U.S. ‘still the Great Satan’ says Iranian Guard chief

 

The head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard said on Tuesday that the U.S. “is still the Great Satan,” regardless of the nuclear deal struck with Americans and world powers over the Islamic Republic’s contested nuclear program. The comments were made by Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, reported by the official Guard website. He said that “the enmity against Iranian nation by the U.S. has not lessened and it has been increased.” “We should not be deceived by the U.S.,” Gen. Jafari reportedly said. “It wants to infiltrate into Iran, resorting to new instruments and method.”

The Guard and hardliners remain suspicious of the U.S., even as authorities look over the historic accord that curbs Iran’s nuclear program in return to lifting economic sanctions. Earlier Tuesday, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the head of powerful Iran’s Experts Assembly, which oversees the nation’s Supreme Leader and institutions under his supervision, also said the nuclear deal would not alter Iran’s foreign policy toward the U.S.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran considers the U.S. its No. 1 enemy,” Ayatollah Yazdi said. “If you try to discover the root of the sedition that is happening around us today, you will identify U.S. as its main supporter.” Meanwhile on Tuesday, the state news agency IRNA quoted Tehran’s police chief, Gen. Hossein Sajedinia, as saying his officers detained several people for distributing apparel bearing the flags of the U.S., Israel and Britain, as well as items bearing ‘Satanic symbols’. Such crackdowns on Western items are common in Iran.

U.S. upset at India-Russia deals

A day after Russian President Putin’s visit, the United States criticised India for the agreements signed between New Delhi and Moscow. Responding to a question on the 20 agreements signed, including one on the Rupee-Rouble trade, State department spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “Our view remains that it’s not time– for business as usual with Russia. But beyond that, we’d have to take a closer look at what these agreements entail.” The US and Ukraine have also expressed unhappiness that President Putin was accompanied by the Crimean Premier Sergey Aksyonov. Mr. Aksyonov is on the sanctions list of the U.S., Canada and European Union for his role in the accession of the former Ukrainian region to Russia in March this year. While the U.S. state department said it was “troubled” by his presence in New Delhi, Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko accused India of putting “money” ahead of “values” and “civilisation”. “The Indian position doesn't help, it doesn't save Aksyonov,” said Mr. Poroshenko, speaking at the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney on Friday, “He is a criminal, it's very simple.” The Ministry of External affairs refused to comment on the attack from the U.S. and from Ukraine over the issue. Officials told The Hindu that while Mr. Aksyonov’s arrival in Delhi was “not a surprise”, he was not part of the “official delegation”, and was on a private visit. However, The Hindu has learnt his meetings in New Delhi were arranged by the Russian Consul-General in Mumbai Alexey Novikov, and he initialled a “partnership agreement” between Crimean and Indian businesses, particularly in the area of meat exports. Seafood exporter Gul Kripalani, who was present at the meeting told The Hindu, “I am really surprised that this agreement has attracted so much controversy. The meeting with the Crimean Prime Minister followed Russia’s decision to allow the import of Indian buffalo meat last week.” India has refused to join western sanctions over Russia’s actions in Crimea, and the joint statement issued by President Putin and PM Modi said “India and Russia oppose economic sanctions that do not have the approval of the United Nations Security Council.”

Swedish court rejects Assange appeal

 

On Thursday a Swedish appeals court rejected an appeal by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to revoke a detention order issued by prosecutors in 2010 over allegations of sexual assault. "In the view of the Court of Appeal there is no reason to set aside the detention solely because Julian Assange is in an Embassy and the detention order cannot be enforced at present for that reason," said the Court of Appeal. Mr. Assange has been stuck inside Ecuador's London Embassy since June 2012 to avoid a British extradition to Sweden. Sweden wants to question him on allegations of sexual assault and rape, which he denies. The Australian says  that he fears if Britain extradited him to Sweden he would then be extradited to the United States where he could be tried for one of the largest information leaks in U.S. history.

