The two-day ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has convened in the Iranian capital, Tehran. - At the opening ceremony of the NAM ministerial meeting, Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi hailed Egypt’s efforts during the past three years which “have had considerable effect on the progress of NAM’s programs.” On Sunday, during the opening ceremony of the NAM expert-level meeting, Iran assumed the rotating presidency of the movement for three years. Egypt's Ambassador to the United Nations Mootaz Khalil formally handed over the presidency to Iran. More than 100 countries are partaking in the NAM meeting which kicked off at the expert level in Tehran on Sunday.

PressTV: UN chief to meet Leader of Islamic Revolution, Iran president

Gaza will no longer be “livable” by 2020 unless urgent measures are taken to improve the area’s water supply, power, health and schooling, according to a UN report. The coastal strip is extremely isolated due to an Israeli blockade which Tel Aviv refuses to lift, [falsely] claiming it prevents arms from reaching Gaza’s governing Hamas organization.

“Action needs to be taken right now on fundamental aspects of life: water sanitation, electricity, education, health and other aspects,” UN humanitarian coordinator Maxwell Gaylard told journalists. Those services are "not keeping pace with the needs of the growing population," the report states. According to AFP, the document predicts the population of the Gaza Strip will increase from 1.6 million people today to 2.1 million people in 2020 – calling into question whether the region can actually sustain such growth. At the moment, the region is suffering from its worst-ever fuel shortage and power cuts, as well as unemployment levels of around 45 per cent. But while the population grows, these problems are predicted to only get worse.

Gaza’s lack of clean drinking water should be the first thing that is addressed, according to UNICEF Special Representative Jean Gough. According to Reuters, the report estimates a 60 per cent increase in Gaza’s future water needs, while urgent action is already needed to protect the area’s existing water resources. At present, only a quarter of Gaza's waste water is treated. The rest, including raw sewage, goes straight into the Mediterranean Sea. According to a report released in June by Save the Children and Medical Aid for Palestinians, the levels of water contamination in Gaza are around ten times higher than what is deemed safe for consumption. However, many poor families have no choice but to drink the water.

BBC: Gaza 'will not be liveable by 2020' - UN report
Stephen Lendman: Palestinians Living in Firing Zones

Family of Corrie, who was crushed by an IDF bulldozer during a pro-Palestinian protest in Gaza in 2003, filed lawsuit in Haifa accusing Israel of intentionally killing their 23-year-old daughter. - The Haifa District Court rejected on Tuesday accusations that Israel was at fault over the death of American activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an army bulldozer during a 2003 pro-Palestinian demonstration in Gaza. Corrie’s family had accused Israel of intentionally and unlawfully killing their 23-year-old daughter, launching a civil case in the northern Israeli city of Haifa after a military investigation had cleared the army of wrong-doing. In a ruling read out to the court, judge Oded Gershon called Corrie’s death a “regrettable accident”, but said the state was not responsible because the incident had occurred during what he termed a war-time situation. At the time of her death, during a Palestinian uprising, Corrie was protesting against Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. “I reject the suit,” the judge said. “There is no justification to demand the state pay any damages.”

AWIP: Family of slain US activist awaits verdict

In jail in San Francisco after being arrested at an anti-war rally three years ago, Lily Haskell had a decision to make. Give a DNA sample, as felony arrestees in California must do, or refuse the cheek swab and get charged with an additional misdemeanor. She chose the latter. Now Haskell's the lead plaintiff in a suit that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is rehearing next month. It's a test case dealing with one of the hottest Fourth Amendment issues the country faces — the expectation of privacy that people have over their DNA.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is the California Supreme Court's review of a state court of appeal panel's forceful decision finding the DNA collection unconstitutional. And the U.S. Supreme Court has telegraphed in the past month that it is likely to take up a criminal case in Maryland that raises the same question. The lawyer bringing the federal challenge to California's DNA swab law, Michael Risher of the ACLU of Northern California, hopes that the Ninth Circuit will stop the state from adding arrestee DNA to its already sprawling databank of criminal DNA profiles.

