US President Barack Obama has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Israeli President Shimon Peres, the man who has overseen the killing of Palestinian women and children by Israeli forces in the occupied territories for decades.

Obama awarded the 88-year-old Israeli president the highest civilian honor in the United States during a dinner ceremony in the White House on Wednesday. “No individual has done so much over so many years to build our alliance… as the leader we honor tonight -- our friend, Shimon Peres,” Obama said during the event, which also hosted former US President Bill Clinton. Obama also stated that the “bonds” between the United States and Israel are “unbreakable” and “non-negotiable.” The Israeli president has been honored by Obama a few months ahead of the US presidential election of November 2012...

The UK's highest court has rejected a move by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to reopen his appeal against his extradition to Sweden where he faces sex crime allegations. - The announcement was made by the Supreme Court, which said in a statement the required period for extradition "shall not commence until the 14th day after today". Seven Supreme Court justices unanimously dismissed the move as being "without merit". On May 30 the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-2 majority that Assange's extradition was lawful and could go ahead. But his QC Dinah Rose immediately told the court that Assange was considering an application for his case to be reopened on the basis that there had been a flawed hearing. The Swedish authorities want Assange, 40, to answer accusations of raping one woman and sexually molesting and coercing another in Stockholm in August 2010 while on a visit to give a lecture. Assange, whose WikiLeaks website has published a mass of leaked diplomatic cables that embarrassed several governments and international businesses, claims the sex was consensual and that the allegations against him are politically motivated.

The Guardian: Julian Assange's application to reopen extradition case turned down
ABC News: UK Top Court Rejects Assange Bid to Reopen Case

James Cogan: Defend Julian Assange
Robert Stevens: British Supreme Court endorses extradition of Julian Assange
John Pilger: Why what happens to Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange is important for us all
WL Central: Open letter to the Australian people from Christine Assange, mother of Julian Assange

Flying, spying robots are addictive. Every military commander who has them wants more. Those who don’t have them covet their colleagues’ supply. And according to Air Force planning, they’re about to go to the military’s redheaded, drone-poor stepchild: the command overseeing South America. - That’s according to Gen. Norton Schwartz, the outgoing Air Force chief of staff. As Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk drones start to leave the Afghanistan war behind, Schwartz told a Washington audience on Monday, they’ll go to “operational missions by previously underserved” regional commands — Pacific Command and Southern Command, per National Defense magazine. While US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia have loaded up on drones, they’ve largely been left out of the unmanned escalation.

Greeks pulled their cash out of the banks and stocked up with food ahead of a cliffhanger election on Sunday that many fear will result in the country being forced out of the euro. - Bankers said up to 800 million euros ($1 billion) were leaving major banks daily and retailers said some of the money was being used to buy pasta and canned goods, as fears of returning to the drachma were fanned by rumors that a radical leftist leader may win the election. The last published opinion polls showed the conservative New Democracy party, which backs the 130 billion euro ($160 billion) bailout that is keeping Greece afloat, running neck and neck with the leftist Syriza party, which wants to cancel the rescue deal. As the election approaches, publishing polls is now legally banned and in the ensuing information vacuum, party officials have been leaking contradictory "secret polls".

Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed yesterday never to bow in the face of social upheaval as tens of thousands of determined protesters chanting “Russia Will be Free” marched against his third term. - A sea of white opposition ribbons and posters mocking the strongman filled central Moscow’s leafy boulevards for a peaceful procession, although some top protest leaders were prevented from attending because of police questioning. The so-called March of Millions – the first since May, when Putin extended his 12-year domination of Russia through to at least 2018 – ended with a rain-soaked rally. No arrests were reported. But anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny and A-List television host Ksenia Sobchak were being interrogated after having their homes raided in a choreographed security sweep that seemed designed to keep them off stage. “Dear friends, they are afraid of us and we aren’t afraid of them,” protest leader Boris Nemtsov told the masses on an avenue named after the Soviet-era Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov. A police officer later walked backstage to hand Nemtsov a warrant to appear for questioning later in the day.

