A new video has emerged showing Israeli soldiers violently arresting a seven-year-old Palestinian boy in the occupied West Bank. ● The incident took place in the city of al-Khalil (Hebron) on Monday morning after several young children started throwing stones at an Israeli checkpoint. Palestinian sources said that Israeli troops came out of the checkpoint and threw stun grenades and fired tear gas canisters at the children. The Israeli forces arrested Yousef Hajajreh, 12, and Oday Rajabi, 7, the latter being on his way to school. A teacher was also forced into a headlock as he was trying to intervene in the arrest of the crying seven-year old. The Israeli forces dragged him up the road, where he was arrested. Palestinian sources added that Malak Salaymeh, 18, was also detained as he confronted the troops. Seven-year-old Rajabi was reportedly detained at the checkpoint for around 40 minutes before being released.

The MH17 crash was a result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that struck the Boeing from the outside, the preliminary report into the Malaysia Airlines disaster in Ukraine said. ● “Flight MH17 with a Boeing 777-200 operated by Malaysia Airlines broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside,” the Dutch Safety Board said in its preliminary report. Dutch investigators added that “there are no indications” that the tragedy was triggered “by a technical fault or by actions of the crew.” The Malaysia Airlines plane en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 298 people aboard crashed in Ukraine's Donetsk region on July 17. The majority of those on the plane – which was allegedly shot down – were citizens of the Netherlands.

Flight MH-17 Black Box Reveals "Massive Explosive Decompression"
RS Comment ■ Dutch report into MH17 finds crash caused by ‘high-energy objects’ from outside plane
Peter Haisenko ■ The Dutch Commission Report on the MH17 Crash is not worth the Paper it’s Written On
Peter Haisenko ■ The West has control of the investigation and apparently has decided not to investigate
Niles Williamson ■ Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?
Paul Craig Roberts ■ Burning Point With Ekaterina Kudashkina

A new package of sanctions against Russia has been adopted by the EU. Previous reports said the "further restrictive measures" were aimed at targeting three major oil companies, as well as the defense sector. According to a Monday statement by the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, the new package was adopted through written procedure, "deepening the targeted measures of 31 July." "The sanctions aim at promoting a change of course in Russia's actions destabilizing eastern Ukraine," the statement reads.

[Editor's Comment:] Just looking at the last few decades, leaving out Latin America, we've seen the U.S. "destabilizing" Iran, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. In actual fact, the U.S. has killed & murdered about 2 million people, in all probability even more than that. During all this time, we've heard nary a peep from the EU, much less any serious protests and have seen no sanctions whatever against the U.S. On the contrary, the EU has participated in the killing. Why did the EU stay silent? Pretty obvious, right? And now, by what right do the U.S. & the EU whine about Crimea? After all, a plebiscite was held there, one which made the wishes of the people there abundantly clear. - They want to be part of Russia, like they were before Nikita Khrushchev, the Ukrainian, gave Crimea away to the Ukraine (as if this peninsula was his to split off from Russia in the first place). Now the U.S. is preparing for (yet another) war, this time one against Russia, a war that may develop into WW3 and that probably will include the use of nuclear weapons. - All this for Crimea? And what's so special about the Ukraine anyway? Nothing special, except that it borders on Russia and is of strategic value to the U.S. and the ones who control this godforsaken country as a launching pad for attacks against Russia. - No, Obama's not the one; he's clearly not in charge. He's a puppet. A psycopathic one to be sure, but a puppet nevertheless and useful to those who control him. So, who are they? What is it they're after? - The Ukraine and ultimately Russia, right? But why? How far are they willing to go?