The FBI recently announced that it will distribute free facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies following a pilot program of the system, reported Slate.com. Police will be able to use the Universal Face Workstation (UFW) program, which grants access to a central database of about 13 million images. Police departments will also be able to submit and enhance their own image files to be cross-referenced with existing images in the database to identify matches. UFW, which was piloted in February in Michigan, is part of a $1 billion biometrics FBI program called Next Generation Identification, which will create a database for scars and tattoos. The program is expected to launch within a few weeks, while full operational capability for facial recognition is scheduled for summer 2014, according to a statement from the FBI. Officials in Hawaii, Maryland, South Carolina, Ohio, New Mexico, Kansas, Arizona, Tennessee, Nebraska and Missouri have expressed interest in participating in the facial recognition pilot program. Amid recent news like the WikiLeaks report on the national TrapWire system, some are concerned with privacy issues surrounding facial recognition technology, but the FBI insists such technology is only being used to supplement current biometrics, such as fingerprinting, to identify criminals.

RT: Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system
AWIP: TrapWire investigation links transit systems and Anonymizer in global surveillance network

The U.S. military on Monday dealt out punishment to six Army soldiers for burning Qurans at Bagram Air Base that ignited deadly protest in Afghanistan, and to three Marines for their roles in urinating on Taliban corpses.

The Army handed out administrative discipline to four officers and two non-commissioned officers for the Quran burning but found no ill intent on the part of the soldiers so none will face criminal charges. The administrative punishment, however, will likely result in the end of their military careers. The investigation against one sailor was dropped when it was determined he was simply ordered to drive the truck with the material to the burn site at the base. The burning of the Muslim holy books in February sparked weeks of protests that led to 30 Afghan deaths. U.S. officials said at the time the books were mistakenly sent along with garbage for disposal after detainees had written messages in them. The investigation found up to 100 Qurans and other religious materials were burned in the incinerator at Bagram Air Field on Feb. 20. An Army report released on the incident Monday shed new light on what happened that day.

PressTV: 3 US Marines get slap on wrist for acts of desecration in Afghanistan
AWIP: US forces urinate on dead Taliban

A 28-year-old man has been given a six-month suspended sentence by a court in the Netherlands for threatening and insulting Queen Beatrix – on social networking service Twitter. - In a ruling that may have set a Dutch legal precedent, judges said tweets by the man, who has not been named, could be considered "threatening, insulting and hurtful" even if they had not actually been read by the person at whom they were aimed – in this case, the queen. The detailed contents of the tweets were not revealed in open court, but the judges found them “offensive to her dignity” and said that whether Queen Beatrix herself had read them was “irrelevant” to their decision to convict.

The Mars rover Curiosity is indulging in a flurry of multimedia activity ahead of its science mission proper. It sent the first image from its 100mm telephoto lens, already spotting an intriguing geological "unconformity". Nasa also released a colour panorama of Mount Sharp, the rover's ultimate goal. On Monday, the rover relayed "the first voice recording to be sent from another planet", and on Tuesday it will broadcast a song from artist will.i.am as part of an educational event.

But alongside these show pieces, Curiosity - also known as the Mars Science Laboratory - is already warming up its instruments for a science mission of unprecedented scope on the Red Planet. Nasa said that the rover was already is returning more data from Mars than all of the agency's earlier rovers combined. It will eventually trundle to the base of Mount Sharp, the 5km-high peak at the centre of Gale Crater, in which the rover touched down just over three weeks ago. For now it is examining the "scour marks" left by the rocket-powered crane that lowered the rover onto the planet's surface, giving some insight into what lies just below it.

The rover will now employ its Dan instrument, which fires the subatomic particles neutrons at the surface to examine levels of hydrogen- and hydroxyl-containing minerals that could hint at Mars' prior water-rich history. Another tool in its arsenal, the ChemCam, which uses a laser to vapourise rock and then chemically examine the vapour, will also have a look at the scour marks. And the Sample Analysis at Mars or Sam instrument, itself a package of three analysis tools, has now been switched on and is being run through its paces ahead of "sniffing" the Martian atmosphere; the tests include analysing a sample of Earth air that was left in it at launch.