Obama authorises airstrikes in Iraq

U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Thursday night he had authorised the Pentagon to launch targeted airstrikes if needed to protect Americans from Islamic militants in northern Iraq and help Iraqi security forces protect civilians under siege, threatening to revive U.S. military involvement in the country’s long sectarian war. In a televised late-night statement from the White House, Mr. Obama also said American military forces had already carried out airdrops of humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of Iraqi religious minorities desperately in need of food and water. “Today America is coming to help,” he declared. The announcements reflected the deepest American engagement in Iraq since U.S. troops withdrew in late 2011 after nearly a decade of war.

Cosmic inflation no longer theory, now a fact

 

On March 17, the most important day for cosmology in over a decade, the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics made an announcement that swept physicists off their feet. Scientists published the first pieces of evidence that a popular but untested theory called cosmic inflation is right. This has significant implications for the field of cosmology.

The results also highlight a deep connection between the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. This has been the subject of a century-old quest in physics. Cosmic inflation was first hypothesized by American physicist Alan Guth. He was trying to answer the question why distant parts of the universe were similar even though they couldn’t have shared a common history. In 1980, he proposed a radical solution. He theorized that 10^-36 seconds after the Big Bang happened, all matter and radiation was uniformly packed into a volume the size of a proton.

By the time it was 10^-33 seconds old, its volume had increased by 10⁷⁸ times — a period called the inflationary epoch. After this event, the universe was almost as big as an orange, expanding to this day but at a slower pace. While this theory was poised to resolve many cosmological issues, it was difficult to prove. To get this far, scientists from the Centre used the BICEP2 telescope.

Through the South Pole’s dry atmosphere, BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) 2 studies the 13.5 billion-year old residual energy of the Big Bang called the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This is a field of microwave radiation that permeates the universe. The CMB consists of electric (E) and magnetic (B) fields, called modes.

The B-mode patterns, in particular, have undergone some changes as the universe aged. It is susceptible to gravitational effects. For example, the E-mode can be twisted by the strong gravitational pulls of large galaxies into the B-mode.

However, scientists were looking for effects of what are called gravitational waves. These are waves of purely gravitational energy capable of stretching or squeezing the space-time continuum.

The inflationary epoch is thought to have set off gravitational waves rippling through the continuum. In the process, they etched their effects on the B-mode, visible today as a curling pattern in the magnetic field.

To find this, a team of radio-astronomers led by John Kovac from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics used the BICEP2 telescope from 2010 to 2012. It was equipped with a lens of aperture 26 cm, scanning an effective area of two to 10 times the width of the Moon.

Then, they used the different datasets they’d collected to subtract unwanted signals from one another until they were left with one that showed only the amount of curl. Prof. Kovac said in a statement, “Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today.”

The curl due to gravitational waves was confirmed with a statistical significance of 5.2 sigma — sufficient to claim evidence — but only in the part of the sky they mapped. The team has set a significance of 2.7 sigma for the rest of the sky, and future work will focus on strengthening this.

Scientists were also looking for a ratio called the tensor-to-scalar ratio. It denotes the amplitude of the gravitational waves. Its value has been found to be 0.20 plus or minus 0.05. Although theoretical predictions had pegged it between 0 and 0.3, scientists had expected it to be less than 0.2. The higher value means the ancient gravitational waves were more powerful than expected, and could explain why galaxies formed so rapidly after the inflation.

Now, astrophysicists from other observatories around the world will try to replicate BICEP2’s results.

It is notable that gravitational waves are a feature of the theories of relativity, and cosmic inflation is a feature of quantum mechanics. Thus, the BICEP2 results show that the two previously exclusive theories can be combined at a fundamental level. This throws open the door for physicists to explore a unified theory of nature in new light.

NASA searches for ideas to bring asteroids closer to earth

 

U.S. space agency NASA has announced a formal proposal worth $6 million for projects that would help robots and astronauts grab an asteroid from deep space and bring it closer to earth for further study.

In support of NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission — a key part of the agency’s stepping stone path to send humans to Mars — agency officials are seeking proposals for studies on advanced technology development.

NASA envisages spending up to $6 million on over 25 proposals this year.

The proposal should focus on technologies that can be used to identify potential targets like sending robotic spacecraft to capture the selected asteroid and put it in a stable orbit beyond the moon.

The technology should also help astronauts get to the space rock and bring back samples in the mid-2020s, NASA said in a statement.

