A U.S. drone fired two missiles at a house in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region on Thursday, killing three people and wounding three others, according to Pakistani intelligence officials. - The attack was the second strike in two days, with another on Wednesday that killed 8 people. The back-to-back strikes could signal a complete end to the hiatus that occurred after American airstrikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November. The Obama administration halted drone strikes for about six weeks, and has slowly restarted them since January. The identities of the 11 people killed in two days are not known publicly. U.S. policy is typically to refer to anyone who has been killed by drones as “terrorists,” whether they are or not.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has accused NATO of killing eight children in an air strike on the country's territory. The incident adds to the already strained relationship between Afghanistan and its Western allies. - The Afghan leader has assigned a delegation to launch an all-out probe into the NATO bombing, which took place in the province of Kapisa on Wednesday. NATO confirmed that “there has been a situation.”

A grocery shop that was bombarded by Israeli war-
planes in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law in the OPT continued during the reporting period (02 – 08 February 2012)

Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF wounded 7 protesters, including a child and a French solidarity activist, in al-Nabi Saleh weakly protest in the West Bank. In the Gaza Strip, three civilians, including 2 children, were wounded by glass shrapnel, a woman suffered nervous trauma and a woman sustained wounds in the foot when IOF warplanes fired a missile at a civilian target.

In the West Bank, during the reporting period, IOF used excessive force to disperse peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to Israeli settlement activities and the construction of the annexation wall in the West Bank. As a result, 7 protesters, including a child and a French solidarity activist, were wounded in al-Nabi Saleh weakly protest, northwest of Ramallah. Additionally, dozens of Palestinian civilians and human rights defenders participating in peaceful demonstrations suffered from tear gas inhalation. IOF also held Ali Dar Ali, 27, a reporter for Palestine TV, and Najib Allah Hussein Sharawna, 23, a cameraman of Palestine TV, in a military jeep for 4 hours.

In the Gaza Strip, IOF warplanes attacked civilian targets, including residential houses. As a result, three civilians, including 2 children, were wounded by glass shrapnel, a woman suffered nervous trauma and a woman sustained wounds in the foot. The airstrikes also resulted in the destruction of an agricultural room, a shop, several warehouses and a tunnel. Additionally, the strikes resulted in damages to 28 houses, 2 shops, a legal firm, a sports club, a school and 4 civilian cars. [...] [...] [...]

Stephen Lendman: Murdering Khader Adnan
Stephen Lendman: Gaza: Isolated Under Siege

Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran's nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News. - Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders. The group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980. The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars.

AWIP: The terrorist attacks in Iran
AWIP: Iran's nuclear scientists are not being assassinated. They are being murdered
Haaretz: Israel's Mossad trained assassins of Iran nuclear scientists, report says
John Glaser: US Officials: Israel Works With Terror Group to Kill Iranian Scientists
Fars News Agency: Report Confirms Mossad-MKO Collaboration

ALEPPO, (SANA) – Two terrorist attacks on Friday morning targeted Military Security Branch and a headquarters of law-enforcement forces in Aleppo City. Source at the Ministry of Health said that the bodies of 25 martyrs and 175 injured people were admitted to the national hospitals. The attacks caused great damage to the two headquarters and the nearby residential buildings. Medical teams are helping injured civilians and military members and pulling bodies from under the rubble.

Early this week, Lebanon’s security officials intercepted and seized a suspicious cargo containing huge amounts of US dollars, guns, special passports and credit cards upon arrival in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, from the US and Brazil. The items, packed in a number of chests and delivered via airmail, were discovered at Beirut’s airport. Earlier in August 2011, Lebanese army intelligence had intercepted a covert shipment of 1,000 assault rifles, reportedly destined for the city of Baniyas in Syria. Army investigators say they have uncovered ties between the smugglers and the political entourage of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who is backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia.

AWIP: En route to Syria's CIA "rebels"? - Lebanese security officials seize suspicious cargo from US, Brazil

UK Minister says website blocking proposals “imminent”. - The British government is about to unveil proposals to block the Internet for copyright enforcement purposes. The confirmation came in a Parliamentary debate yesterday on Intellectual Property, in which pro-copyright MPs had a little ‘chit-chat’ about the allegedly ‘anti-copyright’ government, and indicated their desire for the activation of the Digital Economy Act.

Animal rights activists say they are not so sure animal abuse shown in footage filmed inside a New South Wales abattoir is the work of a rogue operator. - On Thursday night, ABC's Lateline screened distressing footage taken inside the Hawkesbury Valley Abattoir in north Sydney that showed animals not being stunned properly before slaughter and pigs being beaten repeatedly with an iron bar. The NSW Food Authority says it closed down the abattoir after viewing the footage and will conduct an investigation.

Sydney Morning Herald: Atrocity abattoir had passed many audits

Brazil’s massive Belo Monte hydroelectric power project is arguably the most hated government project in the world. Although opposition to the dam remains more international than local, a group of fisherman and tribal members of the Xingu River Lives Movement rowed up and down the river on Wednesday to block construction workers from initial phase construction of the mega-dam.

The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy. Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero."

The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused controversy in 2009 when a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated that they would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350. However, the scientist who led the new work is clear that while greater uncertainty has been discovered in Asia's highest mountains, the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern.