MFS -The Other News - What the main papers don't say.

  Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity situation Indonesia 5.7 - 5.5 ; Solomon Islands 5.2 !More info here.

• Andrew Breitbart At CPAC, “I Have Videos” of Obama From His College Day.(TT).Andrew Breitbart took the podium at CPAC Friday afternoon, introduced to the stage with Rage Against The Machine’s Guerilla Radio, and revealed to the audience he had “videos” of Barack Obama from his college days. “I have videos, this election we’re going to vet him,” Breitbart disclosed to raucous applause. “We are going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008.”Read the full story here.

• Voices of Opposition Speak Out Against Obama’s Contraception Mandate ‘Accommodation’.(Heritage).That’s the near-unanimous response to President Obama’s supposed “accommodation” offered to those who objected to Obamacare’s mandate that religious institutions pay for contraceptive products and services—including abortion-inducing drugs.That mandate — which tramples heavily on religious liberties — drew tremendous fire across the board, from Christians and Jews alike, drowning the President in a political maelstrom of his own design. And though today the President sought to calm that storm with a “compromise,” the voices of opposition are as strong as ever because, quite simply, it doesn’t remedy the moral and religious liberty objections to this mandate, and as a practical matter, it simply doesn’t work.Here’s a roundup of the reactions:Former Vatican Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, Princeton Prof. Robert George, Notre Dame Law Prof. Carter Snead, Catholic University of America President John Garvey, and EPPC Fellow Yuval Levin wrote: This so-called “accommodation” changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy. It is certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services…It is morally obtuse for the administration to suggest (as it does) that this is a meaningful accommodation of religious liberty because the insurance company will be the one to inform the employee that she is entitled to the embryo-destroying “five day after pill” pursuant to the insurance contract purchased by the religious employer. It does not matter who explains the terms of the policy purchased by the religiously affiliated or observant employer. What matters is what services the policy covers.The Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty noted: It’s not like President Obama has seen the light and is now committed to protecting conscience; he’s trying to, as the New York Times puts it, “shore up support among wavering Democrats, who have also expressed doubt about the rule, along with more liberal religious organizations and charities, who oppose the rule but not as vehemently as the Catholic leadership.”Pro-Life Caucus Chairman Chris Smith weighed in:The so-called new policy is the discredited old policy, dressed up to look like something else. It remains a serious violation of religious freedom. Only the most naïve or gullible would accept this as a change in policy.The newest iteration of Obama’s coercion rule utterly fails because it still forces religious employers and employees who have moral objections to paying for abortion inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception to pay for these things, because it is still the employers who buy the coverage for their employees.Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said: This ObamaCare rule still tramples on Americans’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion. It’s a fig leaf, not a compromise. Whether they are affiliated with a church or not, employers will still be forced to pay an insurance company for coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs.This is not just a problem for church-affiliated hospitals and charities. Under these rules, a small business owner with religious objections to abortion-inducing drugs and contraception must either violate his religious beliefs or violate the law.”And the Alliance Defense Fund wrote:The Obama administration’s rule change doesn’t change anything. Employees will still pay for this coverage. Through this sleight of hand, the administration is forcing indirectly what it can’t do directly. It is still forcing people of faith to subsidize practices and treatments that violate their values, their morals, and their religious beliefs. What’s next? Will the administration force Jewish schools to serve pork because it’s ‘good’ for Jewish students? When you take religious liberty from a few, you take religious liberty from all.The responses go on and on, but perhaps words laid down before the President even made his announcement sum it up best. Archbishop Donald Wuerl, Chuck Colson, and Meir Soloveichik joined forces in the Wall Street Journal this morning to warn of the common peril posed by Obamacare’s mandate for their faith communities: Stories involving a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew typically end with a punch line. We wish that were the case here, but what brings us together is no laughing matter: the threat now posed by government policy to that basic human freedom, religious liberty.…[U]nder no circumstances should people of faith violate their consciences and discard their most cherished religious beliefs in order to comply with a gravely unjust law.”.Hmmmm......An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. Read the full story here.