“We are reaching out to seek new and innovative ideas as we extend the frontier of space exploration,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations.

“To reach Mars, we would rely on new technologies and advanced capabilities proven through the Asteroid Initiative. We are looking forward to exciting ideas from outside NASA as well to help realise that vision,” he added.

The proposals have to be submitted before May 5 and the space agency would reward the winners around July 1 for projects that would wrap up in six months.

According to Greg Williams, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for plans and policy, the selection process would build on a workshop that generated hundreds of ideas for asteroid exploration last year.

NASA is already supporting projects such as the Asteroid Data Hunter contest, which is offering $35,000 in awards over the next six months to citizen scientists who come up with improved algorithms for identifying asteroids.

Next year, the space agency would review mission concepts for redirecting an asteroid up to 10 metres wide — or breaking off a piece of a bigger asteroid and bringing it back.

Bad weather halts MH370 search

 

Bad weather has forced the suspension of the search for debris from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Heavy rain, gale force winds and low cloud made a search impracticable, said the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the search in the southern Indian Ocean.

Air and searches could resume on Wednesday.

Planes from five nations trawling a Lithuania-sized patch of ocean midway between Australia and Antarctica have spotted objects they are trying to locate in the 68,500 sqkm area, 2,500 kilometres south-west of Perth.

So far none of the objects spotted has been located.

The latest sightings — “a grey or green circular object and the second an orange rectangular object” — were spotted on Monday from an Australian Orion maritime surveillance plane.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said in its latest statement that all of the various sightings had been in the search area.

The area was plotted using computer modelling of where the plane would have run out of fuel if, as the Malaysians now believe, it flew south after doubling back during a March 8 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The US Navy, which has a surface-skimming P8 Poseidon, described as the world’s most sophisticated maritime patrol aircraft, in the search fleet, is deploying a special undersea device to help find the black box of the lost Boeing 777-200.

The towed pinger locator can identify the characteristic “ping” emitted by the flight recorder from an ocean depth of more than 6,000 metres, the US Defence Department said.

China hikes defence spending

China on Wednesday announced its biggest hike in military spending in three years, with its defence budget set to cross $ 130 billion in the coming year.Chinese military analysts explained the 12.2 per cent hike as driven by the need to counter a "high risk security environment" in the region, marked in recent months by rising territorial tensions with many neighbours.A draft budget report, which is expected to be approved during the week-long annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC) or Parliament, which opened here on Wednesday morning, proposed a 12.2 per cent hike in defence spending to 808.2 billion Yuan, or $132 billion.This reflected an $ 18 billion rise from the previous year, when the budget rose by 10.7 per cent, and the highest percentage increase since 2011, when spending was hiked by 12.7 per cent.

While Chinese officials said the increase was in keeping with the size of China's growing economy and in line with what most countries spend in terms of percentage of GDP, the 12.2 per cent hike is certain to stir the attention of the region, and particularly China's neighbours.China's spending now dwarfs that of most countries in the region, and is second only to the United States, which spends more than $ 600 billion on defence.Last month, India announced a 10 per cent hike in military spending during the interim budget. On account of the weakening rupee, however, India's effective defence spending in dollar terms actually fell from last year, down to $ 36.2 billion from $ 37.5 billion."There is a yawning gap emerging in the conventional capabilities between China and India," warned Brig. (Retd) Arun Sahgal, Director of the Forum for Strategic Initiative in New Delhi."This asymmetry is increasing by the day, and the fundamental point is that the Chinese, because of a strong economic position and a very definite plan, are focused on military modernisation".Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who presented the government's annual report to the NPC's opening session, vowed to carry out "coordinated planning for military preparedness in all scenarios" and to push the development of "new and high technology weapons and equipment". He said China would also enhance border, coastal and air defences and "place war preparations on a regular footing".At the same time, his work report said China would "advance neighbourhood diplomacy" and "speed up" infrastructure links with neighbours. Mr. Li specifically highlighted the on-going plans to build a Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) economic corridor, a "maritime silk road" linking Asia and the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and a corridor linking China and Pakistan as priorities.Chinese military analysts explained the defence hike as a response to China's challenges in the region, such as on-going territorial differences with Japan over East China Sea islands, and recent disputes in the South China Sea."In order to protect the country and safeguard regional peace and stability, China has to enhance its national defence," said Chen Zhou, a researcher with the People's Liberation Army's Academy of Military Sciences and a member of the NPC, adding that China was facing "increasing strategic pressure" with some countries in Asia "speeding up strategic adjustments and strengthening military alliances", in a reference to the U.S. "pivot"."The comparatively low level of input into national defence, coupled with a high-risk security environment, dictates that we must raise our defence budget on a moderate scale," he told the official Xinhua news agency.Asked about fears voiced by some countries in the region, such as Japan, about China's military spending, Qin Gang, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said the PLA was not made up of "boy scouts with spears"."Some foreigners always expect China to be a boy scout. In that way, how can we safeguard national security and world peace? Even as a scout grows up, his former dress and shoes will not fit anymore and thus he will have to change into bigger ones," he said.The spending hike will, nevertheless, likely raise concerns, analysts say, as the gulf in military capabilities continues to widen even as territorial disputes remain unresolved.Brig. (Retd) Sahgal said with the increased spending, China's "coercion index" vis-à-vis countries like India had increased."In India, unfortunately, the last decade has been a lost decade," he said. "The Chinese are now increasing their budget by the total Indian defence budget. In the past four years, there hasn't been a single purchase, or modernisation of the three services, while our equipment is getting depleted. What we are seeing," he added, "is that we are now getting out of their league".

