(ANSAmed) - ANKARA - The vote of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives on a non-binding resolution in which the 1915 and 1917 Armenian massacres that took place during the Ottoman empire are defined as ''genocide'' was expected in Ankara. So much so that, with unusual speed in Turkey, as soon as it was discovered from the website of the Turkish Cabinet Office that out of the 46 members of the Committee, 23 against 22 voted in favour of the document, a message of condemnation immediately appeared. Premier Tayyip Erdogan expressed concern over the consequences of the vote and underlined that the taking of a stance by the parliamentary body ''risks damaging Turkish-American relations, as well as the process of normalisation between Turkey and Armenia.'' Shortly after, it was announced that the Turkish Ambassador to the US, Namik Tan, has been immediately recalled to Ankara ''for consultation''. Tan arrived in Washington just a few weeks but is already an expert on America. That things were not looking good for Ankara was already clear a few days ago, but events have taken a turn for the worse in the last 48 hours. Turkey was opposed to the approval of the document insomuch as it has always denied that the number of Armenians killed during the massacres total one and a half million (for Ankara there were ''only'' 300,000) and that they died as a result of a civil war and not due to genocide. Thus yesterday morning Turkey had already raised not only the possibility of withdrawing their Ambassador if the resolution were approved, but also the potential of cancelling contracts worth 45 billion dollars with five large US defence companies. Furthermore, Ankara has circulated - via the Turkish press - a so-called 'Plan B' to be implemented if the document is approved. This plan sets out, amongst other things, that Turkey could potentially not ratify the protocols of normalisation of relations signed in October in Zurich with Armenia, considered to be important for the stability of the Caucasus.

source-http://www.ansamed.info

Three Islamic Jihad militants were killed yesterday in an Israel Air Force strike on the northern Gaza Strip while attempting to fire rockets into Israel, and another Palestinian was seriously injured in the strike.

Ten Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in the past two weeks, which have seen dozens of rockets and mortar shells launched at Israel.
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Despite the apparent escalation of violence, Israel Defense Forces officials said Hamas is not interested in a broader confrontation with Israel, and predict calm will soon return to the Gaza border.

Israeli aircraft struck the militant cell around 7 P.M. last night. IDF officials told Haaretz the Jihad operatives were spotted while setting up rocket launchers east of the city of Dir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

One of the men killed was Awad Nasir, a 29-year-old resident of the city who was a senior commander of the Al-Quds Brigades, Islamic Jihad's armed wing. It is possible the cell Nasir headed was operating independently, without direct orders from the organization's leadership.

Hassan al-Qatarawi, 22, of Bureij refugee camp, and Hudhaifa al-Hams, 23, of Nuseirat refugee camp, both aides of Nasir, were also killed in the strike.

Several high-ranking IDF officers said they do not think Hamas is behind the recent rocket and mortar fire, although last week the Islamist group did downgrade efforts to prevent smaller, more radical factions from launching projectiles into Israel.

The officers said Hamas' decision to loosen its reins over smaller factions in Gaza may be an attempt to allow them to express their anger at the Israeli strikes and at Egypt's plan to erect a wall between Egypt and Gaza. Hamas and the smaller factions are worried that the barrier will severely limit Gazans' ability to smuggle weapons and other goods into the Strip.

The IDF officers said it was difficult to predict the next phase of Israel's conflict with Hamas.

"We've seen in the past how confrontations have developed even if the major power holders have no interest in them," said one. "Hamas must know that Israel will respond to any aggression against it, and that if necessary, will know how to exact a price from the landlords in the Strip - the group's leadership."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting yesterday that the IDF is striking rocket manufacturing facilities in Gaza, as well as the smuggling tunnels by which Iranian weapons are reaching the territory. "The government's policy is clear: Every rocket on our soil will be met with force," he said.

Hamas sought to play down yesterday's air strike, giving it minimal space on its official Web site. However, a Hamas parliamentarian, Mushir al-Masri, said the strike showed Israel was seeking an escalation with the group, and that a Palestinian response was only a matter of time.

"The resistance will choose the time and place" for such a response, Masri said. "The Palestinian people will protect itself with all means and methods at its disposal."

Palestinian medical sources said yesterday that two other Palestinians had been killed in an IDF strike in the northern Gaza Strip, a statement the army denied.
source-haaretz.com

The Iron Dome short-range missile defense system passed a series of tests over the last few days with flying colors, successfully shooting down Qassam rockets, Grad rockets and mortar shells one after the other.

