Israel ultimatum: Stop the missiles by Saturday night. Hamas leader in Tehran

Mahmoud A-Zahar of Hamas welcomed in Tehran

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

After five days of non-stop missile fire on a dozen towns and villages, Israel Thursday night, March 15, gave Egypt and Hamas two days to halt the shooting or else the Israeli Defense Forces would go into action against Gaza. debkafile’s military sources report that neither Egypt nor Hamas can be expected to go up against the missile shooters now.  The attacks have now been taken over from Jihad Islami by a small group of Salafi Palestinians calling itself Haraka Muhaheddin, which belongs to Jalalat, the al Qaeda roof organization in the Gaza Strip.

Most of the missiles are now coming from the Salafi concentrations in the southern part of the enclave –targeting Beersheba and Netivot Thursday morning and as night fell aimed at Ashdod, Ashkelon, Shear Hanegev and the Eshkol region. The firing escalated after Israel laid down its ultimatum

Egypt and Hamas don’t know exactly who is giving Haraka the missiles, except that they are smuggled from Sinai through tunnels managed by Iranian intelligence agents in conjunction with local al Qaeda networks.

It is highly unlikely that Hamas will venture to lay hands on these Salafi terrorists at a time when one of its top officials in Gaza, Mahmoud A-Zahar, is visiting Tehran for talks with Iranian leaders who are keen to keep the missile assaults going.

His visit marks the Hamas fundamentalists’ return to the Iranian fold - that is if they ever really left it. This, Israeli strategists have chosen to ignore and are treating Hamas as a non-participant in the missile offensive and available to help Cairo bring the terrorists to accept a ceasefire.

The sequence of events leading up to this week’s violence points to the opposite conclusion and, therefore, the probable escalation of the violence rather than a truce.

Five days before the missile fire began, on March 5, a Hamas Deputy Politburo Chief Mousa Abu Marzouk and Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah met in Beirut and finalized tactics for building up tensions on Israel’s borders.

Monday, March 12, Mahmoud A-Zahar was in Cairo to wind up Gaza ceasefire terms with Egyptian officials when, to their astonishment, instead of returning to Gaza, he boarded a plane to Tehran. He is still there.

And so, while the Egyptians try and reach some sort of accommodation with Hamas for a truce, Hamas itself is in close communion with the Iranians, who want to see the Israeli military stuck in a messy a showdown with the Palestinian Salafis.

Eye in the sky

By YAAKOV KATZ

Sky Sapience unveils hovering UAV for surveillance.

After establishing a name as a world leader in the development of unmanned drones, Israeli companies are expanding to a new field – tethered hovering platforms.

Earlier this month, a new Israeli company called Sky Sapience unveiled the Hovermast, an unmanned platform that can hover in one place for extended periods and provide real-time surveillance.

Equipped with four thrusters and a central fan for lift and stabilization, the Hovermast lands without additional recovery systems and comes packed into a small container that can be installed on the roof of a vehicle.

With the push of a button, the container opens, and HoverMast extends up to 50 meters high within 15 seconds.

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Gabriel Shachor, a former senior officer in the air force, together with a group of engineers, founded Sky Sapience. It works with another Israeli company called Controp, which manufactures high-quality sensors that can be installed on the Hovermast for various missions.

Shachor said Hovermast was unique in that even people who were not trained to operate unmanned aerial vehicles could use it easily. The system is suitable for border control and security of sensitive installations, he said.

“Anyone can use the system and receive immediate surveillance, all with the press of a button,” he said, adding that the Hovermast could receive its power directly from the vehicle – meaning that as long as the vehicle has fuel and is running, the Hovermast will work.

The introduction of the new device comes a few months after Israel Aerospace Industries revealed the Electric Tethered Observation Platform (ETOP), a similar hovering unmanned platform.

The ETOP is slightly larger than the Hovermast and can carry a payload of about 20 kg. in comparison to the Hovermast’s 9 kg.

UK could lose coveted AAA rating, warns Fitch

Britain's hopes of retaining its prized triple-A credit rating were dealt a blow last night after Fitch said the country was more likely than not to be downgraded.

By Jonathan Sibun, Louise Armitstead

In a major setback for George Osborne ahead of next week’s Budget, Fitch said the “risks and uncertainty” surrounding the Coalition’s debt reduction plans were “material”.

Fitch said it regarded the Government’s fiscal plans as “credible”, but said that its decision to take a negative outlook reflected “the very limited fiscal space to absorb further adverse economic shocks in light of such elevated debt levels and a potentially weaker than currently forecast economic recovery”.

The credit rating agency put a slightly greater than one in two chance on a downgrade for the UK over the next two years.

It cited the eurozone crisis – which “is not resolved and could once more intensify” – and the backdrop of the UK’s “still large” structural budget deficit and its “high and rising” government debt as the main drivers.

The move comes after rival agency Moody’s last month likewise put Britain’s top-notch rating on a negative outlook.

The Treasury said the decision by Fitch to follow suit was a lesson to anyone hoping for giveaways in next week’s Budget.

Fitch explicitly warned that “discretionary fiscal easing” - a relaxation of the Government’s austerity efforts - would likely prompt a rating downgrade.

“A week from the Budget this is a reminder of why it is essential Britain sticks to its plans to deal with its debts,” a Treasury spokesman said.