Ukraine President gave in to protesters demands, deal signed

 

Yielding to hard Western pressure, Ukraine’s embattled President Viktor Yanukovych has agreed to call early presidential election, cede key powers to Parliament and form a coalition caretaker government. Ukrainian and Russian analysts described Mr Yanukovych’s decision as total surrender.

The Ukrainian leader made the announcement on his website after marathon talks with opposition leaders brokered by the Foreign Ministers of Germany, France and Poland. The talks, which began on Thursday, went through the night and resumed on Friday. Russia was represented at the talks by human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin.

The three opposition leaders, Arseny Yatsenyuk, Vitaly Klitschko and Oleh Tyahnibok, approved the deal after “consulting” protesters in the streets.

Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called the agreement “a good compromise,” but analysts said Mr Yanukovych merely accepted the opposition’s demands.

“What compromise are you talking about? Yanukovych has signed an act of capitulation,” wrote Vladimir Kornilov, a Ukrainian political scientist.

“The West has dictated its terms of capitulation to Yanukovych, who did not even try to resist,” said Vigen Akopyan, editor of Russia’s Regnum online news service.

Mr Yanukovych gave no timeline for the proposed steps, but Vladimir Oleynik, a senior lawmaker from the President’s Party of the Regions, said that within the next 48 hours the Parliament should vote on reverting to the 2004 Constitution, which took away from President and gave to Parliament the right to appoint Prime Minister and the cabinet. The Constitution was scrapped after Mr Yanukovych won presidential elections in 2010.

According to Mr Oleynik, a coalition government is to be formed within 10 days and new presidential elections will be held before the end of the year, about six months earlier than scheduled.

It was not immediately known whether radical protesters from the Right Sector group would accept the agreement between Mr Yanukovych and leaders of the Parliamentary opposition. The radicals wrecked a truce negotiated on Tuesday and unleashed deadly violence in Kiev.

Over the past three days 77 people have died and 580 have been wounded in clashes between protesters and police, according to Ukraine’s Health Ministry. The Interior Ministry said 16 police officers had been killed and 130 suffered gunshot wounds.

Late on Thursday the Ukrainian Parliament voted to call off an “anti-terrorist operation” the security forces had launched earlier this week to clear central Kiev from protesters. By Friday afternoon all riot police were withdrawn from the scene of recent fighting.

The agreement reached in Kiev is a setback for Moscow, which had been urging Mr Yanukovych to get tough with the protesters and do not let them “wipe their feet on the authorities like a doormat.”

Akash medium-range missile test-fired

India on Friday successfully test-fired its Akash medium-range surface-to-air missile from a defence base in Odisha.