China's currency could be eventually used as an alternative to the U.S. dollar and Euro by southeast Asian countries, experts said. - Phathanaphong Phusuwan, a senior official of the Bank of Thailand, said in a seminar on Thai-Chinese trade, investment and finance relations on Saturday that the yuan would likely be used more between China and ASEAN member states in the long run. In the panel discussion co-hosted by the National Research Council of Thailand, Huaqiao University and the Thai-Chinese Culture & Economy Association here, the official of the Thai central bank commented the Chinese currency could possibly replace the U.S. dollar and Euro when it comes to trade, financial and money-exchange dealings throughout the ASEAN community, due in part to the unresolved economic and financial problems in the United States and the European Union.

Two activists of the Pussy Riot punk rock group who are being sought by Russian police have fled the country, the band's Twitter account says. - Three members of the group were jailed this month for staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral. The pair who fled have not been named but the husband of one of the jailed women said the duo had taken part in the cathedral protest in February. Many in the West condemned the Pussy Riot sentences as disproportionate. However, the Kremlin has rejected accusations by musicians and some governments that the case was politically motivated. Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich were found guilty of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" and jailed for two years.

Almost a decade after their daughter was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer as she tried to block its path in a Gaza Strip conflict zone, Rachel Corrie's parents are preparing for a judge's ruling in their high-profile civil lawsuit against the military. - They hope Tuesday's court decision will conclude a case that's turned their daughter into a rallying cry for pro-Palestinian activists, taken years of their life and drained their savings. "We are here with a great deal of anticipation for Tuesday," said Corrie's mother, Cindy, 64, a homemaker and musician from Olympia, Washington. "We are hoping for some accountability here for what happened to Rachel." Corrie, a pro-Palestinian activist, was 23 when she was killed in March 2003 while she and other activists sought to block an Israeli military bulldozer they believed was about to demolish Palestinian homes in the Gaza border town of Rafah. The driver has said he didn't see Corrie, and the death was accidental.

Desert Peace: RACHEL CORRIE’S LAST MOMENTS CAPTURED ON FILM - Video
The Guardian: Rachel Corrie's family claim Israeli military withheld vital video evidence
Jonathan Cook: Rachel Corrie family finally puts Israel in dock

Israeli veterans have spoken out, describing a degrading culture of abuse and harassment of Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza. A report containing 30 veterans’ testimonies details numerous cases of violence committed by Israeli soldiers.

The report was released to world media on Saturday by Breaking the Silence, an organization made up of Israeli army veterans formed in 2004. They compiled more than 850 accounts from current and former Israeli soldiers describing abuses they committed or witnessed. The investigation seeks to serve as “a witness to the ongoing decline of the military system into increasing immorality."

A first sergeant in an armored corps unit described his job as “population control,” in a testimony entitled "What is that job, really?" His unit would enter Palestinian villages on a daily basis to “make their presence felt” and to show the local residents that the area did not belong to them. “A patrol goes in, or two patrols, two Hummers secured by a jeep, and raise hell inside the villages. A whole company may be sent in on foot in two lines like a military parade in the streets, provoking riots, provoking children,” said the first sergeant. He said that his commander’s aim was to “grind the population down” so that they would not even think of throwing stones at their occupiers.

An Israeli bus driver refused to take Palestinian passengers on board, was ordered to do so by police, and took his revenge by forcing them off the bus at the entrance to a settlement. The bus company: “The driver acted exactly as expected of him.” - Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, Thursday, two weeks ago: a bus driver on the 286 line that goes to the settlement of Ariel refused to allow a group of Palestinian workers on board who wanted to get back home to the West Bank. After a short argument the driver called the police, asking for the Palestinians to be escorted away from the door of the bus. A policewoman who arrived shortly after talked to the would-be passengers, and then told the driver the Palestinians all had valid permits to be in Israel, all went through security checks at the entrance to the station, and that he therefore must allow them on the bus.

