Jerusalem News (9 March, 2014, 7 Adar-2, 5774)
Contents:
1. China Expands Strategic Presence in Israel
Spending Targets High-Tech, Industry, Infrastructure
2. Mark Williams: Western Powers and Israeli Co-ordinations over actions in Syria
3. Arctic getting darker, Earth warmer
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1. China Expands Strategic Presence in Israel
Spending Targets High-Tech, Industry, Infrastructure
Mar. 1, 2014 - 11:20AMÂ Â |Â Â By BARBARA OPALL-ROME
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140301/DEFREG04/303010021/China-Expands-Strategic-Presence-Israel
Extracts:
TEL AVIV Â China is building a strategic presence in Israel through a
growing portfolio of holdings in national infrastructure, high-tech startups
and core industries.
With state financing, surging investment and the support of the Israeli
government, Chinese public institutions and private investors are acquiring
control of key industries and gaining unprecedented access to Israeli
technology, innovation and know-how.
Lured by China's vast market and diplomatic clout with its UN Security
Council seat, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has assigned top
priority to expanding links with Beijing.
'Our strengths complement one another. China has massive industrial and
global reach. Israel has expertise in every area of high-tech,' Netanyahu
said at a joint press conference in Jerusalem with Chinese Foreign Minister
Wang Yi.
China is a lead contender for a megaproject to connect the Mediterranean
coast to the Red Sea by high-speed rail with its proposal to build, operate
and transfer the network with significant state financing.
Estimated to exceed US $8 billion, the twin-track railway would traverse
tunnels and bridges, with a direct stop in Beersheba, the planned epicenter
for Cyber and intelligence.
An Israeli government decision is expected by the end of the year. If tapped
for the job, it will fortify Beijing's footprint here for decades as a
strategic alternative to the Suez Canal.
Netanyahu views the so-called Red-Med project as a way to strengthen
Sino-Israeli ties, given Beijing's heavy reliance on sea routes.
'A significant portion of [Chinese shipping] passes through the Suez Canal,
and we are building a valve in the form of a train,' Netanyahu said in a
late January conference address here.
Growing Portfolio
Officials here say China is rapidly replacing Europe as the second leading
source of capital fueling Israel's high-tech sector.
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2. Mark Williams: Western Powers and Israeli Co-ordinations over actions in Syria
Subject: The Current Situation In Syria & Israel
Shalom Yair
According to this report it looks like Israel and the West
might be working more closely together than most people realise
http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/siege-of-syrian-arms-depot-exposes-chemical-weapons-fears#full
In a tense four-hour period on Tuesday night last week, rebels involved
in the assault, Â including Jabhat Al Nusra, were warned by by officials
in the command centre that Israeli jets were on standby to bomb a
bunker on which they were advancing, less than 8km from the border with
Israel.
Accounts of the event were given by three different sources, familiar
with the situation around Tal Al Jabiyeh and with the workings of the
international command centre.
Jordan denies the existence of the international operations command
centre, which monitors the Syria conflict and oversees the distribution
of weapons and funding to allied rebel units fighting against forces
loyal to Mr Al Assad.
None of the Western or Arab states that have intelligence and military
staff working at the MOC has publicly acknowledged it, but the centre’s
existence has become an open secret.
The night of Tuesday, February 25, appears to have been one of the
command centre’s most fraught periods, as a sense of panic set in at
the prospect of an Al Qaeda faction getting its hands on the weapons
stockpile.
The command centre has not intervened in this way when other regime
storage facilities in Deraa province have been overrun, and has been
content to let the rebels share out any weapons they capture.
This time, however, as fighting around the Tal Al Jabiyeh facility
raged and the prospect of it falling into rebel hands came closer to
reality, the command centre bluntly demanded guarantees from rebel
forces that they hand over to it any weapons stored in a white,
reinforced concrete bunker with thick metal, electrically operated
shutters blocking its east facing entrance.
Rebels were told if they failed to give that guarantee, an Israeli
airstrike would immediately be called in on the area to destroy the
entire compound and everything in it.
I've no idea how reliable the report is, but it does seem plausible.
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3. Arctic getting darker, Earth warmer
http://www.news.com.au/world/breaking-news/arctic-getting-darker-earth-warmer/story-e6frfkui-1226830216599
 February 18, 2014 9:45AM
Extracts:
THE Arctic isn't nearly as bright and white as it used to be because of more ice melting in the ocean, and that's turning out to be a global problem, a new study says.
With more dark, open water in the summer, less of the sun's heat is reflected back into space. So the entire Earth is absorbing more heat than expected, according to a study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
That extra absorbed energy is so big that it measures about one-quarter of the entire heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide, said the study's lead author, Ian Eisenman, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.
The Arctic grew eight per cent darker between 1979 and 2011, Eisenman found, measuring how much sunlight is reflected back into space.
"Basically, it means more warming," Eisenman said in an interview.
The North Pole region is an ocean that mostly is crusted at the top with ice that shrinks in the summer and grows back in the autumn.
At its peak melt in September, the ice has shrunk on average by nearly 35,000 square miles (90,650 sq kilometres) - about the size of the US state of Maine - per year since 1979.
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