A new Swedish study shows that all Swedes who developed narcolepsy from the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix received the vaccine from 12 of the 35 batches, despite the Swedish Medical Products Agency’s (Läkemedelsverket) previous claim that no such connection exists. - Over 220 Swedes, most of them children, developed narcolepsy as a side effect from the Swine flu vaccine Pandemrix, according to the reports filed with insurance company Läkemedelsförsäkringen. All these had received the vaccine from some 12 of the 35 batches of vaccine delivered to Sweden. From 23 of the 35 shipments there is no recorded case of anyone developing the condition, according to the study, which was carried out by the Swedish Narcolepsy Association (Narkolepsiföreningen). The association traced the vaccine through the batch number on the side of the boxes. Their findings will now be investigated by the agency, which has previously denied any connection between different vaccine shipments and the onset of narcolepsy. In some parts of Sweden, namely in counties Skåne, Västra Götaland, Dalarna and Uppland, there are more children affected by narcolepsy than anywhere else in the country, which has so far flummoxed researchers. Over half a million Swedes were vaccinated against swine flu with Pandemrix between autumn 2009 and spring 2010.

Gaza's only fresh source of water is too dangerous to drink because of contamination by fertiliser and human waste, a new report says. - The charities Save the Children and Medical Aid for Palestinians say the number of children being treated for diarrhoea has doubled in five years. They say Israel's five-year blockade of the territory is preventing crucial sanitation equipment from getting in. The blockade must be lifted "in its entirety", they say. The report, Gaza's Children: Falling Behind, says that high levels of nitrates and other contaminants have been found in the main water supply. Nitrates, found in faeces and fertiliser, are linked to the doubling of the incidence of watery diarrhoea in children since the blockade began, it says. As well as the blockade, it blames war damage and chronic underinvestment.

AWIP: Official report: 90% of Gaza water polluted
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The Vatican Bank is under media fire as reports emerge that Italian prosecutors suspect it of laundering Sicilian mafia bosses’ riches. - The Institute for Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, has so far refused to disclose details of an account held by a priest in connection with a money laundering and fraud investigation. Father Ninni Treppiedi was sacked from serving as a priest after a series of church funds transactions made by his parish came to anti-mafia prosecutors’ attention this spring. The dealings, involving millions of euro, date back to 2007-2009. Prosecutors suspect Treppiedi was involved in money-laundering operations linked to Matteo Messina Denaro, a Mafia Godfather on the run. The cleric’s former post in Aclamo, near Trapani, is said to be the richest parish in the Mafia stronghold of Sicily.

Syrian Christians light candles during a service
at the al-Zaytoun Church in Bab Touma Square in
Damascus, on December 13 , 2011 in support of
Syrian President Bashar Assad and in memory of
those killed in the ongoing unrest in the country.
(AFP Photo/Louai Beshara)

The Christian minority in Syria is facing a growing threat and thousands are being forced to flee their homes as they face harassment and discrimination from radial Islamist factions of the opposition.

At least 9,000 Christians from the western Syrian city of Qusayr were forced to seek refuge after an ultimatum from a local military chief of the armed opposition, Abdel Salam Harba, Fides news agency reports. In the latest outburst of violence a Christian man was shot dead by a sniper in Qusayr, which neighbors the restive city of Homs. There have been reports last week that some mosques in the city have announced from the minarets: "Christians must leave Qusayr within six days, which expires this Friday." Two Catholic priests who fled Qusayr confirmed to the news agency that they heard the ultimatum "with their own ears" repeated from the minarets. "The situation is unsustainable in the area and exposed to total lawlessness," Fides sources on the ground say. They also fear that the fate of Christians in Qusayr could soon affect the 10,000 believers who live in other villages in the area. The areas controlled by the opposition are witnessing the rise of radical forms of Sunni Islam with the extremists not willing to live in peace with the Christians. Many of these gangs and armed groups operate independently of the Free Syrian Army, which rejects such kinds of discrimination against minorities.

