu. The National Health and Family Planning Commission said in its daily update on H7N9 cases that a total of 102 H7N9 cases have been reported in China, including 20 that have ended in death.
The conclusion reached by debkafile's counterterrorism and intelligence sources is that the brothers were double agents, hired by US and Saudi intelligence to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks which, helped by Saudi financial institutions, had spread across the restive Russian Caucasian. Instead, the two former Chechens betrayed their mission and went secretly over to the radical Islamist networks.
The FBI was last night hunting a 12-strong terrorist "sleeper cell" linked to the Boston marathon bomb brothers. Police believe Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were specially trained to carry out the devastating attack. More than 1,000 FBI operatives were last night working to track down the cell and arrested a man and two women 60 miles from Boston...
Egypt's justice minister has resigned, following demands from Islamist supporters of President Mohammed Morsi for the "cleansing" of the judiciary. Ahmed Mekky was seen as a supporter of judicial independence during former President Hosni Mubarak's rule. He threatened to quit last year after the president adopted broader powers.
More than 11,000 more were injured and nearly two dozen are missing following Saturday's devastating quake.
The United States is to equip Israel with a range of advanced missiles and fighter jets, new defence chief Chuck Hagel has said on a visit to Jerusalem. The deal is part of a US $10bn arms package involving Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Mr Hagel said the weapons would allow Israel to maintain its qualitative military edge over its neighbours.
A magnitude-5.9 earthquake hit central Mexico near the Pacific Coast on Sunday night, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The earthquake was centered more than 200 miles from Mexico City, the USGS said, in the Mexican state of Michoacan. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries in Michoacan, according to state civil protection officials.
China is continuing a massive rescue operation in Sichuan province, deploying thousands of workers, after a powerful earthquake on Saturday. Rescue workers are using dynamite and heavy equipment to get through roads blocked by landslides to reach remote areas, reports say. But reaching these areas has been a struggle, with bad weather and powerful aftershocks contributing to delays.
Intense fighting between the military and Islamist militants in northern Nigeria is reported to have killed at least 185 people, however the army has disputed this figure. Rocket-propelled grenades and heavy gunfire bombarded the remote town of Baga near the border with Chad for hours on Friday evening, officials say. Some 2,000 homes were reportedly destroyed, causing many of the deaths.
France and the Netherlands have joined an initiative by 13 EU states to help European consumers boycott goods made by Israeli settlers on Palestinian land. Foreign ministers from the group - which also includes Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and the UK - put forward their ideas in a letter to EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton on 11 April.
Prospects of an EU tax on financial transactions have been put into question by confusion on how it would work and a legal challenge by the UK. A six-page-long memo drafted by civil servants in the EU Council last week - seen by EUobserver - indicates cooling enthusiasm among the 11 EU countries which supported the introduction of a financial transactions tax (FTT).
There may be Hezbollah terrorists living in America, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the US House Committee on Homeland Security, said on Sunday. He said he was worried over the freedom of movement of terrorists in the wake of the twin bombings in Boston last week.
Jordan has opened two corridors of its airspace to Israeli Air Force drones seeking to monitor the ongoing conflict in Syria, French daily Le Figaro reported on Sunday, citing a Western military source in the Middle East. According to the report, Jordanian King Abdullah made the decision in March during US President Barack Obama's visit to Jordan, which came immediately after his first trip as president to Israel.
21 Apr 13
US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Palestinian Authority (PA) head Mahmoud Abbas in Istanbul on Sunday, the State Department said, as a US-led "peace" push focusing on the PA's economy steps up. Kerry and Abbas, who have met several times recently, will "continue the conversation that they've been having for several weeks now about how to get both sides back to the table," a State Department official said...
Iran's oil ministry says the country is considering exporting oil to North Korea as a way to improve its battered economy. The official IRNA news agency quoted on Saturday Oil Minister Rostam Ghasemi as saying talks are underway between Tehran and Pyongyang on oil exports. An oil deal would bring the two nations deeply at odds with the U.S. and the West closer together.
The economic impact of the Boston Marathon bomb suspect manhunt could run into the billions of dollars, according to one expert, as a million city residents were stuck at home, stores were shuttered and public transit ground to a halt.
Authorities are hunting for suspects after shooting broke out during a massive marijuana celebration in Denver, leaving two people with gunshot wounds. The gunfire scattered thousands attending Saturday's 4/20 counterculture holiday, the first since Colorado legalized marijuana.
North Korea has moved two more missile launchers to its east coast, where preparations are apparently under way for a missile test as tensions simmer on the peninsula, reports say. Expectations had been high that Pyongyang would carry out a test to coincide with celebrations marking the birth of North Korea's late founding leader Kim Il-sung on April 15 but it did not materialise.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has announced a doubling of US aid to Syria's rebels and told a Friends of Syria meeting its members were committed to a peaceful transition. Mr Kerry told the meeting in Istanbul that the US would provide Syrian rebels $123m (£81m) in new, non-lethal aid. He said President Barack Obama was committed to a "democratic, unified, post-Assad Syria".
Rescuers and relief teams struggled to rush supplies into the rural hills of China's Sichuan province Sunday after an earthquake left at least 180 people dead and more than 11,000 injured and prompted frightened survivors to spend a night in cars, tents and makeshift shelters.
Built in to President Obama's budget proposal for 2014 is a $580 million contingency fund to address the turmoil roiling the Middle East and North Africa, to be spent across the region over the course of the year at the discretion of the White House and the State Department. That sum is striking some members of the Congress as too large for an administration without a coherent policy toward the Arab Spring.
Israel has the right to decide for itself whether to strike Iran, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told reporters on his flight to Israel on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported. "Israel is a sovereign nation and every sovereign nation has the right to defend itself and protect itself. Israel will do that. It must do that," Hagel was quoted as saying.