Legal expert Ove Bring says to Radio Sweden that it is now "too late" for Swedish prosecutors to question Julian Assange in London. It has become a "matter of prestige" to not give the Wikileaks founder "special treatment." But he also says that if Assange did come back to Sweden the most likely scenario is that he would be questioned, and then released.

The values that distinguished countries from each other could be grouped statistically into four clusters. These four groups became the Hofstede dimensions of national culture:

■ Power Distance (PDI)
■ Individualism versus Collectivism (IDV)
■ Masculinity versus Femininity (MAS)
■ Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI)

Professor Geert Hofstede conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of how values in the workplace are influenced by culture. He analyzed a large data base of employee values scores collected by IBM between 1967 and 1973 covering more than 70 countries, from which he first used the 40 largest only and afterwards extended the analysis to 50 countries and 3 regions. Subsequent studies validating the earlier results have included commercial airline pilots and students in 23 countries, civil service managers in 14 counties, 'up-market' consumers in 15 countries and 'elites' in 19 countries.
In the 2010 edition of the book “Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind”, scores on the dimensions are listed for 76 countries, partly based on replications and extensions of the IBM study on different international populations.

Lance Corporal Buckley became the 1,990th American service member to die in the war when, on Aug. 10, he and two other Marines were shot inside their base in Helmand Province by a man who appears to have been a member of the Afghan forces they were training. A week later, with the death of Specialist James A. Justice of the Army at a military hospital in Germany, the United States military reached 2,000 dead in the nearly 11-year-old conflict, based on an analysis by The New York Times of Department of Defense records. The calculation by The Times includes deaths not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan and other nations where American forces are directly involved in aiding the war. Nearly nine years passed before American forces reached their first 1,000 dead in the war. The second 1,000 came just 27 months later, a testament to the intensity of fighting prompted by President Obama’s decision to send 33,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2010, a policy known as the surge.

The prospect of a major storm blowing through the Gulf of Mexico toward New Orleans upset the tight choreography of the Republican convention on Sunday, straining the party’s highly scripted plans for showcasing Mitt Romney and raising the possibility that news media attention could shift elsewhere. - With the Tropical Storm Isaac now forecast to roar northwest past Tampa on Monday and Tuesday, officials scrambled to reconfigure what had been a four-night schedule into three and to make contingency plans for further changes. But even if the storm largely bypasses this region, it holds the risk of creating an uncomfortable split-screen image, especially if it continues barreling toward New Orleans. The governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama declared states of emergency in anticipation of the storm. Republicans were wary of the optics of television coverage split between the revelry and partisanship surrounding Mr. Romney’s nomination and the threat of the storm making landfall in Louisiana or Mississippi seven years to the week after Hurricane Katrina left an American city in ruins. At the very least, Mr. Romney’s image makers were coming to terms with sharing the news spotlight with the storm just as they were hoping their gathering would give their candidate the exposure he needs to surge ahead of President Obama.

Tropical Storm Isaac has lashed the Florida Keys and South Florida with wind and rain, but may become an even stronger hurricane as it makes its way toward the northern Gulf Coast. - Isaac is expected to make landfall somewhere along the Gulf Coast by Tuesday or Wednesday — the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. That storm caused disastrous flooding all along the coast. A hurricane hasn't hit the Gulf Coast since Ike in 2008. Most of the damage down by Isaac so far has been in the Caribbean. At least eight people were killed by flooding in Haiti, including in tent cities filled with earthquake victims, and two others in the Dominican Republic. Isaac scraped Cuba, downing power lines and trees. As of Sunday night, the storm had hit the Florida Keys with wind and rain, doing little damage aside from scattered power outages.

