(UPI)–Lockheed Martin plans to set up a technology development center in Israel. “The intention is to establish a local branch of Lockheed Martin in Israel in the field of information systems,” said Lockheed Martin’s Vice President for Global Solutions, Robert Eastman. Israel’s military intelligence is currently fast-tracking its cyber warfare capabilities to meet a growing threat, primarily from Iran. Lockheed Martin has extensive cyber defenses of its own. “We have about 30 attacks a day,” Eastman said.

NY Times Questions Kerry Focus on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and not Egypt, Syria

(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Against a backdrop of raging civil war in Syria and emerging chaos in Egypt, the New York Times asked whether the Obama administration is doing the right thing by focusing now on advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, once a stark symbol and source of grievance in the Arab world, is now almost a sideshow in a Middle East consumed by sectarian strife, economic misery. Robert Blecher, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program of the International Crisis Group, told the New York Times, “The moment for this kind of diplomacy has passed. …[U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry] is working with actors who have acted in this movie before, and the script is built around the same elements. But the theater is new; the region is a completely different place today,” Blecher said.

U.S. Student Says He Was Refused Entry Into U.K. Over Israeli Passport Stamps

(Kansas City Jewish Chronicle/JNS.org) A Kansas City student who was denied entry into the United Kingdom late last month and was detained for more than nine hours by U.K. customs officials, before being put on a plane back to the U.S., believes he was targeted because he is Jewish and had traveled to Israel.

Louis Cantor, 23, arrived in the U.K. and waited in line to go through customs. He was detained after a customs agent saw two pages in his passport with Israeli stamps. Cantor says he was never told why he was being denied entry. He was told his photo and fingerprints have now been placed in a database that will make it difficult for him to obtain entry into the U.K. or any other European Union country.

Cantor’s father, Chuck Cantor, said that during the time Cantor was detained, he was given only half of a sandwich and very little water. When Cantor asked for more food and water, he was denied and told to “stop pestering.”

The U.K. man who had offered Cantor summer work experience, Kevin Shilling, said that the U.K. Border Agency agent he spoke to in his attempt to get Cantor admitted into the country made more than one antisemitic comment.

After his detention, Cantor was escorted to a plane for a flight back to the U.S. “My only real goal with this fiasco is to get my fingerprints and picture removed from their database and the blacked out stamp in my passport removed as well,” he said.