It even succeeded in determining which missiles to shoot down - those whose trajectory made them likely to land in a populated area - and which to ignore.

This was the first test of the system as a whole rather than individual components.
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The results are a feather in the cap of the developer, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which succeeded in transforming the highly complex system from an idea into an almost fully operational product in just two and a half years. The first operational battery is expected to be deployed in May.

Credit also goes to Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his ministry's outgoing director general, Pinchas Buchris, for pushing the project.

It is hard to exaggerate the importance of the successful tests. Iron Dome is supposed to provide protection against missiles with a range of between four and 70 kilometers. That covers everything from mortar shells through Hamas' Qassams, Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets and even Iranian Fajr rockets, which have apparently made their way to the Gaza Strip. As such, it radically improves Israel's strategic position.

Nevertheless, protection of Israel's home front remains far from complete. First, Iron Dome has yet to be tested in a genuine attack. Second, Israel still lacks any additional missile batteries beyond the prototype just tested. Third, the intermediate layer of Israel's missile defense system - Magic Wand, which is supposed to handle missiles with longer ranges than those covered by Iron Dome but shorter than the long-range ballistic missiles covered by the Arrow - has yet to reach a similarly advanced stage of development, and is not expected to do so until 2012.

The first Iron Dome battery will be delivered to the air force in about six weeks and is slated, if all goes well, to become operational in May. A single missile battery is enough to protect a medium-sized city like Sderot.

The question is how many batteries the Israel Defense Forces will ultimately acquire, and when. It would take about 20 batteries, each costing some NIS 50 million, to defend the entire northern and southern border regions. That will require either diverting substantial funds from other defense projects or significantly increasing the defense budget.

Rafael is expected to profit handsomely, both from sales to the IDF and, later, overseas. The United States, for instance, might want to purchase the missile protection system to defend its army bases in the Middle East against terror attacks.

Will Iron Dome make Israel more likely to launch another war in Gaza? It may do just the opposite, by increasing Israel's deterrence against Hamas, thereby stabilizing the situation. If Hamas knows its ability to harm Israel has been substantially reduced, it may be less likely to engage in provocations.

However, the Palestinians will almost certainly put the system to the test, if only in the hope of scoring a symbolic victory by breaking through Israel's technological shield.

But for all the praise this achievement deserves, one criticism must be leveled: It should have happened much sooner. For years, the IDF refused to invest the necessary funds in developing Iron Dome, until former defense minister Amir Peretz finally forced it to do so. Had this been done sooner, not only would Israeli lives have been saved, but it might have been possible to avoid last winter's war in Gaza altogether and significantly reduce the damage from the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
 SOURCE-http://www.haaretz.com

The U.S. Embassy in Yemen says it has reopened after Yemeni forces successfully dealt with a security threat that prompted its closure for two days.

The U.S. mission in Sana'a said Yemen had addressed a "specific area of concern" by conducting a counter-terrorism operation Monday north of Sana'a. It also warned that the threat of terrorism against American interests in Yemen remains high.

The British Embassy in Sanna'a also reopened Tuesday but kept its public services suspended.

The United States and Britain closed their embassies in Sana'a Sunday due to warnings of a possible al-Qaida attack. Yemen says its forces killed two al-Qaida members responsible for that threat Monday in an operation in the northern region of Arhab.

Yemen's government also announced the arrest Tuesday of five suspected al-Qaida members in the capital and the western region of Hodeida.

The U.S. mission in Sana'a commended Yemen's government for trying to disrupt al-Qaida's affiliate in the region, and promised continued U.S. support for those efforts.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Yemen's instability is a threat to regional and global security. Yemen's government has been fighting secessionist southern rebels, Shi'ite fighters along the Saudi border and the growing presence of al-Qaida militants.

Yemen-based Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for a Nigerian man's unsuccessful attempt to bomb a U.S.-bound airplane on December 25.

The Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has told U.S. investigators he was trained by al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.
source-http://www1.voanews.com

Cape Town — Airline passengers who are citizens of, or fly through, five African nations will undergo more intensive security screening from today before being permitted to board flights to the United States.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced the new "enhanced screening" on Sunday.

According to Monday's editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post, the five African nations affected are Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan.

Nine other nations - most of them in Asia or the Middle East - are also covered by the TSA's directive, which applies to "nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest." Sudan is regarded by the U.S. as a "state sponsor of terrorism." The Washington Post named the other African countries affected as "countries of interest to U.S. intelligence agencies."

