Settlements cover 42% of West Bank - Jewish settlements control more than 42% of the West Bank, and much of that land was seized from Palestinian landowners in defiance of an Israeli Supreme Court ban, an Israeli human rights group said. OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Jewish settlements control more than 42 percent of the West Bank, and much of that land was seized from Palestinian landowners in defiance of an Israeli Supreme Court ban, an Israeli human rights group said Tuesday. The group’s findings echo what other anti-settlement activists have claimed in the past: That settlements have taken over lands far beyond their immediate perimeters, sometimes from private Palestinians. Israel’s settlements have been a much-criticized enterprise throughout the decades and a major obstacle to regional peace efforts. “The extensive geographic-spatial changes that Israel has made in the landscape of the West Bank undermine the negotiations that Israel has conducted for 18 years with the Palestinians and breach its international obligations,” the B’Tselem group said in a summary of its report. Settlers disputed the figures and said the report by the B’Tselem group was politically motivated. Israeli officials had no comment.

"The President emphasized that the conference will only take place if all countries feel confident that they can attend, and that any efforts to single out Israel will make the prospects of convening such a conference unlikely," the statement said. Antiwar: Obama and Netanyahu All Smiles. You Tube: Terrorist Israeli Government is bringing America down and Israel too.

DUBAI – Dubai will not be using full-body scanners in either of its two airports to protect passengers’ privacy, a Dubai airports’ top police official said, according to local press reports Tuesday. Full-body scanners will not be used in Dubai airports as they “contradict Islam, and out of respect for the privacy of individuals and their personal freedom,” Al-Bayan daily quoted Brigadier Pilot Ahmad Mohammad Bin Thani, head of Dubai police’s general department of airport security, as saying. “The scanners will be replaced with other inspection systems that reserve travellers’ privacy,” it cited him as saying.

Shameful Sham Climategate report urges 'campaign to win hearts and minds' to restore confidence in global warming science. The University of East Anglia's enquiry into the conduct of its own staff at its Climatic Research Unit has highlighted criticisms of the department and staff conduct - but clears the path for the individuals concerned to carry on. The CRU played an important role in writing the UN's IPCC summaries on climate science, so the issue is far from a parochial one. The most serious charge is poor communication; Sir Muir Russell even calls for "a concerted and sustained campaign to win hearts and minds" to restore confidence in the team's work. Climate Audit: Climate Audit's McIntyre: 'Muir Russell's [climategate report] contains many gaffes and errors'. Examiner: More Errors: Muir Russell writes that Oxburgh inquiry looked at the science. Lord Oxburgh has specifically stated that his inquiry did not look at the science'.

Iraq's antiquities are facing an old enemy. A new wave of looting has hit museums and archaeological sites across southern Iraq. Officials say the treasures have been left completely unprotected and exposed to increasingly organised gangs. That's despite a national and international clamour to protect Iraq's history. From Baghdad Al Jazeera's Omar Al Saleh reports.

A Spanish court on Tuesday was seeking the arrest of undercover CIA agents it says used false documents in Spain during the dirty war on terrorism ordered by the George W. Bush administration. That revelation, reported by the local press, was offered by judicial sources investigating U.S. civilian flights with stopovers in Spanish airports between 2003 and 2005. Prosecutor Ismael Moreno with the Audiencia Nacional (National Court)asked the United Kingdom for help in taking statements from Olivier Minkwitz, the author of a report by the British NGO Reprieve which demonstrates that members of those flight crews used fake IDs in their many stopovers in Spain. Reprieve is an organization of lawyers representing individuals locked up on terrorism charges without trial or evidence in the prison maintained by the United States on the its naval base in Guantanamo. According to members of the Reprieve team, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in at least seven kidnappings and illegal transfers of prisoners from Afghanistan and to secret jails in Europe and Africa. The Spanish prosecutor Moreno demanded the arrest of 14 alleged CIA agents who were part of the crew of one of the flights that stopped over in Palma de Mallorca in 2004. According to the court, those individuals were carrying false passports and did not report their presence to Spanish authorities in accordance with the law for undercover operations.