• Egypt bans British woman from leaving country over NGO row.(BM).CAIRO: Egyptian authorities barred a British woman from leaving Egypt on Friday, saying her name was on a list of foreigners working for NGOs in Egypt currently under investigation over receiving foreign funds and “interference in internal political affairs.”The British trainer at the National Democratic Institute (NDI) was stopped from the London-bound plane, however, she was not arrested, bit notified she is barred from traveling pending investigations.The Egyptian authorities barred another 6 Americans from traveling over the past two weeks for the same reason.Tensions have risen between the US, Europe and Egypt after an Egyptian investigation referred 43 NGO workers including 19 Americans and 27 others (European and Egyptian) to trial on charges of “illegally receiving foreign funds for political motives.”The 48-year-old woman is currently under investigation for the same case, and her travel ban was ordered by the Attorney General Abdel Maguid Mahmoud.On Saturday, the state-owned MENA news agency reported that the British Foreign Secretary announced that it is providing assistance to the British woman, which was charged of using illegal funds to stir unrest in Egypt.Read the full story here.

• Obama Gets Hit with Another Religious Freedom Lawsuit.(Heritage).The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has already filed two lawsuits challenging the Obamacare regulation that requires many religious employers to provide health insurance coverage for sterilization, contraception, and what many people believe are abortion-inducing drugs.Those lawsuits are on behalf of Belmont Abbey College (a Benedictine Catholic college in North Carolina) and Colorado Christian University (a nondenominational Christian university in Colorado).This morning, the Becket Fund sued the Obama Administration again, this time on behalf of Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), the Catholic television network that was started nearly 30 years ago by a cloistered nun named Mother Angelica in her monastery garage.According to its press release, the network objects to paying for—and refuses to pay for—“contraceptive services and for drugs that destroy human life”:“The federal government cannot force people to violate their religion like this,” said Mark Rienzi, Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund and a constitutional law professor at the Catholic University of America. “Mother Angelica founded EWTN to spread the teachings of the Catholic Church—not to betray them.”EWTN claims it is “the largest religious media network in the world” and transmits programming “24 hours a day to more than 148 million homes in 144 countries and territories.” If EWTN wasn’t already covering the Obama Administration’s “unprecedented” assault on religious freedom before, it seems likely that viewers will be provided ample coverage in the days to come.The Heritage Foundation has repeatedly criticized the Obamacare contraception mandate as a violation of religious freedom. Heritage has also pointed out that the Obama Administration’s actions, though entirely counter to the freedom of religion, “should not be surprising given the nature of the President’s health care law.” Religious freedom goes hand in hand with limited government and with freedom more generally. With intrusions of freedom as broad as those made by the Obamacare legislation, burdens on freedom of religious and moral conscience are likely to follow. Indeed, they have.Read the full story here.

• Southern Baptist leader: Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate.(BB).(LifeSiteNews.com) — One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans.Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com "we will not comply" with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD."We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just like Dr. King wrote his from the Birmingham jail," Dr. Land said.Dr. Land wrote an op-ed on Tuesday with Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy and research at ERLC, calling his fellow Southern Baptists and evangelical Christians throughout America to oppose any infringement on the First Amendment. "The Obama administration has declared war on religion and freedom of conscience," they wrote. "We consider this callous requirement by the Obama administration to be a clear violation of our nation's commitment to liberty of conscience and a flagrant violation of our constitutional protection to freedom of religion."Dr. Land told LifeSiteNews he hopes Baptist ministers will "preach from the pulpit just how serious and dangerous this initiative by the Obama administration is," and "encourage their parishioners to contact their congressmen and their senators and the president and let them know how deeply unhappy they are with this decision, and they want…legislation guaranteeing that it won’t happen again.""It is now in the providence of God," Dr. Land said. "Our responsibility is to stand and say, ‘We will not comply with this. We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just like Dr. King wrote his from the Birmingham jail.’ We will not comply."Dr. Land, who earned a Doctorate of Philosophy from Oxford University, has been named by Time magazine as one of .The Twenty-five Most Influential Evangelicals in America."President Obama’s recess appointment of Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) provided an insight to the president’s views, Dr. Land said. Feldblum has said whenever religious rights come into conflict with sexual rights, that sexual rights must prevail. .That’s exactly what’s happening in the Health and Human Services contraceptive and abortifacient directive,. he said. .They are saying that a woman’s right to have free contraceptive services and free abortifacients trumps the deeply held religious convictions of Catholics and Baptists and others. That’s a war on religion.Read the full story here.

