A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that a group of immigrants can proceed with a lawsuit accusing top Bush administration officials of widespread abuses and racial profiling after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The plaintiffs are eight men who were arrested for minor immigration violations after 9/11 as a part of the government's aggressive effort to uncover terrorists. The men allege that they were held for months in New York and New Jersey solely because they were or were perceived to be Muslim or Arab.

"Detaining individuals as if they were terrorists, in the most restrictive conditions of confinement available, simply because these individuals were, or appeared to be, Arab or Muslim exceeds those limits," US District Judges Rosemary Pooler and Richard Wesley wrote in their 109-page decision.

"It might well be that national security concerns motivated the defendants to take action, but that is of little solace to those who felt the brunt of that decision. The suffering endured by those who were imprisoned merely because they were caught up in the hysteria of the days immediately following 9/11 is not without a remedy," the judges said.

Arguing that there is a peace and war party in almost every capital, Professor Stephen Cohen, scholar of Russian studies at Princeton and New York Universities, told RT he believes the war party in Washington is against the Minsk agreement.

US policies in Ukraine have failed to achieve their goals. With violence flaring up once again, and relations fraught with tensions, diplomacy seems to be the best option. But is there a consensus in the US on the acceptable terms of a political settlement, and how are the dynamics of US internal politics likely to affect its policy toward Russia, especially as the 2016 presidential race heats up?

To find answers to these questions RT's program "Worlds Apart" talked to Professor Stephen Cohen, Professor of Russian Studies and History Emeritus at NYU, and Professor of Politics Emeritus at Princeton University.

Area 51 does exist, NASA Chief Major Charles Bolden tells British schoolkids - but there are "no aliens or alien spacecraft or anything" in there.

Speaking to a hand-picked group of British school children, Major Bolden said the US government was not hiding alien life in Area 51 - but said it does exist.

"There is an Area 51. It's not what people think. I've been to a place called that but it's a normal research and development place. I never saw any aliens or alien spacecraft or anything when I was there".

However when asked by a ten year old child if he believed in aliens. The response by the Major was that: "I do believe that we will someday find other forms of life or a form of life, if not in our solar system then in some of the other solar systems - the billions of solar systems in the universe".

"Russia does not claim some sort of hegemony, it does not claim some kind of ephemeral superpower status," Putin said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

According to the president, Moscow has started to protect its interests in a determined way, but is not acting aggressively.

"We have begun to more persistently and consistently defend our interests," he stated. "We want relations based on equality with all members of the international community."

Moscow's relations with the US, the EU and NATO deteriorated since 2014 amid the Ukrainian crisis and Russia's reunification with Crimea. The West accused Russia of participating in the armed conflict in Ukraine and began boosting its military presence in Europe.

Moscow has repeatedly denied the accusations, expressing concern over NATO's expansion and increased military presence in Eastern Europe near Russia's western borders.

Russia and Greece have signed a deal to create a joint enterprise for construction of the Turkish Stream pipeline across Greek territory, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said. The pipeline will have a capacity of 47 billion cubic meters a year.

The construction costs are about €2 billion and the parties will sign a roadmap Friday, Novak told RIA at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum.

The Greek extension of the Turkish Stream project is called the South European pipeline in the memorandum signed on Friday, Novak said, adding that the construction will start in 2016 and be completed by 2019.

The two countries will have equal shares in the company, Novak said.Construction of the pipeline in Greece will be financed by Russia, and Athens will return the money afterward.

The High Level International Military Group—a UN-commissioned group made up of 11 former chiefs of staff, generals, senior officers, and political leaders from the U.S., Germany, Spain, Holland, the U.K., Italy, Australia, and Colombia—dismissed all charges and allegations of Israel's war crimes after investigating last summer's attack on Gaza.

The report was issued on Saturday following the group's five-day trip to the region in March. It ultimately claims that Israel acted responsibly and with much restraint when the IDF bombarded Gaza last summer during what is known as "Operation Protective Edge." The report even refers to the attack as "legitimate."

An excerpt from the report states the following:

"We were well aware of the allegations made by some governments, the United Nations, human rights groups and the media, that Israel acted outside the laws of armed conflict in Gaza. Some have suggested that the IDF lacked restraint or even deliberately targeted innocent civilians."