The indigenously-developed missile, with a 27 km range and an effective ceiling of 15 km, was test-fired from the Integrated Test Range of Chandipur in the coastal district of Balasore, 230 km from Bhubaneswar.

“It was test fired by the scientists of (state-run missile system manufacturer) Bharat Dynamic Limited and (state run defence electronics company) Bharat Electronics for the armed forces,” test range director M.V.K.V. Prasad told IANS. “The test was successful,” he added.

The 700-kg all-weather missile can carry a 60-kg warhead at speeds of up to Mach 2.5. It can operate autonomously and simultaneously engage and neutralise different aerial targets.

It can be launched from static or mobile platforms, enabling flexible deployment by the armed forces.

Preparation are underway for a few more tests of the missile from the same base within next fortnight, Mr. Prasad said.

INS Arihant all set for sea trials

India’s first indigenously built nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, INS Arihant would be going to sea trials within “a few weeks or months” as its preliminary harbour acceptance trials are over and various systems, including nuclear propulsion, have proceeded satisfactorily and as per the time schedule.

The submarine would undergo sea trials, during which all the systems, including its ballistic missiles, would be tested before it is finally commissioned into the Indian Navy, Assistant Chief of Naval Staff Rear Admiral L.V.S. Babu, said here on Tuesday.

Incidentally, INS Arihant, which is the lead ship of India's Arihant-class of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, would also figure on the Indian Navy tableaux at this year’s Republic Day Parade.

The sub-surface ballistic nuclear missile (SSBN) submarine would be “indigenously designed, built, operationalised and maintained,” said Rear Admiral Babu, adding that “there were no hiccups in the progress of harbour trials” at Vishakhapatnam. Once the sea trials, which would test the capability of various systems in real deep sea scenario, are over the Navy would announce its arrival, he said, as it would be a “stabilising force in the Indian Ocean”.

Stating that “it is a fact that we (Indian Navy) would like to have more submarines”, the Rear Admiral denied that clearance for three SSBNs has been obtained. “That is our wish, it has not been cleared,” he said, adding that finance and infrastructure were major considerations.

He also made a mention of the Scorpene submarines, being developed at the Mazagaon docks, and said these are scheduled to be inducted from 2016. “We would be looking at inducting one submarine per year till we have six of them in the fleet.”

China building second aircraft carrier

A senior Communist Party official in northeastern China said that China was at work on a home-built aircraft carrier and had plans to operate a fleet of at least four of the vessels, a Hong Kong newspaper reported.

The comments by Wang Min, the party secretary of Liaoning Province, are an official indication of what outside observers have long predicted: that China’s commissioning of a refurbished aircraft carrier in 2012 was only a first step in its effort to develop its capacity to build and sail its own aircraft carriers.

According to the Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao, Mr. Wang said on Saturday that China’s second aircraft carrier was being built at a shipyard in the coastal city of Dalian and should be completed in six years. The newspaper has ties to the Communist Party, although it is not an official mouthpiece.

China’s first aircraft carrier, named Liaoning for the city where it was refurbished, was purchased from Ukraine and towed to China, where it underwent years of work before joining the Chinese fleet in 2012. Late last year, while on exercises in the South China Sea, a Chinese support vessel sailing with the Liaoning had a near collision with a United States Navy cruiser, the Cowpens, that had apparently been monitoring the Chinese flotilla.

The Ta Kung Pao report has since been removed from the newspaper’s website, and reposts carried on the websites of domestic Chinese media outlets have also been deleted.

Other mainland media sought to downplay Mr. Li’s statement. News of China’s aircraft carrier “isn’t worth fussing over,” Li Jie, a professor at the People’s Liberation Army’s Naval Military Studies Research Institute, wrote in Global Times, a newspaper run by the Communist Party’s People’s Daily Group.

Mr. Li argued that the United States, with 11 aircraft carriers, had attempted to play up China’s naval development as a threat. India, with two aircraft carriers and a third under construction, also has an advantage over China, he wrote. “We should confidently develop aircraft carriers and promptly respond to the outside world’s questions,” he wrote, “so that this ‘China threat theory’ won’t find a market in international society.”

Last year the United States Department of Defense predicted in its annual report on China’s military development that China would “likely build multiple aircraft carriers over the next decade,” with the first of those becoming operational before 2020.

