At least 10 people have lost their lives and several others have been injured in a US drone attack in troubled northwestern Pakistan. A drone reportedly fired three missiles at a house in the Datakhel area of North Waziristan, which was allegedly used by militants. The house has been completely destroyed. Over the past few years, hundreds of people, mostly civilians, have been killed in similar US attacks in the region. Washington claims the strikes target militants. However, Islamabad has repeatedly condemned the attacks, saying they violate Pakistan's sovereignty. The issue of civilian casualties has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington with the Pakistani government repeatedly objecting to the attacks. AWIP: US drone attack kills 6 in NW Pakistan.

An apparent alleged suicide bombing near a bus terminal in Pakistan's Swat Valley killed five people and wounded at least 58 on Thursday, officials said, a sign that Islamist militants remain active in the northwest region despite a massive army operation. The explosion went off around noon in Mingora, the main town in the one-time tourist haven that was overrun by the Taliban in 2007. Pakistani TV footage showed vehicles bent and twisted due to the force of the blast. Some men were desperately trying to open the doors of a car to reach a woman and man sitting in the front who were bloodied and appeared unconscious. The area struck was crowded, so the death toll could rise significantly. [It certainly would not be beyond the CIA/Blackwater/Xe to do this. They've been known to do such things in the past.]

JERUSALEM (RNS) An Israeli feminist was arrested Monday (July 12) when she carried a Torah scroll at the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. Jerusalem police detained Anat Hoffman, co-founder of the Women of the Wall, for five hours, fined her $1,300 and ordered her to stay away from the Western Wall for 30 days, according to the statement released by Hoffman's group. Hoffman was arrested during a procession from the Wall to Robinson's Arch--a secluded section of the Western Wall where the Israeli Supreme Court permits women to read the Torah. The court ruled that women are prohibited from reading from the Torah at the Wall itself because doing so goes against traditional norms of Jewish prayer and could incite ultra-Orthodox Jews to violence.

EL-ARISH, Egypt — A Libyan ship with aid for Gaza has docked in an Egyptian port after Israel's navy stopped it from reaching the blockaded Palestinian territory. The director of the port of el-Arish, Gamal Abdel Maqsoud, says the ship will unload its cargo Thursday and hand it over to the Red Crescent for delivery to Gaza by land. Israeli missile ships stopped the aid vessel from reaching Gaza, which has been blockaded for three years. The Gadhafi foundation, headed by the son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, said the ship, the Amalthea, left Greece on Saturday carrying 2,000 tons of food and medical supplies. The standoff followed a botched Israeli raid on a similar Gaza-bound ship in May in which nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed. EuroNews: Egypt awaits go-ahead to transfer Gaza ship aid.

A group of journalists has announced that it plans to sue Israel over its deadly raid on a flotilla of aid ships bound for the Gaza Strip in May. Lawyers have already begun preparing lawsuits in several European countries, according to several of the journalists, who met in Istanbul on Wednesday. The group accused Israel of violating international law. One of the nine people killed on board the Mavi Marmara, the main ship, was Cevdet Kulclar, a Turkish journalist. Reporters who were on board the ships say the Israeli government never returned their equipment or passports, and that Israeli soldiers later used their credit cards. An Italian journalist, Manolo Luppichini, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in June that his credit card was used to make NIS250 ($65) worth of purchases in Israel.

In a rare move, Israeli courts have punished soldiers involved in the shooting of an unarmed, blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian in the West Bank village of Ni’ilin. A commander and staff sgt. were found criminally guilty for illegal use of a weapon and inappropriate behavior. The incident, caught on tape by a Palestinian using a camera provided by the Israeli human rights organization Btsleem, took place after one of the weekly demonstrations against the separation wall in Ni’ilin. A soldier is seen firing at a blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian from very close range. The Palestinian is then seen on the ground in obvious pain. This type of humiliation and punishment is routine in the West Bank however the clear video footage in this case has been difficult for the Israeli court system to ignore.

In their own words, Israeli leaders paint a picture of Israel - born of terror...

The former US vice-president Dick Cheney has undergone surgery to install a small pump to help his heart work, as the 69-year-old enters a new phase of what he called "increasing congestive heart failure". "The operation went very well, and I am now recuperating," Mr Cheney said in a statement released by his office. The surgery took place last week at Inova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute in northern Virginia. Mr Cheney has dealt with heart problems for much of his adult life, suffering five heart attacks since the age of 37. He said the latest step, the implanting of a pump called a left ventricular assist device, will allow him to resume an active life. [We were unaware that Mr. Cheney even had a heart. The surgery probably was to install some kind of pump where his heart should have been.]