Israel’s Dublin embassy planned to smear Palestine activists as sexual deviants and Mossad agents. - Israel’s deputy ambassador in Dublin proposed to her superiors a plan to personally smear Palestine solidarity activists – especially Israelis – to “humiliate and shame them” as suffering from psychological and sexual problems and imply that they work for Israel’s spy agency Mossad. Deputy Ambassador Nurit Tinari-Modai, who is also the wife of Ambassador Boaz Modai, made the suggestions in a memo to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs that was exposed by Israel’s Channel 10. The full text of the Channel 10 report has been translated from Hebrew by Dena Shunra, with emphasis added.

The first deportation flight is expected to leave Israel on Sunday for Juba, the capital of South Sudan, as part of what Israel calls Operation Returning Home. - Detentions began on Sunday in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, where Israeli television filmed weeping African women and men in handcuffs. Those detained were sent to the Saharonim detention facility in the Negev Desert, close to where they first entered Israel over the porous Sinai Desert border with Egypt. The South Sudanese, whose country was established in 2011 after they fled civil war in Sudan five or six years ago, will be the first to be repatriated, under an agreement between South Sudan and Israel. They number only some 1,500. "The next stage is the removal from Israel of all the "infiltrators" [Untermenschen] from Eritrea and Sudan, whose number comes close to 50,000 people," said Interior Minister Eli Yishai.

The practice of ritually circumcising infant boys is outdated, dangerous, and should be banned, according to Centre Party justice policy spokeswoman Jenny Klinge. - Although the Centre Party itself a junior partner in Norway’s Red-Green coalition government, the politician also criticized the government’s decision to consult experts on the possibility of introducing circumcision into the public healthcare system, a move she fears would legitimize the practice. She stressed that she was not opposed to circumcision in cases where it was deemed a medical necessity. “But circumcision based on ritual and religion is actually about holding down a newborn baby boy and cutting off part of a healthy sexual organ, with all the consequences that this might have for an individual’s future health and sex life,” said Klinge. With this in mind, performing a circumcision on religious grounds ought to be made a criminal offence, she added. Jan Helge Solbakk, a professor of medical ethics at Oslo University, agreed with Klinge’s criticism of the practice. “It represents an irreversible operation on a boy who is not in a position to protect himself, and as such is in breach of basic human rights,” he told Dagbladet.

A new study published in Nature Climate Change, asserts that the warming of the world’s oceans have everything to do with the effects of man. This scientific research has climate change alarmists excited over a new way to direct man-made climate change into the social meme. - According to the study, “We have identified a human-induced fingerprint in observed estimates of upper-ocean warming on multidecadal timescales.” Computer model data from research from Australia, Japan, India and the US proves that the temperature of the oceans and its variable fluctuations are not a natural occurrence. Causational information fabricated by suppositional computer models from the world’s major oceans compared to climate alarmist’s computer models shows that there is an excess of man-made influence. The international team of researchers used for this study attributed only archrival computer models and assumed simulations and compared them to the supposed effects of fossil fuel emissions during the last century.

A section of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership was leaked to the Web early Wednesday, and its contents suggest that US President Barack Obama was perhaps not so genuine with promises made while campaigning in 2008 and even offers some insight into why his administration has been eerily secretive about the TPP. - Despite the White House’s efforts to keep a proposed free trade agreement concealed from the public — and even Congress — an excerpt from the TPP leaked Wednesday reveals that President Obama is prepared to bow to multinational corporations. The United States has been engaged in discussion with eight Pacific nations to come to agreement on the terms of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade contract that would allow for a more open system of exchange between the US and less developed nations. Critics have been concerned, however, over how provisions of the project could drive up the price of medications and other goods across the world. The White House’s reluctance to provide details to even leading lawmakers responsible for America’s trade plans has caused a rift within the president’s own political party as his administration remains adamant about protecting the items being heard.