“A Russian military unit has arrived in Syria, according to Russian news reports, a development that a United Nations Security Council source told ABC News was ‘a bomb’ certain to have serious repercussions,” reports ABC News. “Russia, one of President Bashar al-Assad’s strongest allies despite international condemnation of the government’s violent crackdown on the country’s uprising, has repeatedly blocked the United Nations Security Council’s attempts to halt the violence, accusing the U.S. and its allies of trying to start another war. Now the Russian Black Sea fleet’s Iman tanker has arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus on the Mediterranean Sea with an anti-terror squad from the Russian Marines aboard according to the Interfax news agency. The Assad government has insisted it is fighting a terrorist insurgency. The Russian news reports did not elaborate on the Russian troops’ mission in Syria or if they are expected to leave the port….Moscow has long enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Assad regime, to which it sells billions of dollars of weapons. In return Russia has maintained a Navy base at Tartus, which gives it access to the Mediterranean.” Developing….

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• Jerusalem Post: A conference of Israeli experts are now warning Israel not to export the huge natural gas reserves it is now bringing online, but rather to keep them for domestic energy consumption and strategic national security reserves.
• Bloomberg/Washington Post: Israel’s Leviathan Natural Gas Field May Boost GDP
• Jerusalem Post: ‘Exporting natural gas would help economy, politics’ — Energy and Water Minister Uzi Landau says portion of natural gas in Mediterranean Sea reservoirs should be exported.