INS Vikramaditya enters Indian Navy's area of operation

INS Vikramaditya

INS Vikramaditya and INS Viraat

 It was a sight to behold. As India’s newest aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya entered the Indian Navy’s area of operation in north western Arabian Sea, accompanied by three other vessels, it was rendezvoused — in Naval parlance RVed — with the Western Fleet that had gone all the way from Mumbai to receive it.

INS Vikramaditya, which was accompanied by INS Trikand, which is a Talwar class frigate, INS Delhi which is a Delhi class destroyer and INS Deepak, the fleet tanker, fired ceremonial guns to salute the flag of the fleet commander Rear Admiral Anand Chawla, who was leading the flotilla of the Western Fleet, that also comprised aircraft carrier INS Viraat.

The other ships besides INS Viraat which had gone to receive INS Vikramaditya included two Delhi class destroyers, three Trishul class stealth frigates, a Godavari class frigate and a couple of offshore vessels.

All this happened about 1200 nautical miles from the country's shores on New Year’s eve and thereafter all the aircraft carriers, frigates and destroyers together set sail for India.

INS Vikramaditya, which was commissioned into the Indian Navy on November 16 last at the North Russian shipyard of Sevmash at Severodvinsk, is now headed for its home port at Karwar in Karnataka where it is scheduled to reach in a week’s time.

Commanded by Captain Suraj Berry, INS Vikramaditya -- which took eight years to refurbish at the Russian yard -- would reach Karwar on completing a near 8500 nautical mile journey.

On reaching Karwar, the aircraft carrier would re-equip and prepare and get ready for the next phase which would be its integration with the air wing, comprising about 30 Mig 29K aircraft and six Kamov Ka-31 “Helix” reconnaissance and anti-submarine helicopters.

It would take around four to six months for the full integration of the aircraft carrier after which it will become the spearhead of the carrier battle group. During this period, the aircraft carrier would also be equipped with surface-to-air missile (SAM) and close-in weapon system (CIWS) to safeguard it from aerial attack.

At the time of commissioning of INS Vikramaditya Indian Navy Chief Admiral D.K. Joshi had indicated that Indian naval fighter pilots would be certified to carry out flying operations from the carrier deck within weeks of the carrier’s arrival in India.

While a batch of combat fliers from ‘Black Panther’ squadron has undertaken simulator training in Moscow, before the flying operations from the carrier deck, they are also scheduled to perfect take-off and landing on the shore-based test facility (SBTF) at INS Hansa in Goa.

Iran to work with Russia to stop strike on Syria

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country will press efforts to ward off military action by the U.S. and its allies against the Tehran-backed regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iranian state TV reported on Thursday.

The report said the remarks came late Wednesday during a phone conversation between Mr. Rouhani and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Rouhani was quoted as saying “military action will bring great costs for the region” and “it is necessary to apply all efforts to prevent it.”

According to the report, he said both Iran and Russia would work in “extensive cooperation” to prevent any military action against Syria. Rouhani also called such military action an “open violation” of international laws.

While condemning chemical weapons, Mr. Rouhani was quoted as saying, “Early judgment can be dangerous, before clarification” can be made of allegations that Syria used the weapons.

“Western countries have found some excuse to prepare the ground to weaken the stance of Syria in further talks” after the Syrian government has won the upper hand in confronting rebels, Mr. Rouhani said.

The president also predicted regional consequences for any military strike.

“Syria has a strategic and sensitive situation, and any sort of military invasion would lead to instability in the entire Middle East,” he said.

Russia’s war games catch West off guard

Russia’s unscheduled war games in the Black Sea that began on Thursday without prior notice have taken the West by surprise, with NATO calling on Moscow to show greater openness.

President Vladimir Putin issued a snap order to launch large-scale naval and air manoeuvres in the Black Sea at 4 a.m. on Thursday when he was on the way back from the BRICS summit in Durban, South Africa.

On Friday Mr. Putin watched sea landing operations as part of the surprise three-day drill that involves 36 warships, 20 aircraft and 7,000 troops.

The Kremlin said the main goal of the exercise was to check “combat readiness and coordination among the various branches of the Armed Forces”.