“This is just another warning to anyone who believes there can be deficit-financed giveaways.”

Howard Archer, UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said Fitch had heaped further pressure on the Chancellor to stick to his plans.

“We believe that the UK is more likely than not to be able to retain its AAA rating, as we believe sustainable modest growth will develop from the second half of 2012 and the government will stick to its fiscal austerity plans,” he said. “But there are undeniably appreciable risks to this outlook, some of which are outside the UK’s control.”

The move by Fitch represented a second major blow for the Chancellor after the UK’s leading pension group criticised plans to issue 100-year gilts and warned that most of its members will not buy them.

The National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) said the proposed term was “too long” and not an attractive investment proposition.

Conspiracy theories claim mysterious planet-sized 'Death Star' has been captured on video as it 'refuels' at the surface of the sun

Telescope images of the sun show what appears to be a planet-size dark object extending a 'hose' towards the sun - before it's engulfed by light from the sun, and flies off into space

By Rob Waugh

An orbiting Nasa space telescope captured a dark, planet-sized object flying close to the sun on Monday - and extending what looks like a refueling tube into the star's surface.

The black, Death Star-like, orb is briefly engulfed in light from the sun, then flies off into space.
A video edited from the Solar Dynamics Observatory's photos inspired a wave of speculation on YouTube.

Watch Video

Youtube user 'Sunsflare' captures the strange orb 'anchored' above the visible surface of the sun in photos from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory

The imagery was captured by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory and edited together by a YouTube user, Sunsflare, who challenged experts to explain the strange 'visitor.'

Naturally, the space agency has a rather more ordinary explanation for the strange, black orb.
It's not a visitor from another solar system - or a planet being born out of the surface of the sun, as others had speculated.

Instead, it's a solar 'prominence' or 'filament' - a feature extending out from the sun which forms over the course of a day, and can extend hundreds of thousands of miles into space.

Scientists are still puzzled as to why these features form. The 'dark' parts are material cooler than the surrounding solar matter.

C. Alex Young, a solar astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre said, in a reply to Sunsflare's video, 'Filaments appear to be dark because they're coolerin relation to what's in the background. When you look at it from the edge of the sun, what you see is this spherical object and you're actually looking down the tunnel.'

The video actually shows a solar 'prominence' - a little-understood feature which develops in the surface of the sun. The dark parts are actually cooler material which shows up black against the background

Nasa says, 'A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disc) is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface.

'Prominences are anchored to the Sun's surface and extend outwards into the Sun's hot outer atmosphere, called the corona.

'Scientists are still researching how and why prominences are formed.
'An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and bursts outward, releasing the plasma.

Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory frequently captures the phenomenon - although often as violent eruptions, rather than the eerie sphere of this week's activity.

‘It is not uncommon for prominence material to drain back to the surface as well as escape during an eruption,’ says Holly Gilbert a Goddard solar physicist.

‘Prominences are large structures, so once the magnetic fields supporting the mass are stretched out so that they are more vertical, it allows an easy path for some of the mass to drain back down.’

Solar prominences can take a huge number of forms, including huge eruptions like this (pictured),
which was captured by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory earlier this year

That's no moon: The Death Star space station from Star Wars. Nasa has reassured sun watchers that the Imperial fleet's space station has not visited our solar system

Israel develops its own bunker buster

DEBKAfile Special Report

Israel has developed an improved precision, bunker-burrowing weapon which Israeli Military Industries (IMI) unveiled on March 6. The 500-pound MPR-500 is an electro-optical (laser-guided) bomb that can penetrate double-reinforced concrete walls or floors without breaking apart.

The bomb was shown in action penetrating four reinforced concrete walls with fragmentation from the explosion limited to a radius of less than three meters.

The new weapon is designed as an upgrade for the US Mk82 in Israel Air Force stocks. “The lethality, precision… and relatively low weight of the new weapon,” say its manufacturers, “enable its use against multiple targets in a single pass.”

After blowing the first hole in the targeted underground site, the next bombs continue to extend and deepen it.

The MPR-500 bridges an operational gap between the 250-pound US GBU-39 small-diameter bomb, 1,000 of which were approved for sale to Israel and the 5,000-pound GBU-28 American super-bunker buster. debkafile notes: The IMI’s presentation of the MPR-500 took place at the height of Israel’s argument with the Obama administration over the need for a near-term strike on Iran’s nuclear sites – especially those Tehran is busy transferring to fortified underground bunkers.

It attracted little attention because on the same day, Iran was invited by the Six Powers for nuclear negotiations, Tehran sent out its own invitation to UN nuclear inspectors to visit the suspect military site of Parchin (about which Iran has been hedging since) and the British cabinet received a top-secret intelligence briefing on the likelihood of an Israeli attack.

The Israeli Air Force is also reported to be planning to enlarge its Boeing-707 based aerial refueling tanker fleet, another key component in Israel’s ability to carry out an aerial strike against a target as distant as Iran. The expanded tanker fleet, by providing nearly 2 million pounds of fuel, would allow dozens of Israel F-15 and F-16 warplanes to carry more weapons on this mission.

Israeli officials have consistently challenged the claims of some experts that the lack the military capacity for a successful strike against Iran’s nuclear facilties.