Nevertheless, the investigators drew the following conclusion:

"We examined the circumstances that led to the tragic conflict last summer and are in no doubt that this was not a war that Israel wanted. In reality Israel sought to avoid the conflict and exercised great restraint over a period of months before the war when its citizens were targeted by sporadic rocket attacks from Gaza. Once the war had begun, Israel made repeated efforts to terminate the fighting. The war that Israel was eventually compelled to fight against Hamas and other Gaza extremists was a legitimate war, necessary to defend its citizens and its territory against sustained attack from beyond its borders."

The report appears to be nothing close to the results of a "fact-finding mission," as was claimed, but rather a written defense of the Israeli government.

News about the freezing of Russian assets in France and Belgium will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the Khodorkovsky case.

The asset freezes will almost certainly be relaxed or lifted over the new few weeks because they are legally dubious.

To understand why, it is necessary to explain the nature of the case.

There is a major spat going on at present around Conflict of Interest. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) appears to be backtracking on the issue, and they are talking about relaxing their rules.

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) is very 'heavy' on Conflict of Interest (COI) and has been somewhat critical of the NEJM approach - to say the least. See 13^th June edition of BMJ.

To give you a flavour, one article in the BMJ has the title 'Backtracking on conflicts of interest: a very bad idea... A series of articles in the New England Journal of Medicine has questioned whether the conflict of interest movement has gone too far in its campaign to stop the drug industry influencing the medical profession. Here three former NEJM editors respond with dismay.'

My sympathies are almost entirely with the three former editors: Robert Steinbrook, Jerome Kassirer and Marcia Angell. I think bias, and resultant distortion of medical research is a massive problem.

So massive that it has become difficult to believe most of the research that is published. I am not alone in my concerns. Here is what Richard Horton (Editor of the Lancet), has to say on the matter:

'The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.'

A half of medical scientific research may be untrue... think on the implications of that for a moment. However, before you focus all your efforts on trying to expose financial conflicts of interest as the solution to all problems, you need to take several steps back.

The United States is the primary instigator of the current tension with Russia, Pere Ortega, the head of the Barcelona-based Delas Center for Peace Studies, told Sputnik Wednesday.

"The only one who benefits from all this pressure is the United States, which is the one straining the situation because it weakens Western Europe... Russia shouldn't fall into this trap," Ortega said.

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow would reinforce its nuclear potential in 2015 by adding more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles. Following the announcement, NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg vowed to respond to Russia's "assertive" rhetoric by building up a military presence in Eastern Europe.

"The escalation is verbal at the moment," but it is serious enough to "say that the leadership of both Russia and the United States especially and NATO, are in a very dangerous escalation [of the situation], which could put the threat of confrontation between Russia and Western Europe back on the table."

Russia's relations with NATO became strained after the start of the Ukrainian armed conflict in 2014. The bloc accused Russia or participating in the conflict, and froze contacts with Moscow. Russia, in turn, has denied any involvement in the Ukrainian crisis, calling it a purely internal affair.

On the anniversary of one of the most explosive political scandals in American history, let Sputnik guide you through ten of the most shameful, shocking, deplorable embarrassments to ever rock Washington DC.

In its nearly 240-year history, America has seen its share of political sideshows. Some were minor: former US Representative Anthony Weiner's sexting habits, the cost of John Edwards' haircut, Aaron Schock redecorating his Congressional office to look like the set of Downton Abbey. Others have become part of the national zeitgeist. Stories of the Boston Tea Party, Alexander Hamilton's duel to the death with Aaron Burr, George Washington chopping down that cherry tree, all occupy a special place in a shared American story.

But none have become quite so grandiose as Nixon's great con on the American people, which occurred 43 years ago Wednesday.

1. Watergate

In 1972, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, two reporters for the Washington Post, were contacted by an FBI informant known only as "Deep Throat." Later identified as the Bureau's associate director Mark Felt, he helped bring to light one of the most astonishing presidential scandals in US history, ultimately leading to the resignation of Republican President Richard Nixon.

On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested after breaking into the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex. Deep Throat unveiled a high-level cover-up which, once unraveled, revealed that the five men were paid by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. Nixon's involvement in the affair was proven when the Supreme Court got its hands on the president's infamous tape recordings.

"...People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook," Nixon said during a press conference. "Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."