Russia’s unannounced military muscle flexing has caused unease in Brussels. The war games are being held in a strategic region within striking distance of several NATO countries and Georgia, with whom Russia fought a war in 2008.

“In future it would be useful to make our relations more predictable and ensure maximum transparency,” the Interfax news agency quoted NATO Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow as commenting on the Black Sea drill.

A ranking NATO diplomat told the Russian business daily Kommersant that even though Russia was not obliged to notify NATO of the war games, “partners should not act like this”.

Mr. Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said Russia was under no obligation to give advance warning of military exercises as long as they involved fewer than 7,000 ground troops.

Moreover, naval manoeuvres do not require any notification at all.

The current military drill is the second snap manoeuvre Russia has conducted this year after a break of 20 years.

Largest ever public cyber attack jams Internet

A squabble between a group fighting spam and a Dutch company that hosts websites said to be sending spam has escalated into one of the largest computer attacks on the Internet, causing widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure.

Millions of ordinary Internet users have experienced delays in services or could not reach a particular website for a short time.

However, for the Internet engineers who run the global network, the problem is more worrisome. The attacks are becoming increasingly powerful, and computer security experts worry that if they continue to escalate, people may not be able to reach basic Internet services, like e-mail and online banking.

The dispute started when the spam-fighting group, called Spamhaus, added the Dutch company Cyberbunker to its blacklist, which is used by e-mail providers to weed out spam.

Cyberbunker, named for its headquarters, a five-story former Nato bunker, offers hosting services to any website “except child porn and anything related to terrorism”, according to its website.

A spokesman for Spamhaus, which is based in Europe, said the attacks began March 19 but had not stopped the group from distributing its blacklist.

Patrick Gilmore, chief architect at Akamai Networks, a digital content provider, said the attacks, which are generated by swarms of computers called botnets, concentrate data streams that are larger than the Internet connections of entire countries. He likened the technique, which uses a long-known flaw in the Internet’s basic plumbing, to using a machine gun to spray an entire crowd when the intent is to kill one person.

The attacks were first mentioned publicly last week by Cloudflare, an Internet security firm in Silicon Valley that was trying to defend against the attacks and as a result became a target.

“These things are essentially like nuclear bombs,” said Matthew Prince, chief executive of Cloudflare. “It’s so easy to cause so much damage.”

The so-called denial of service, or DDoS, attacks have reached previously unknown magnitudes, growing to a data stream of 300 billion bits per second. “It is a real number,” said Mr. Gilmore. “It is the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet.”

Spamhaus, one of the most prominent groups tracking spammers on the Internet, uses volunteers to identify spammers and has been described as a vigilante group.

In the past, blacklisted sites have retaliated against Spamhaus with denial-of-service attacks, in which they flood Spamhaus with traffic requests from personal computers until it falls offline. But in recent weeks, the attackers hit back with a far more powerful strike that exploited Internet’s core infrastructure, called the Domain Name System, or DNS.

That system functions like a telephone switchboard for the Internet. It translates the names of websites like Facebook.com or Google.com into a string of numbers that the Internet’s underlying technology can understand. Millions of computer servers around the world perform the actual translation.

In the latest incident, attackers sent messages, masquerading as ones coming from Spamhaus, to those machines, which were then amplified drastically by the servers, causing torrents of data to be aimed back at the Spamhaus computers.

When Spamhaus requested aid from Cloudflare, the attackers began to focus their digital ire on the companies that provide data connections for both Spamhaus and Cloudflare.

Questioned about the attacks, Sven Olaf Kamphuis, an Internet activist who said he was a spokesman for the attackers, said in an online message, “We are aware that this is one of the largest DDoS attacks the world had publicly seen.”

Mr. Kamphuis said Cyberbunker was retaliating against Spamhaus for “abusing their influence”. “Nobody ever deputised Spamhaus to determine what goes and does not go on the Internet,” said Mr. Kamphuis. “They worked themselves into that position by pretending to fight spam.”

A typical denial of service attack tends to affect only a small number of networks. But in the case of a Domain Name System flood attack, data packets are aimed at the victim from servers all over the world. Such attacks cannot easily be stopped, computer security experts say, because those servers cannot be shut off without halting the Internet.