• Obama’s Big Non-Concession on Birth Control.(TWHD).By Keith koffler.As far as I can tell, and I admit it’s an early read, the administration’s “compromise” on its policy of forcing Catholic Institutions to provide free birth control is meaningless. Because while it may disconnect the institution’s money from the requirement, it does not disconnect the institution from it.Here’s what Obama did in his announcement today at the White House.The original Obama administration regulation said that Catholic institutions, like Catholic hospitals and others similar concerns, must provide health insurance for their employees that covers birth control for free. Today, Obama said that the Catholic institutions no longer have to pay the insurance plans that provide this coverage, but that the insurers the instituions are using will be forced to reach out separately to employees and offer it the birth control coverage directly to them.The employees could then effectively contract directly with the insurer to get the contraceptives for free.Here’s the problem. It’s all still part of the package being offered by the institution. Catholic groups are offering a plan that gives employees a chance to get free birth control coverage. They get it as a result of their insurance from their Catholic employer. They don’t get it if they work for an employer who does not provide insurance.Let me put it this way. Say the Obama administration originally mandated that you must invite a drug dealer into your home and required that you must pay him to provide your family with free heroin. But then say he changed the mandate and said, okay, you still have to invite the drug dealer into your home, but instead of you paying him, your individual family members can freely choose to have him give them free heroin.You see? You’re still being forced to have a drug dealer in your home handing out heroin.Obama is not providing a concession. He’s providing a fig leaf. The Catholic Bishops will never take it, nor should they.Hmmm.....When Pres. Obama says, "Everyone plays by the same set of rules," it means they conform to his rules. Read the full story here.

• US Disarmament Expert, 'The Risk that Nuclear Weapons Will Be Used Is Growing'.(Spiegel).Anxieties are mounting as nuclear weapons make their way into unstable regions. In a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview, US disarmament expert Richard Burt discusses the growing risk of their use, why allowing Iran to get the bomb could trigger a Sunni-Shiite arms race and how an attack could make citizens demand a police state.Read the full story here.

• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Iran to Unveil New Achievements in Nuclear Technology Soon.(FNA).TEHRAN - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on Saturday that the country plans to unveil a series of big new achievements in nuclear technology in coming days."The world will witness inauguration of a number of big achievements in the field of nuclear (technology) in coming days," Ahmadinejad said, addressing millions of enthusiastic demonstrators in Tehran who had flocked to the streets to celebrate the 33rd anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. He also underlined that the country's progress and advancement in the field of nuclear technology was achieved despite the pressures of the world arrogant powers, and added all needs of the Iranian nation to the nuclear technology will be met by Iran's talented scientists in the near future. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West's illegitimate calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.A crowd of an estimated 30,000 people in central Tehran cheered Ahmadinejad’s words. Many held aloft placards declaring “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.In pointed messages aimed at those two arch-foes, Iranian officials planted a full-scale model of a captured U.S. spy drone in front of the president’s stage, and hosted on the stage the Hamas prime minister of Gaza.Prominent MP Gholam Reza Mesbahi Moghaddam has lashed out at the President's supporters, saying that he believes in a "deviant current" which aspires to win 180 seats, almost two-thirds of the Majlis. He also warned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "I hope the President attend the interrogation session in parliament if not serious actions will be taken."
  Hojatoleslam Sayyed Hamid Rohani, went farther, accusing those around the President of pursuing an "Anjoman Hujjatieh” ideology to increase corruption, accelerating the return of Shi'a's 12th Imam, equated in their eyes to Ahmadinejad: "They want to make a kingdom for themselves and negotiate with enemies behind the scene. They claim they are standing for justice but in reality they have gathered around themselves the thieves of nation money. They are trying to negotiate and a start relationship with the Great Satan through promotion of American Islam in the name of Iranian Islam or Iranian school." Read the full story here.