Stephen Lendman ■ Sanctions Wars Delay
Itar-Tass: EU ambassadors to meet September 10 to discuss anti-Russian sanctions

Ukrainian and American naval forces are taking part in joint maritime drills dubbed Sea Breeze 2014, which began on Monday in the northwestern part of the Black Sea and will last till September 10. ● Today in the north-west part of the Black Sea, we are beginning the joint Navy exercises of Ukraine and the US, known as eSea Breeze 2014f. The exercises will continue until September 10. The aim is to set up safety measures in areas dangerous to ships,h Colonel Andrey Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's National Security Council, told reporters as cited by AP. The objective of the exercises is gan international operation on establishing and securing a maritime safety zone in a crisis area,h the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said earlier. The drills are part of a program for Kiev-Washington defense cooperation in 2014 and were approved by a presidential decree on March 25, it added. The Sea Breeze exercises come just three days after a peace deal was reached between Kiev and rebel troops following months of bloody fighting. The US and NATO repeatedly accused Russia of ginvading Ukraine,h supporting gpro-Russian separatistsh and deepening the crisis. However, no convincing evidence has been provided for such statements.

■ US-led "Sea Breeze 2014" and "Rapid Trident" in Ukraine aim at more than containing Russia

The INS Tanin, Israel's fourth and most advanced Dolphin class submarine – is en route to Israel from Germany, and the Navy has released video of the vessel and the ceremony in which it was launched at Germany's Kiel shipyards at week's end. ● Reports claim Israel has modified the Dolphin's 650mm launch tubes to allow the launch of missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. Such missiles should give Israel the ability to deter belligerent neighbors like Iran, if it delivers a sufficiently convincing threat to make use of them. However – Israel has thus far maintained a policy of nuclear ambiguity. The German weekly Der Spiegel reported that the submarines have a nuclear capability and are part of Israel's weaponry to counter the nuclear threat from Iran. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has denied that the submarines have a nuclear capability.

An inquiry by the New York Times reveals that, since 2011, 64 foreign governments have subsidized the 28 most important U.S. think tanks, in stark violation of the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act. ● The Times points out that, by doing so, such governments have ensured that nothing damaging to their interests will be published by the think tanks and, in fewer cases, have managed to impose their own concerns, and even used them for lobbying purposes. The daily points its finger, on the one hand, directly at Japan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Norway and Azerbaijan, and, on the other hand, at the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Global Development and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

According to Stars and Stripes, the internal newspaper of the U.S. Armed Forces, the U.S. Army Contracting Command is currently recruiting contractors for an initial one-year stint on the ground in Iraq. ● The newspaper points out that the Obama administration is not willing to deploy a large number of regular troops to fight against the Islamic State and plans to outsource some of their operations. The tasks entrusted to the contractors will be geared towards Arab-Kurdish and Shiite-Sunni reconciliation, which would mark a change of tactics by the U.S. in Iraq where, in 2005, Washington had imposed the adoption of a constitution dividing the nation into regions and communities. The extensive use of contractors was started in the early 2000s by Donald Rumsfeld, who had sought to privatize the armed forces. It gradually lost steam after the military failure in Iraq.

As the US Senate prepares to release a report documenting US torture programme after 9/11, Telegraph reveals new details about the scope of "CIA excesses". ● The CIA brought top al-Qaeda suspects close “to the point of death” by drowning them in water-filled baths during interrogation sessions in the years that followed the September 11 attacks, a security source has told The Telegraph. The description of the torture meted out to at least two leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or “simulated drowning” so far admitted by the CIA. “They weren’t just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth,” said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. “They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture.”

You don’t need to be a Rhodes Scholar to know that dinosaurs became extinct about 66 million years ago. Yet a high school student’s statement that he shot dead his neighbour’s pet dinosaur saw police officers called to the school. Alex Stone, a 16-year-old student at Summerville High School in the town of Summerville in South Carolina, said that his class was asked to write a few sentences about themselves and to list a “status” as if they were filling in their Facebook page, WCSC-TV reported. The teen wrote “I killed my neighbour’s pet dinosaur.” In the status section, he said he wrote: “I bought the gun to take care of the business.” That prompted the school to call in Summerville Police Department. Stone was arrested and later charged with disorderly conduct after he argued with officers, who searched fruitlessly for a gun in his school bag and locker. He has also been suspended from school.

Kentucky Man Arrested For "Terroristic Threatening" After Posting Song Lyrics To Facebook