Christian Science Monitor: Isaac lashes Florida Keys: Is New Orleans next?
Post-Gazette: Gulf Coast braces for intensified storm
Wikipedia: Tropical Storm Isaac (2012)

Ballistics evidence does not support claims Jeffrey Johnson opened fire at police as CCTV footage shows officers confronting him. - A laid-off clothing designer who killed a former colleague outside the Empire State Building did not fire on police, according to evidence. Jeffrey Johnson, 58, was shot by armed officers as he attempted to flee the scene following the fatal shooting on Friday morning. CCTV footage shows him walking along the street, before two officers confront him and he pulls a gun from a bag and points it at them. A witness had claimed Johnson fired at police, but authorities said ballistics evidence so far does not support that. He was then shot dead by officers and nine bystanders were also wounded in the shooting. Johnson had worked for six years as women's accessories designer at Hazan Imports, which is housed in the Empire State Building, but he was laid off about a year ago. Police commissioner Ray Kelly said Johnson fired at his former colleague three times at close range after a dispute about 9am. Johnson then tried to flee but he was confronted by police who had been alerted by a nearby construction worker, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Mr Bloomberg originally said Johnson "clearly turned his gun on the police", but that claim is now in doubt. The injured were thought to have been hit by police bullets. All are expected to survive.

Says Action Would Be Taken Only if Attacked First. - Syrian Ambassador to Jordan Bahjat Suleiman has warned in an interview earlier this week that Syria is prepared to attack Israel’s nuclear weapons facilities in retaliation for any Israeli attack, and that he believes the sites could be destroyed with just 20 missiles. “What the Zionists have, nuclear weapons-wise, could cause us major casualties should they attack Syria. In contrast, we could cause massive losses to their nuclear facilities and we wouldn’t need more than 20 missiles,” Suleiman told a press delegation. Suleiman reportedly went on to say that Syria would never be the one to start a war with Israel, but that they would “not stand idly by” if attacked. Israeli officials raised the possibility of attacking Syria and trying to capture their chemical weapons and most advanced conventional weapons last month.

UN special rapporteur on human rights to urge establishing a mechanism to investigate such killings. - The US must open itself to an independent investigation into its use of drone strikes or the United Nations will be forced to step in, Ben Emmerson QC said yesterday. His comments came as Pakistani officials said that a US drone strike had killed at least four militants after targeting their vehicles in North Waziristan on Sunday. Attacks by American unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are deeply unpopular in the country, which claims they violate its sovereignty and fan anti-US sentiment. Only last week cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan vowed to defy Taliban threats to attend a rally in Pakistan's tribal areas aimed at highlighting the human cost of US drone strikes.

Anders Behring Breivik refused to appeal a prison sentence that could keep him locked up for life, saying it would legitimize Norway’s legal system. Having been found sane, he apologized to militant nationalists for "not killing more". - In an often harrowing 13-month legal proceeding which found Berivik guilty of carrying out last July’s bombing and shooting massacre which killed 77 and wounded over 240, the Norwegian far-right extremist remained defiant until the end. In his final statement before the court, Breivik insisted he did not

“recognize the court as it “received its mandate from political parties that accept multiculturalism." “Since I don't recognize the authority of the court, I cannot legitimize the Oslo district court by accepting the verdict," he continued. "At the same time I cannot appeal the verdict, because by appealing it, I would legitimize the court." "I wish to apologize to all militant nationalists that I wasn't able to execute more."

He would give one final clinched-fist salute before being led out of the courtroom for the last time.

PressTV: Analyst: West lies about failure of multiculturalism - Video
AWIP: Verdict in Murder Trial of Norwegian Extremist: Guilty
Jordan Shilton: Norwegian mass murderer Breivik sentenced to 21 years
Max Fisher: A Different Justice: Why Anders Breivik Only Got 21 Years for Killing 77 People

Three years in prison have become a closer prospect for some German followers of Russian punk band Pussy Riot. The Catholic Church has pressed charges against Cologne Cathedral intruders, who now face longer prison terms than their heroes. - The three protesters have been charged with disturbing a religious service which, according to German law, could mean up to three years in jail. "The right to demonstration cannot be set above the right to religious freedom and the religious feelings of the congregation,” Cologne Cathedral’s dean told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. Three women from Pussy Riot received a two-year prison sentence for hooliganism over their controversial performance in Russia’s central Cathedral of Jesus Christ the Savior.