• Turks torpedo Israel Navy participation in NATO op.(JPost).Turkey has torpedoed an Israeli plan to contribute an Israel Navy missile ship to a NATO mission in the Mediterranean Sea, in what would have been the first time Israel actively participated in one of the Western military alliance’s operations.Diplomatic and defense officials told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that Turkey had decided to prevent Israeli participation in the long-term operation – called Active Endeavor – following the Israel Navy raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in 2010 in which nine Turkish nationals were killed.Diplomatic officials said that ever since its success, Turkey had been seeking to scuttle greater Israeli participation in the alliance.NATO launched Operation Active Endeavor in the wake of 9/11 and has succeeded in bringing together a number of countries to patrol the Mediterranean and share information concerning terrorism and suspicious ships.In 2008, Israel sent a navy officer to sit at the operation’s headquarters in Naples and in late 2009, Defense Minister Ehud Barak submitted an official request to NATO to contribute a missile ship to the mission. In 2010, Israel and NATO signed an agreement that was supposed to pave the way for the ship’s participation.“Israel’s navy anyhow patrols the Mediterranean and since we were interested in upgrading our ties with NATO, it made sense to offer to actively participate in the operation,” a senior government official said. “The Turks, though, torpedoed the move and refused to allow one of our ships to join.”While Israel has participated in numerous NATO activities over the past decade, it has never sent troops or navy ships to play an operational role in the military alliance’s operations.While Turkey succeeded in thwarting the navy’s participation in Active Endeavor, it has, however, failed to prevent Israel from upgrading its ties with NATO. Defense officials said this week that the sides were on the verge of signing a new cooperation agreement that would lead to a significant upgrade in relations.As a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue, which was created in 1994 to foster ties with Middle Eastern countries, Israel is frequently invited to participate in NATO workshops and exercises.The senior government official said, though, that the new agreement would enable Israel to participate in top NATO forums even though it is not a full-fledged member of the alliance.Israel is also considering a request by NATO to open an office at its headquarters in Brussels. Defense officials said that the offer was still open and that it was being “positively considered” by the government.Hmmm....NATO should kick out Turkey and replace them with Israel at least they can count on them, unlike Turkey who lately objects to most actions demanded by NATO or the U.S.They refuse actions against Iran but would drag NATO in a war with Syria.Read the full story here.

• Syrian Armored Forces Move Nearer to Israel.(VOC).According to reports from the Free Syria Army, the Syrian military has moved forces stationed in the southern part of the Syrian Golan Heights closer to Israel.The Syrian military did not come close to the border with Israel. However, armored forces that were stationed along the Syria-Jordan border, which were recently reinforced, were moved and are now closer to Israel, according to the report.The Free Syria Army is the largest opposition group in Syria and is partly made up of defectors from the official Syrian Army.Israel has been concerned that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, whose regime is on the verge of collapse, may try to defuse the uprising against him by starting a conflict with Israel.A Lebanese newspaper, The People’s Army, claimed Thursday in its news website that the IDF has been making an extra effort in the past few days to place landmines all along its border with Syria.Hundreds of Israeli soldiers are reportedly working at lining the border with mines. Israel had already placed mines along some stretches of the border with Syria after the Nakba Day events last year, in which hundreds of Syrians broke into Israel virtually unimpeded. The action had been orchestrated by the Syrian government, later reports showed.Hmmmm......30 Th of March the day of assault on Israel.Read the full story here.