An Iranian nuclear scientist claimed today that he suffered extreme mental and physical torture at the hands of US interrogators after disappearing last year, adding to Tehran’s allegations he was abducted by American agents. The US said he was a willing defector who changed his mind and decided to board a plane home from Washington. Shahram Amiri was embraced by his family – including his tearful seven-year-old son – after arriving in Tehran in the latest spectacle of a puzzling series of events that left Iran and Washington with starkly different accounts.

Mr Amiri flashed a V-for-victory sign as he stepped into the terminal. Iran [correctly] portrayed the return of Mr Amiri as a blow to American intelligence services that were desperate for inside information on Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran sought maximum propaganda value – allowing journalists to cover Mr Amiri’s return and having a top envoy from Iran’s Foreign Ministry on hand to greet him. Washington described the 32-year-old Mr Amiri as someone who reached out to US officials, but offered few other details.

Speaking to journalists after a flight via Qatar, Mr Amiri repeated his earlier claims that he was snatched while on a pilgrimage last year in the Saudi holy city of Medina and carried off to the United States. He claimed he was under intense pressures during the first few months after his alleged kidnapping. “I was under the harshest mental and physical torture,” he said at Tehran’s international airport, with his young son sitting on his lap. AWIP: Major Embarrassment for US as Long-Missing Iranian Scientist Turns Up a DC Embassy. PressTV: Iranian scholar speaks about abduction. + Amiri 'rejected bribe offer of USD 50mn'. Wapo: U.S. paid Iranian nuclear scientist $5 million for aid to CIA, officials say.

Israeli navy boats forced the Libyan aid ship "Hope" to sail to the Egyptian harbor of El-Arish instead of Gaza Strip, Reuters news agency reported on Wednesday. The AFP earlier today quoted Mashallah Zawi, the representative of the Gaddafi Foundation which chartered the vessel, as saying that the solidarity activists on board the ship were adamant on heading to Gaza and that their morale was high. He told the French news agency via satellite phone that the ship stopped at sea for 12 hours due to "technical difficulties". Zawi said that the ship was surrounded by eight navy boats. The international campaign to break the siege on Gaza in a statement on Wednesday morning urged the world community to immediately act to protect the Libyan aid vessel. The world must assume its responsibility in protecting the ship and to enable it to reach Gaza especially when it is on a humanitarian mission. PIC: Egypt blocks entry of Jordanian aid convoy to Gaza.

Former Guantanamo detainees can proceed with lawsuits accusing Britain of complicity in torture overseas, a High Court judge ruled Wednesday, rejected a government request to suspend the action. Britain had asked a judge to direct the six men, and six others who plan to launch similar cases, to halt their lawsuits and focus on reaching out of court settlements, allowing an independent inquiry into the accusations to begin. But High Court judge Stephen Silber ruled that the men can press ahead with their cases, even if their lawyers decide to take part in mediation talks aimed at reaching a deal outside the courts. Some documents giving a taste of what might be released in the inquiry also were released, showing an often-confused government position under former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Officials claim the court cases could last five years and cost tens of millions of pounds (dollars), they also insist that intelligence agency staff have been taken off anti-terrorism duties to review up to 500,000 documents to be disclosed in the cases. The Guardian: Omar Deghayes: 'He was brought in manacled and hooded'. + The torture files: the interrogations.

Australian scientists have discovered prehistoric sea life hundreds of kilometers below sea level with remote-control cameras at Osprey Reef.

In an unprecedented mission to document species threatened by ocean warming, scientists found ancient sharks, giant oil fish, swarms of crustaceans and a primitive shell-dwelling squid species called the Nautilus.

“Some of the creatures that we've seen we were sort of expecting, some of them we weren't expecting, and some of them we haven't identified yet,”' AFP quoted lead researcher Justin Marshall from the University of Queensland on Thursday.

Special low-light sensitive cameras trawled 1,400 meters below the Great Barrier Reef to help scientists with the discovery of several unidentified fish species, including prehistoric six-gilled sharks.

The astonishing creatures, which were captured by remote-control cameras at Osprey Reef, live in a dark world where the pressure is 140 times greater than on land.

Marshall said research has been speeded up because recent oil spills are affecting the world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, and there is a growing threat to its biodiversity by the warming and acidification of the world's oceans.

A truly disturbing study from researchers at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, reveals that political partisans reacted to facts that contradicted their worldview by clinging closer to their worldview.

In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates. They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”