Russia has sent advanced antiship cruise missiles to Syria, a move that illustrates the depth of its support for the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad, American officials said Thursday. - Russia has previously provided a version of the missiles, called Yakhonts, to Syria. But those delivered recently are outfitted with an advanced radar that makes them more effective, according to American officials who are familiar with classified intelligence reports and would only discuss the shipment on the basis of anonymity. Unlike Scud and other longer-range surface-to-surface missiles that the Assad government has used against opposition forces, the Yakhont antiship missile system provides the Syrian military a formidable weapon to counter any effort by international forces to reinforce Syrian opposition fighters by imposing a naval embargo, establishing a no-fly zone or carrying out limited airstrikes.

Times of Israel: Netanyahu to Putin: ‘Your missile sales to Assad could trigger war’

The Israeli military says its troops have shot at a target inside Syria, after gunfire from Damascus hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. - The military said in a Tuesday statement that the gunfire from Damascus damaged a military vehicle without causing any injuries. The statement added that the Israeli soldiers “returned precise fire.” Tel Aviv has recently boosted military activities in the occupied Golan Heights, where clashes between Syrian forces and foreign-sponsored militants have spiked dramatically in recent weeks.

PressTV: Syria seizes Israeli army vehicle used by insurgents in al-Qusayr

The Daily Star: Israeli unit crosses technical fence in Ghajar - GHAJAR, Lebanon: An Israeli army unit crossed the technical fence just south of the occupied village of Ghajar at dawn Monday, without passing the Blue Line [entering through Syria instead], to a road dug by Israelis by the eastern bank of the Wazzani River. The crossover comes two months after three Israeli bulldozers backed by tanks and armored vehicles crossed the same fence to dig the road that runs parallel to the river. The Israeli unit consisting of 10 army personnel stayed within the area around the makeshift road for a short while, positioning themselves behind rocks and mounds of earth along the Wazzani River.

A new video shows foreign-backed militants in Syria whipping two men for violating marriage procedures based on their interpretation of Islam. - The incident has occurred in the northwestern city of Saraqeb in Idlib Province, where a court formed by the militants issued a verdict to flog the men - the husband and father of a local woman. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Salafi militants in Syria have conducted similar acts in over two years of turmoil in the country. They say their own interpretation is the only correct way of implementing the rules of Islam. Unrest has gripped Syria since March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

Just months after a study was published showing that two Monsanto products, a genetically modified (GM) maize and Roundup herbicide, damaged the health of rats, the journal that published the study appointed a former Monsanto scientist to decide which papers on GM foods and crops should be published, a new article reveals. - Monsanto and GM foods suffered a storm of bad publicity after a study published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) in September 2012 reported that a GM corn and Roundup caused organ damage and increased rates of tumors and premature death in rats. But in early 2013 Richard E. Goodman, a former Monsanto researcher with close ties to the biotech industry, joined the senior editorial staff of FCT. Goodman was given the specially created position of associate editor for biotechnology.

A massive tornado has ripped through part of the Central US state of Oklahoma, near its Oklahoma City capital, killing 91 so far, including many elementary school children, and leaving a trail of devastation with winds of up to 200 miles (320 km) per hour.

The killer tornado struck the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore Monday afternoon, flattening homes, two schools and a hospital, leaving at least 120 injured with numerous people reported missing. According to the National Weather Service, the dangerous storm system remains a threat to as many as 10 more US states as more twisters are expected to emerge from it. While rescue and emergency workers searched for more survivors through the rubble of an elementary school that was directly hit by the tornado in Moore, Oklahoma state authorities confirmed 91 deaths on Monday, a figure that is still expected to climb.

Gawker: Mile-Wide Tornado Hits Oklahoma City Suburb, Killing at Least 51 - VIDEOS
Niles Williamson: Devastating tornado kills at least 91 in Oklahoma City

The journalism world has been rightly outraged by the Justice Department dragging the Associated Press (and now a Fox News reporter) into one of its sprawling leak investigations. As we wrote last week, by obtaining the call records of twenty AP phone lines, “the Justice Department has struck a terrible blow against the freedom of the press and the ability of reporters to investigate and report the news." But there are several other important lessons that this scandal can teach us besides how important free and uninhibited newsgathering is to the public’s right to know.

Ed Hightower: New revelations of US government spying on the press

Bruce Schneier: I'm going to start with three data points. One: Some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the U.S. government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks. Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSec hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up. And three: Paula Broadwell, who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus, similarly took extensive precautions to hide her identity. She never logged in to her anonymous e-mail service from her home network. Instead, she used hotel and other public networks when she e-mailed him. The FBI correlated hotel registration data from several different hotels -- and hers was the common name. - The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time.

I'm Being Followed: How Google—and 104 Other Companies—Are Tracking Me on the Web

Sister Teresa Forcades is one of Catalonia's foremost political figures, but uniquely for a faith-led figure in Spain, her ideology is feminist and left-wing. Against a backdrop of continued economic contraction and austerity, she spoke to the Guardian about the need for an alternative to capitalism and criticised the misogyny of the Catholic church