• Hamas will never acknowledge Israel, says Haniyeh.(BM).Tehran (dpa) – Hamas would never acknowledge the Israeli state, said Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian movement in Gaza, on Friday in Tehran.“They (West) want from us to stop resistance and acknowledge Israel but I herewith announce that this will never happen,” Haniyeh said though an interpreter at a ceremony marking the 33rd anniversary of the 1979 Iranian revolution.“Our message and the message of all those who lost their blood in the Palestinian lands is that all occupied lands will eventually be liberated from Israeli occupation,” Haniyeh said.He thanked Iran for its constant support for Palestinian resistance groups and called on maintaining unity in the Islamic world.Haniyeh arrived in Tehran on Friday and is to meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Iran, which does not recognize the state of Israel, is a supporter of Hamas but has constantly denied providing any financial and military aid to the movement.Read the full story here.

• Top Pentagon general meets with Egypt’s army rulers; strike fails to attract protesters.(AlArabiya).Egypt’s state news agency says the Pentagon’s top general is visiting the country for security talks with the country’s military rulers, amid tensions between the two allies over charges filed against 16 American civil society workers accused of fomenting unrest.MENA reported Saturday that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey has met with Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and several members of the country’s ruling military council, including his Egyptian counterpart Lt. Gen. Sami Anan.The report says that they discussed “the depth of the strategic relationship between Washington and Cairo.”A Pentagon official had said prior to Dempsey’s visit to Cairo that the nonprofit dispute would be raised in the meeting and that he would talk with Egypt’s leaders about “choices and consequences.”On Friday, Egypt’s military rulers warned in statement that the country faces conspiracies that seek to topple the state and spread chaos.“Never will we bow to threats, nor succumb to pressures, nor accept ultimatums,” it said.Hmmmm.......As i said yesterday:"Come to think of it....How about the U.S. sale of 125 - M1A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt?".Read the full story here.

• I am not Anonymous!(AM).CIA website hacked by "Anonymous".The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was unresponsive on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline."CIA Tango down," a member of Anonymous said on @YourAnonNews, a Twitter feed used by the group. "Tango down" is an expression used by the US Special Forces when they have eliminated an enemy.Attempts to access the CIA website at cia.gov were unsuccessful.A CIA spokesman had no immediate comment.Anonymous last month briefly knocked the websites of the US Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation offline.Those attacks were in retaliation for the US shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload.There was no immediate explanation from Anonymous for the targeting of the CIA site.Most Anonymous cyberattacks are distributed denial of service attacks in which a large number of computers are commanded to simultaneously visit a website, overwhelming its servers.Read the full story here.

• UK - Muslim fanatics who called for execution of gays and wanted to set up a 'medieval state' under Sharia law in Derby are jailed for up to two years.(DM).Three Muslim extremists who handed out leaflets calling for homosexuals to be hanged, stoned and burned to death have been jailed.The group handed out the material in the street as well as posting it through letterboxes in a hate-filled campaign calling for the execution of gay people who they claimed were at the root of society’s problems.Ihjaz Ali, Kabir Ahmed and Razwan Javed are the first to be prosecuted under new laws against inciting hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. Ali was jailed for two years and Ahmed and Javed for 15 months each.Sentencing the men today, Judge John Burgess, Recorder of Derby, told them: 'You have been convicted of intending to stir up hatred.'It follows that your intention was to do great harm in a peaceful community.'He went on: 'Much has been said during the course of this trial about freedom of expression, and the freedom to preach strongly held beliefs; beliefs, which may have some foundation in scripture.'Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democracy and a basic ingredient of any free society. Parliament clearly had this very much in mind when this legislation was passed.'Last month the trio were found guilty at Derby Crown Court. Residents had told of how the three fundamentalists wanted to transform their small area of Derby into a 'medieval state' under Sharia law.Anyone who dared to question their extreme agenda was branded an 'M15 agent' or a 'sell-out,' they said.It emerged that:

