Israel’s defense chief said Tuesday a Russian plan to supply sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to Syria was a “threat” and signaled that Israel is prepared to use force to stop the delivery. - The warning by Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon ratcheted up tensions with Moscow over the planned sale of S-300 air-defense missiles to Syria. Earlier in the day, a top Russian official said his government remained committed to the deal. Israel has been lobbying Moscow to halt the sale, fearing the missiles would upset the balance of power in the region and could slip into the hands of hostile groups, including the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, a close ally of the Syrian regime. Israel has carried out several airstrikes in Syria in recent months that are believed to have destroyed weapons shipments bound for Hezbollah. Israel has not confirmed carrying out the attacks. The delivery of the Russian missiles to Syria could limit the Israeli air force’s ability to act. It is not clear whether Israeli warplanes entered Syrian airspace in these attacks.

The designs for more than two dozen major weapons systems used by the United States military have fallen into the hands of the Chinese, US Department of Defense officials say. - Blueprints for the Pentagon’s most advanced weaponry, including the Black Hawk helicopter and the brand new Littoral Combat Ship used by the Navy, have all been compromised, the Defense Science Board claims in a new confidential report. The Washington Post acknowledged late Monday that they have seen a copy of the report and confirmed that the Chinese now have the know-how to emulate some of the Pentagon’s most sophisticated programs.

“This is billions of dollars of combat advantage for China,” a senior military official not authorized to speak on the record told Post reporters. “They’ve just saved themselves 25 years of research and development.” “It’s nuts,” the source said of the report.

A U.S. Air Force F-15 fighter crashed off the southern Japan island of Okinawa early Tuesday after the aircraft developed problems in flight. The pilot ejected and was recovered safely. - The F-15, flying out of Kadena Air Base, went down in the Pacific about 115 kilometers (70 miles) east of Okinawa, the military said in a statement. Lt. Col. David Honchul, the chief spokesman for the U.S. Forces, Japan, said the pilot was recovered safely after a search by U.S. and Japanese rescue crews. After he ejected from the plane the pilot remained in contact with the rescuers. He was rescued by a Japanese air force helicopter.

Bill Maher is taken apart by Glenn Greenwald for trying to absolve the US from any responsibility for the mass slaughter and destruction in Muslim countries, blaming it on Islamic fundamentalism, as if the Afghanistan and Iraq wars never happened, as if the US wasn't pushing for more war in Iran, as if it isn't intervening in Somalia and Yemen.

The interactive below is the fullest research to date on the extent of CIA rendition flights of terrorist suspects. It's the result of three years of research by The Rendition Project, a collaboration between academics at Kent and Kingston universities and the NGO Reprieve. It includes more than 11,000 rows of data on confirmed and suspected rendition flights, and other flights from related carriers. It should be used in conjunction with the notes linked below.

Palestinian sources say the Israeli regime has supplied Gaza hospitals with a potentially killer gas to be used for anesthetic purposes, Press TV reports. The Ministry of Health in Gaza said Israel, which is the sole supplier of nitrous oxide gas to Gaza hospitals, gave them carbon dioxide gas posing as nitrous oxide. Four patients have died after inhaling carbon dioxide instead of nitrous oxide during surgical operations.

Rep. Ron Paul: The president will continue and even expand drone attacks overseas because they are “less deadly” than ground invasions. He promises to be more careful in the future. He is entertaining the introduction of “kill courts” which will meet in secret to decide who is to be executed without trial or charge. He promises these will have sufficient oversight. He will seek a new and updated Authorization for the Use of Military Force to expand his legal authority to wage war wherever and whenever he wants. He promises it will one day be repealed. He will continue to indefinitely detain at Guantanamo individuals who have been neither charged nor convicted of any crime, and who cannot even be tried because they were tortured and thus the evidence is tainted. He promises to “commit to a process of closing GTMO.” The speech speaks of more war and more killing and more interventionism all masked in the language of withdrawal.

A friend of mine Scotty has been arrested with a $50,000 bail for simply investigating Newtown. This is concrete evidence that they have a lot to hide. We will be doing everything we can to spread the message and free Scotty! More information will come as it happens.

The shocking minutes relating to President Putin’s meeting this past week with US Secretary of State John Kerry reveal the Russian leaders “extreme outrage” over the Obama regimes continued protection of global seed and plant bio-genetic giants Syngenta and Monsanto in the face of a growing “bee apocalypse” that the Kremlin warns “will most certainly” lead to world war. According to these minutes, released in the Kremlin today by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation (MNRE), Putin was so incensed over the Obama regimes refusal to discuss this grave matter that he refused for three hours to even meet with Kerry, who had traveled to Moscow on a scheduled diplomatic mission, but then relented so as to not cause an even greater rift between these two nations. At the center of this dispute between Russia and the US, this MNRE report says, is the “undisputed evidence” that a class of neuro-active insecticides chemically related to nicotine, known as neonicotinoids, are destroying our planets bee population, and which if left unchecked could destroy our world’s ability to grow enough food to feed its population.

Russia Today: March against Monsanto: Rallying for our future

On Monday the foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) met in Brussels and agreed not to renew the arms embargo against Syria. This will allow each European country to directly arm the Syrian opposition fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which was previously forbidden under the terms of a one-year EU embargo which is about to expire on Friday. Europe’s former colonial powers in the Middle East, Britain and France, are leading the offensive to directly arm the "Syrian" "rebels".

PressTV: Russia slams EU's lifting of arms ban on Syria militants
SANA: CSTO Member Countries Oppose Illegitimate Attempts to Arm Opposition
PressTV: EU arms embargo on Syria militants over: Hague
PressTV: Hague: UK govt. ready to go it alone on arming terrorists in Syria
Russia Today: McCain sneaks into Syria, meets "rebels"
PressTV: Syria militants ask American senator for US targeted strikes on Hezbollah