Russia to re-establish permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean

 

Russia will re-establish its permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean, more than two decades after it withdrew from the region, Russian military sources said.

A naval task force, drawn from the Black Sea Fleet, will be deployed for round-the-year duty in the Mediterranean in 2015, a General Staff official told Russian news agencies on Monday.

“The force will accomplish scheduled and urgent missions on the Mediterranean theatre of operations, including deterrence of threats to Russian national and military security originating from that region,” the military official said.

The deployment of a new naval task force was practised during the largest war games of Russia’s three naval fleets in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean last month, he added.

The Mediterranean task force will be modelled on a Soviet Navy group that used to patrol the region during the Cold War, the official revealed.

The Fifth Operation Squadron of the Soviet Navy was set up in the Mediterranean in 1967, shortly after the six-day Arab-Israeli war. Russian historians believe the move deterred the United States from using its Sixth Fleet on the side of Israel.

The Fifth squadron, numbering up to 80 warships at its peak strength, was disbanded in 1992.

Pope Benedict XVI resigns

Pope Benedict XVI pronounced at the Vatican on Monday said he had decided to resign. This is the first time a Pope has decided to step down in 600 years. He said he was resigning in “full freedom” ,which is necessary ,and would devote the rest of his life to prayer. The Pope said he no longer had “the strength of body or mind” to “fully serve the Petrine Ministry.

Pope Benedict XVI, formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger before he assumed Pontifical office on 19 April 2005, made the declaration in Latin, during a consistory in the Vatican.

The Holy See’s spokesperson, Father Federico Lombardi said the resignation would go into effect at the end of the month. “The Pope has announced he will give up his ministry at 8 pm on the 28th of February. That is when the period known as “sede vacante” or the Empty Chair will commence”. The next Pope will be elected before Easter which this year falls on March 31. The voting could well begin during Holy Week which begins on March 24.

Israel threatens to send Gaza back to Middle Ages

Israel struck Gaza enclave with a barrage of missiles from land and sea for a fifth day on Sunday, killing at least three children, targeting media houses.At least eight Palestinian journalists were injured when air raids hit buildings housing local media offices. One of the injured Palestinian journalists had to have a leg amputated. Medics said three children were killed, one of them as young as 18 months old, when a refugee camp in central Gaza became the target of Israeli attacks. The attacks also wounded 12 people. Even as media reports said efforts for a ceasefire were on, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel was ready to "significantly expand" its operation in Gaza. Israel's Interior Minister went a step ahead when he said "the goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages".It said that its navy had also shelled Gaza. Egypt, meanwhile, stepped up efforts to achieve a truce as it hosted Palestinian and Israeli officials for ceasefire talks. French diplomat Fabius meanwhile termed it "an emergency situation" and pleaded that "war must be avoided". While US President Barack Obama declared that he respects Israel's right to defend itself, British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned Israel that a ground assault by it may cost it international support. Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi also warned that an Israeli ground invasion would have "serious repercussions". He said Egypt would never accept it "and neither will the free world".  

Cautious Response From China Concerning Agni V

China on Thursday said the two countries are not rivals and enjoy “sound” relations though the sources in the Chinese establishment feel that the launch can give rise to another round of arms race in the region.

“China has taken note of reports on India’s missile launch. The two countries have sound relationship.

“During the (recently held) BRICS meeting (in Delhi) the leadership had consensus to take the relationship further and to push forward bilateral strategic cooperative partnership,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a media briefing in Beijing when asked about the launch.

In Delhi, the diplomatic sources in the Chinese embassy said the “Agni-V launch can give rise to another round of arms race in this part of the world.”

Asked whether China was concerned as most of the country would come under the Agni’s range, Mr. Liu said in Beijing that “both the countries are emerging powers. We are not rivals. We are cooperative partners. We should cherish the hard earned momentum of cooperation.”

To another question whether it would affect the regional stability, he said “we hope Asian countries can contribute to peace and stability.”

However, China’s state-run Global Times came out with a strong editorial criticising the launch, claiming that the Chinese nuclear power is more “stronger and reliable” and New Delhi has “no chance” to catch up.