From PressTV
US blows lid off Israel’s nuclear weapons, hydrogen bombs program
The US government blows the lid off Israel’s nuclear weapons program by declassifying a top secret document, a report says.
Last month the United States released documentation from its 1987 assessment of Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities, following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Jerusalem Post reported on Saturday.
The 386-page document, formally titled Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations, was commissioned by the Department of Defense and complied by Leading Technologies Incorporated.
According to the report, the document gives a detailed breakdown of Israel’s nuclear weapons development in the 1970s and 1980s.
Israel is “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,” reads the declassified document.
It goes on to say that in the 1980s Israel was “reaching the ability to create bombs considered a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.”
It also parallels Israel’s nuclear research laboratories to US nuclear facilities known to carry out weapons research.
The Soreq and Dimona nuclear facilities “are the equivalent of our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories,” it reads.
“The Soreq center runs the full nuclear gamut of activities from engineering, administration, and non-destructive testing to electro-optics, pulsed power, process engineering and chemistry and nuclear research and safety,” the paper goes on to say. “This is the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”
In accordance to FOIA regulations, the United States informs the relevant partner giving them the option of formal objection.
The Jerusalem Post quoted US Army Col. Steven Warren, the director of Pentagon press operations, as saying that Israel was informed of “our planned release of the documents and they did not object.”
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From Russia Today
Ex-Chancellor Schroeder criticizes Merkel’s Russia policy
German ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has slammed Angela Merkel’s policy towards Russia, saying he understands Moscow’s foreign policy concerns and sees no reason to fear a possible Russian threat in Eastern Europe.
Schroeder, the chancellor of Germany from 1998-2005, fully recognized Russia’s concerns, which are linked to the growing isolation of the country. “The Warsaw Pact ceased to exist with the end of the Soviet Union, while NATO not only survived, but also has extensively expanded to the East,” he said in a Saturday interview to Der Spiegel.
From Russia Today
Germany needs 500,000 migrants a year until 2050 – study
Within the next 15 years, half of all German workers will become pensioners, the Bertelsmann Institute warns in a study published Friday. Without immigrants, Germany’s labor pool is likely to shrink from current its 45 million to 29 million people (or 36 percent) by 2050.
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From Ynet News
Nasrallah: Saudi Arabia forgets Israel is the enemy
Hezbollah chief condemns intervention in Yemen, says Saudis abandoned Palestinians and aims to control Yemen.
The leader of Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah group unleashed a tirade against Saudi Arabia on Friday over its intervention in Yemen, saying the Sunni kingdom has abandoned the Palestinians and does not care to oppose Israel.
Hassan Nasrallah rejected Riyadh’s claim that it had assembled a coalition to conduct airstrikes against Shiite Houthi rebels in order to save Yemen, an operation named “Decisive Storm.”
From The Times of Israel
Is US-Israel crisis a speed bump or sign of a long-term conflict?
Despite tensions, top lawmakers say relationship base on ‘shared values,’ not personalities of Obama and Netanyahu
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Barack Obama’s refusal to accept Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ostensible recommitment to a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has watchers of the U.S.-Israel relationship wondering if the recent crisis is a mere speed bump or a sign of a deeper shift in ties between the countries.
Netanyahu moved quickly last week to emphasize that his statement on the eve of his reelection that no Palestinian state would be established on his watch did not represent a policy shift away from a two-state solution. But Obama administration officials were unwilling to accept that clarification, a point the president emphasized in a press conference Tuesday when he said that differences with Israel were “substantive” and not easily papered over.
“The central question is whether this is a temporary blip on the radar screen or whether there’s something deeper and more structural going on,” said David Harris, the American Jewish Committee’s executive director. “We have to know the answer to that in order to know whether we can put the U.S.-Israel train back on track, as we all would like.”
Along with other Jewish organizational leaders and pro-Israel lawmakers, Harris has been urging the White House to tone down its rhetoric in recent days, but Obama’s comments on Tuesday – his most detailed on the rift since the Israeli election – suggest the administration is not heeding those warnings.
“I have conveyed to the White House that it’s time to cool it,” Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told JTA. “The U.S.-Israel relationship is based on shared values and an unbreakable bond, not on personalities.”
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From The Independent
From PressTV
EU keeps Hamas on terror list despite court ruling
The European Union (EU) has kept Hamas on its terrorism blacklist despite a court ruling ordering the 28-member bloc to remove the Palestinian resistance movement from the register.
The measure comes as EU foreign ministers have lodged an appeal against the decision made by the union’s second highest court late last year. The appeal process is expected to take around a year and a half.
“Hamas stays on list during Council’s appeal to December judgment,” Susanne Kiefer, a spokeswoman for the European Council said on Twitter.
The General Court of the European Union ruled on December 17, 2014 that the decision to sanction Hamas in the wake of the September 11, 2011, attacks was not based not on sound legal judgments, but rather on conclusions drawn from the media and the internet.
From Russia Today
Arab nations move closer to unified military force as Yemen conflict escalates
Arab leaders hope to fulfill a long-held dream of creating a joint military force as they meet in Egypt this weekend. The project has been given more impetus in the wake of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen to battle Shia Houthi rebels.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told an Arab League summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday that he is in favor of creating a united Arab force to help maintain security within the region. He also said he has accepted a proposal from the Arab foreign ministers to form the joint Arab military force.
The move to create a joint Arab army comes on the backdrop of a Saudi-led coalition launching airstrikes against Houthi Shia anti-government forces in Yemen. Kuwait’s Emir also spoke on Saturday in Egypt saying that the Houtis posed a threat in the region.
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From Ynet News
Abbas: Yemen policy should extend to Palestine
Palestinian leader urges Arab League to carry out intervention ‘policy in Palestine, Syria, and Iraq as in Yemen.’
The 26th Arab League Summit opened Saturday in Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday as Arab states gathered to discuss the region’s many questions – the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen, the fight against Islamic State militants, talks to form a united military force, and of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
From the Jewish Daily Forward
Iran Inches Toward 2-Page Nuclear Deal
Major Powers Warn Talks Could Still Collapse
By Reuters
As the French and German foreign ministers arrived in Switzerland on Saturday to join talks between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Western and Iranian officials familiar with the negotiations cautioned that they could still fail.
Kerry and Zarif have been in Lausanne for days to try to reach an outline agreement by a self-imposed deadline of March 31 between Iran on the one hand and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China on the other.
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From Ynet News
Egypt jails two over Israel espionage charges
Giza court sentences man and woman to lengthy prison terms for passing ‘strategic information’ to Israeli intelligence officials. A court in Egypt has sentenced a man and woman to lengthy jail terms and ordered them to pay large fines after convicting them of spying for Israel, a judicial official said Saturday.
Their two accomplices – Israeli intelligence officials – were sentenced in absentia to life terms, the official added.
The man, Ramzy al-Shebini, was sentenced to life, and the woman, Sahar Salama, to 15 years. In Egypt, a life term generally means 25 years.
