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RT @EndTimeHeadline: BREAKING NEWS: The Sun has unleashed another Massive Solar Flare. More Details Later…

American officials and corporate security experts examining a new wave of potentially destructive computer attacks striking American corporations, especially energy firms, say they have tracked the attacks back to Iran, the New York Times reported on Friday.

According to the report, the targets have included several American oil, gas and electricity companies, which government officials have refused to identify.

via Report: US traces cyber attack wave to Iran – Israel News, Ynetnews.

The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has enough of the nerve gas sarin to “eradicate the whole of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo,” a former Syrian chemical weapons scientist told Al Jazeera on Friday.

“If the regime is to fire a Scud-B with a chemical warhead filled with sarin, the missile would create a chemical cloud in the atmosphere that is 3km long and 500m wide, which could be fatal to all people under it,” the scientist, that asked to remain anonymous, said.

The scientist told Al Jazeera that Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile includes 700 tons of sarin gas as well as an unspecified quantity of mustard gas, at least 3,000 aerial bombs that could be fitted with chemical warheads and more than 100 chemical warheads for Scud missiles. He dispelled assessments by Western intelligence that Syria has tabun nerve gas.

Despite that, the scientist that fled Syria claimed that the Assad regime will only unleash its chemical stockpiles if it “no longer cares about the world knowing.”

He told Al Jazeera that the Assad regime used sarin gas in small quantities to stop rebel advances in four towns in the suburbs of Damascus, in Aleppo’s Sheikj Maksoud district, in Idlib’s Saraqeb town and in Homs’ al-Khalidiyeh district.

“The intention was to incapacitate rebels and force them out of strategic areas, while keeping the deaths among their ranks limited,” he said.

via ‘Assad has enough sarin to wipe out Damascus’.

The unrest engulfing the Middle East could result in Israel becoming involved in a “surprise war” with Syria, according to the head of the Israeli air force.

“When you look [around] today I think that a surprise war can be born in very many configurations,” Major General Amir Eshel said at a conference near Tel Aviv.

In particular, the general stressed that if rebels ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad and seized the huge stockpiles of missiles within the country, it could lead to a major conflict in the region.

“If Syria collapses tomorrow, we are liable to find ourselves in this stew very quickly and in a very big way,” Eshel said.

“The enormous arsenal parked there… will be spread all over the place and you find yourself having to act on a very broad scale.”

via Israel gearing up for ‘surprise war’ with Syria if Assad falls – general — RT News.

At a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Thursday morning, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that Israel was very interested in reopening negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. A spokesperson in the Prime Minister’s office said that the discussions were “positive,” and that Israel had urged Kerry to do what he could to convince the PA to return to the negotiating table.

At the outset of the meeting, Netanyahu praised the U.S.-Israel relationship. Addressing Kerry, Netanyahu said he was “an old personal friend and a long-standing friend of Israel, and that friendship was demonstrated in President Obama’s historic visit here in March. It was demonstrated yesterday in an extraordinary resolution by the U.S. Senate to stand with Israel against Iran’s nuclear program.

via PM to Kerry: Let’s Get Talks With PA Going – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Iran is pressing ahead with the construction of a research reactor that Western experts say could offer it a second way of producing material for a nuclear bomb if it decides to make one, a U.N. report showed on Wednesday.

Iran has transported the reactor vessel to the heavy water plant near the central town of Arak but has not yet installed it, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a confidential report issued to member states.

Western concerns about Iran are focused largely on uranium enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow, as such material refined to a high level can provide the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

But experts say Arak may also be a proliferation issue as it could yield plutonium for nuclear arms if the spent fuel were reprocessed. Iran has said it has no fuel reprocessing plans.

“Once the reactor operates, it could spawn more than enough weapons-grade plutonium for a bomb per year, should Iran ever decide to do that,” said nuclear expert Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment think-tank.

via Iran pushes ahead with new nuclear plant that worries West – Yahoo! News.