1. Muslim fanatic and hate preacher Anjem Choudary was secretly invited by the group's ringleader, Ihjaz Ali, for a series of meetings in Derby;
2. The group had links with the extremist organisation Al-Muhajiroun, which is banned under UK anti-terror laws;
3. Moderate Muslim leaders who spoke out against the group's activities were targeted in a hate campaign in which their faces were printed on 'wanted' posters;
4.  Police had to be called during local elections because the group's supporters were standing guard at polling stations, ordering Muslims not to vote.One gay resident summed up the atmosphere in the area.‘It used to be lovely round here,’ he said. ‘Now, because of these people, you don’t feel safe. I don’t have any problems with Muslims. But these lot need to realise we live in England, not some Islamic state.’Read and see (Video) the full story here.

• Iran Using Gold and Oil to Surpass U.S. Sanctions.(BigPeace).Since U.S. sanctions have dramatically cut the Islamic Republic’s ability to obtain financing via the dollar and euro, Tehran is aiming to use gold to deal in the world market. The republic is seeking to evade sanctions imposed by the United States, which were implemented earlier this year as a deterrent to continue building its nuclear program.According to a Thursday Reuters report, Iran has also used yen to buy large volumes of wheat and has already purchased a minimum of 200,000 tons of wheat on the soft market, mostly from Australia.According to a Christian Science Monitor Report:  Iran, which is still in the market to buy additional wheat supplies, is also considering barter deals to feed its 74 million people weeks before a presidential election, they said.Grain ships are stuck outside Iranian ports and exports of staples to Iran such as maize, sugar, palm oil and rice are being hindered as collecting payment from buyers gets harder.“Grain deals are being paid for in gold bullion and barter deals involving oil are being offered,” one trader said. “Some of the major trading houses are involved,” he added.Traders said details of how barter deals work were still unclear as the problem had developed so quickly.Iranian buyers have in the past side-stepped sanctions by booking business through third countries, especially Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, traders said. But this option had been suddenly closed as the UAE was not allowing sanction-breaking finance, they said.“As the shipments of grain are so large, barter or gold payments are the quickest option,” another trader said.Friday morning the Associated Press reported that despite US pressure to comply with American sanctions, the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh was insisting that diplomacy was the best way to deal with Iran.Hmmm.......Notice how not a single paper points out Turkey's role in this.Read the full story here.

• Russians Rally for Kuril Islands.(RN).More than 4,000 people rallied in Russia’s Far East on Saturday in support of the country’s claim to the disputed Kuril islands in the Pacific Ocean, police said.Demonstrators in the port town of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk called for Russia to take a tougher stance in the decades-long dispute with Japan over the four islands, which were occupied by Soviet troops at the end of World War II.  The dispute has stopped the two countries from signing a peace treaty.On Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Japan was determined to “move ahead with negotiations.”He was speaking during a protest rally was held in Tokyo to demand the return of the islands, known as the Northern Territories in Japan.  Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sparked a diplomatic row with Tokyo in November 2010 by making the first ever visit by a Russian leader to the islands.He later said Russia would increase its military presence there. Japan’s then prime minister Naoto Kan called Medvedev’s visit an “inexcusable rudeness.”Read the full story here.

• Iranian Navy Receives 2 Light Submarines.(RN).The Iranian Navy has commissioned two Ghadir class diesel-electric submarines to boost Iran’s naval capability, official IRNA news agency reported.IRNA cited Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari as saying that the submarines were built and equipped by domestic manufacturers.The 120-ton Ghadir class submarines are highly maneuverable and best suited for missions in shallow waters. They are equipped with at least two torpedo tubes and feature elements of "stealth" technology.With the addition of two new subs, the number of Ghadir vessels in the Iranian Navy has reached 16. The first submarine of this class was commissioned in 2007.Ghadir class subs have been reportedly designed by Iran on the basis of North Korean Yono class vessels.In addition to Ghadirs, the Iranian Navy has three Soviet-built Kilo class submarines and a domestically-built Nahang sub.Read the full story here.