The Post also reported that in a directive to airlines on the tougher screening measure, the TSA had emphasized a "full body pat-down and physical inspection of property".

The TSA's public statement said the directive applies to "every individual flying into the U.S. from anywhere in the world travelling from or through" the affected countries.

The directive follows the arrest of a Nigerian for attempting to set off a bomb on an airliner flying from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day.

Vanguard

It was issued as former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo made an appeal urging the international community not to judge all Nigerians by the actions of one person.

"Nigerians are law-abiding people and not terrorists," Vanguard newspaper reported him as saying.

"The young man's case should not be used as a standard to judge Nigerians or in fact, to criminalise all Nigerians... The fact that the boy committed a grave offence as a Nigerian does not say that all Nigerians are terrorists or criminals."

The TSA statement said its new directive "also increases the use of enhanced screening technologies and mandates threat-based and random screening for passengers on U.S.-bound international flights."
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The New York Times reported that the extra scrutiny of passengers and their carry-on bags could include the use of "whole-body scanners" - which can examine people for explosives or weapons beneath their clothing - where they are available.

But the screening of Americans and citizens of nations not affected by Sunday's directive
could be relaxed. The Times reported that civil rights groups had protested the distinction made between passengers on the basis of their country of origin.

It quoted Nawar Shora of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee as saying the directive wrongly implied that all citizens of certain nations are suspect. "...[T]his is extreme and very dangerous," he reportedly said.
source-http://allafrica.com

WASHINGTON: Researchers at Tel Aviv University have found a new way to fix the security holes linked with the popular "captcha" securit
y mechanism- wavy letters websites ask us to type into a box-used by web pages and newsletter sign-up forms to prevent computer robots from hacking into servers and databases.

While these codes are becoming increasingly complicated for an average person to use, they are not immune to security holes.

A research project led by Prof. Danny Cohen-Or of Tel Aviv University's Blavatnik School of Computer Sciences demonstrates how a new kind of video captcha code may be harder to outsmart.

Cohen-Or said that the foundation of the work is really pure research, but it opens the door so security researchers can think a little differently.

"Humans have a very special skill that computer bots have not yet been able to master. We can see what's called an 'emergence image' - an object on a computer screen that becomes recognizable only when it's moving - and identify this image in a matter of seconds. While a person can't 'see' the image as a stationary object on a mottled background, it becomes part of our gestalt as it moves, allowing us to recognize and process it," said Cohen-Or.

In the new study, co-authored with colleagues in Taiwan, Saudi Arabia and India, Cohen-Or has described a synthesis technique that generates pictures of 3-D objects, like a running man or a flying airplane.

He said that the technique will allow security developers to generate an infinite number of moving "emergence" images that will be virtually impossible for any computer algorithm to decode.

"Emergence," as defined by the researchers, is a unique human ability to collect fragments of seemingly useless information, then synthesize and perceive it as an identifiable whole. So far, computers don't have this skill.

"Computer vision algorithms are completely incapable of effectively processing emergence images," said Cohen-Or's faculty colleague Dr. Lior Wolf, a co-author of the study.The scientists have warned that it will take some time before this research can be applied in the real world, but they are currently defining parameters that identify the "perception difficulty level" of various images that might be used in future security technologies.

"We're not claiming in our research paper that we've developed a whole new captcha technology. But we are taking a step towards that - something that could lead to a much better captcha, to highlight the big difference between men and bots. If it were to be turned into a solution, however, we wouldn't be able to give humans a multiple choice answer or common word answer for what they see, so we'll need to develop a way to use it. We have a few ideas in the works," said Cohen-Or.


source-http://infotech.indiatimes.com

The Russian Foreign Ministry has voiced concern over the recent anti-government protests in Iran and said Russia is not meddling in Iran's internal affairs.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Monday, after protests in Iran on Sunday during the Shia Muslim ceremonies for Ashura, which is the anniversary of the martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), Imam Hussein (PBUH).

At least eight people were killed in clashes between security forces and demonstrators that broke out during the protests, according to the Tehran police headquarters.

The police also said that the police forces neither used violence nor fired a single bullet on Sunday.

“We believe the most important thing in such a situation is to show restraint, and seek a compromise on the basis of the law, and also to take political efforts to prevent a further escalation of the confrontation,” the Russian Foreign Ministry statement added.

The Russians rejected allegations claiming Moscow was involved “in the internal political processes in Iran.”

Commenting on the allegations, the statement said, “We are convinced that this is the work of those opposed to Russian-Iranian cooperation.”

 source-http://www.presstv.i