The Bilderberg Group is one of the most secretive and exclusive clubs that attracts world's most powerful people. Its meetings are invitation only and take place under tight security, away from the prying eyes of the public and the press. Investigative journalist Daniel Estulin, who has made it his mission to uncover the secrets of the Bilderberg Group, has shared some of his revelations with RT. He claims the group makes decisions on international policy in a way far removed from democracy.

As Sarah began pleading with them to give her father a little time and space to get up because he is an amputee, they began kicking and hitting him. One of the police officers used his knee to press Pruyn’s head down so hard on the ground, said Pruyn in an interview this July 4 with Niagara At Large, that his head was still hurting a week later. CBC News: G20 reporters complain to police watchdog. AWIP: Male officers strip search and cavity search females. Toronto G20 Police RAPE and TORTURE journalist!

ACTA is the predictably deficient product of a deeply flawed process. What started as a relatively simple proposal to coordinate customs enforcement has transformed into a sweeping and complex new international intellectual property and internet regulation with grave consequences for the global economy and governments' ability to promote and protect the public interest. ACTA would:

■ Encourage internet service providers to police the activities of internet users by holding internet providers responsible for the actions of subscribers, conditioning safe harbors on adopting policing policies, and by requiring parties to encourage cooperation between service providers and rights holders;
■ Encourage this surveillance, and the potential for punitive disconnections by private actors, without adequate court oversight or due process;

An experimental solar-powered plane took off for its first 24-hour test flight this morning. The plane, named Solar Impulse, left Payerne airfield in Switzerland shortly before 6am after an equipment problem that delayed a previous attempt was solved. The team hopes its plane, which has a 260-foot wingspan, will circle the globe using only energy collected from the sun.

The United States Army on Monday filed charges against Private 1st Class Bradley Manning, accusing the 22-year-old of giving a video of a US military massacre in Baghdad to the WikiLeaks web site, which posted an edited version in April under the title “Collateral Murder.” The video was taken by US Apache helicopters in July of 2007 and showed them firing on mostly unarmed Iraqis in East Baghdad. It was accompanied by voiceover of radio traffic in which American soldiers gloated about gunning down defenseless Iraqis. Among the 12 people acknowledged killed by the US government were a Reuters reporter and his driver. The wounded included two small children. The video showed that after the initial deadly Apache attack, the helicopters returned to gun down unarmed civilians who sought to rescue those wounded in the first assault. The Guardian: US private Bradley Manning charged with leaking Iraq killings video. Antiwar: Bradley Manning, American Patriot: The campaign to smear him is picking up steam.

[Wikileaks: Collateral Murder (VIDEO). This video shows men gathering on a Baghdad street on July 12, 2007, shortly before they were fired upon. View related photos wikileaks.org] A senior U.S. military official said Monday that a gritty war video that shows U.S. forces firing repeatedly on people along a Baghdad street was authentic. However, the Pentagon would not confirm the video's authenticity. The incident on July 12, 2007, happened the same day and in the same area that a Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver were killed. Two children also were wounded. The senior military official said that the video posted Monday at Wikileaks.org was of a 2007 incident in the New Baghdad District of eastern Baghdad. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the video and a Pentagon investigation have never been released.

Wired’s Threat Level blog reported late Sunday that “an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site WikiLeaks,” was arrested by the Pentagon. The leaked video, which was filmed in Baghdad in 2007 during an operation that killed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, was published online by WikiLeaks in April. AFP: Soldier arrested in Iraq for alleged intel leaks: army.

Popular disgust is mounting over revelations that, while demanding huge social cuts from working people, top French officials took money from billionairess Liliane Bettencourt and helped her evade taxes. The 87-year-old Bettencourt’s net worth of €17 billion, largely in holdings of stock in cosmetics giant L’Oréal, makes her France’s richest woman. Yesterday, the news web site Mediapart published interviews implicating President Nicolas Sarkozy in the Bettencourt affair. It interviewed Claire T., Bettencourt’s former accountant, currently under investigation, after she testified to police the night before. The accountant’s testimony suggests that Bettencourt illegally funded Sarkozy’s election campaign. Daily Mail: Sarkozy and the envelopes of cash: President denies taking money from L'Oreal heiress. AWIP: What the butler heard. The Guardian: Nicolas Sarkozy denies campaign took illegal donation.