The British ambassador to Israel has said international support for the Jewish state among those in the political mainstream is eroding, driven by settlement expansion in the West Bank and continued restrictions on Gaza.

There is "growing concern" in the UK over lack of progress towards peace with the Palestinians, and Israel was now being seen as Goliath against the Palestinians as David, said Matthew Gould, in reference to the biblical story.

In an unusually forthright interview for Israel's Channel 10 news, Gould said he detected a shift among the middle ground of British members of parliament towards a more critical view of Israel.

"Israelis might wake up in 10 years' time and find out that the level of understanding in the international community has suddenly changed, and that patience for continuing the status quo has reduced," he said.

"Support for Israel is starting to erode and that's not about these people on the fringe who are shouting loudly and calling for boycotts and all the rest of it. The interesting category are those members of parliament in the middle, and in that group I see a shift."

Belarus has expelled the Swedish ambassador for meeting opposition groups and "destroying" relations between Stockholm and Minsk.
Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said the accusations against Ambassador Stefan Eriksson were "ridiculous" and "groundless".

The move comes a month after a Swedish PR firm dropped hundreds of teddy bears over Belarus in a pro-democracy stunt.

Mr Bildt said Sweden would not welcome Belarus's incoming ambassador.

He added that two other Belarusian diplomats in Stockholm had also been told to leave.

In power since 1994, Belarus's President Alexander Lukashenko has cracked down hard on political opponents. His re-election in 2010 was marred by reports of abuses.

Four weeks into a trial between two titans of the biotech industry, Monsanto Co. claimed on Tuesday that its biggest competitor, DuPont, owes them $1 billion for infringing on their patent for herbicide-tolerant lab-made crops.

Monsanto insisted this week that rival company DuPont owes them $1 billion for producing genetically modified crops that were designed to withstand the herbicide Roundup, a technology for which the leading biotech corporation has a patent for. Monsanto's accusations are based on hundreds of lines of DuPont-made soybean crops that combined the patented Roundup Ready trait with their own herbicide immunity called GAT. Although DuPont claims that their products performed better than Monsanto's crops by combining technologies from both companies, Monsanto maintains that DuPont infringed on their copyright going back several years and should now compensate them to the tune of $1 billion.

DuPont has filed a counterclaim in response under the argument that Monsanto deceived the US government in getting patent approval for their Roundup Ready crops. Attorneys for DuPont say that Monsanto was not clear with the US Patent and Trademark Office about what genes used in their Roundup Ready crops actually helped organisms fight off herbicides, allowing them wide breadth to thwart similar attempts at the technology from its competitors.

The NYPD's top officials have endorsed the department's surveillance of Muslims and even top-secret missions abroad. According to the author of a new book, though, the FBI says these efforts produced "no intelligence of any value."

That's what reporter Ronald Kessler has found, at least, and he's dug deep to get to the bottom of the NYPD's controversial surveillance tactics that was first uncovered by the Associated Press in recent months. Earlier this year it was discovered that the NYPD had been conducting clandestine surveillance over Muslims and collecting intelligence everywhere from local markets to mosques and even in cities abroad. Kessler investigated that program to put together his forthcoming book, The Secrets of the FBI, and in an except just released by the author, he writes that even one of America's biggest intelligence agencies is up in arms over the NYPD's actions.

Kessler writes that the efforts under former FBI Director J Edgar Hoover "not only trampled on Americans' rights but often failed to focus effectively on real threats such as spies and terrorists." Decades after Hoover's death, however, Kessler says that those merits are alive and well, but not with the FBI. Even though it's arguably not part of their job, the NYPD has adopted controversial techniques and policies that the author compares to the practices put forth by Hoover.

"In an unprecedented move, Michael B. Ward, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Newark office, went public to say that the New York surveillance tactics were not an effective form of intelligence gathering and were in fact harming the fight against terrorism by fomenting distrust among New Jersey's Muslims," Keller writes.

A North Dakota court has approved the use of drones to help arrest citizens on US soil. UAVs have primarily been used to conduct strikes against purported militants in countries like Pakistan, but their use at home has been on the rise as of late.

­District Judge Joel Medd denied a request to dismiss charges against Rodney Brossart, who was arrested after law enforcement resorted to using a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to inspect his property, according to court documents obtained by US News.

Judge Medd wrote that "there was no improper use of an unmanned aerial vehicle" and that the UAV "appears to have had no bearing on these charges being contested."

Last June, Brossart was arrested after a long standoff with police, prompted by his refusal to return a herd of cows that had meandered onto his farm in the town of Lakota. During the standoff, Brossart was tased by police after allegedly threatening to kill an officer entering his property. At one point, the Department of Homeland Security offered the local SWAT team one of its Predator drones.

Court documents show that the drone was used "for surveillance" while local SWAT team chief Bill Macki said the UAV inspected Brossart's property to make sure that neither he, nor his family members, were armed or left the farm during the arrest.

While being stripped naked by US airport technology might make some travelers uncomfortable, the TSA has further elevated concern by refusing to hold public hearings regarding its rules and regulations of nude full-body scanners.

A year ago, the Transportation Security Administration was ordered to hold public hearings regarding the use of its full-body scanners at US airport security checkpoints - hearings that never occurred, reported Wired.

In a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in July 2011, claiming the body scanners were intrusive and unconstitutional, the US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to block use of the scanners - but ordered the hearings.

Under the Administrative Procedures Act, the TSA would have to go through a 90-day "notice and comment" period for any rules that would affect the rights of the public.

Critics of the machines, including worried air passengers, claim that the radiation used by the scanners to see through clothes are privacy violations and threats to ones health. Some have questioned the scanner's effectiveness, worrying that the machines might not detect explosives taped to a person's body - or placed inside the body. These concerns, among others, would have to be addressed at the hearings.

A senior Palestinian official says Abbas leaning toward waiting until after the U.S. vote, in line with a U.S. request, to avoid further strain to his relationship with the Obama administration.

The Palestinians are bracing for possible punitive reactions by the United States and Israel if they go ahead with plans to seek UN General Assembly recognition of "Palestine" as a non-member observer state, according to an internal document obtained yesterday.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, backed by the Arab League, is ready in principle to take this step, but hasn't decided whether to submit the request when the General Assembly convenes in September or to wait until after the U.S. presidential election in November.

A senior Palestinian official said Abbas leans toward waiting until after the U.S. vote, in line with a U.S. request, to avoid further strain to his relationship with the Obama administration.

However, some members of Abbas' inner circle are pushing for a September bid, arguing that the Palestinians have gained nothing by trying to appease the U.S.

"We have nothing to lose from the Americans," said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO Executive Committee. "What we need is to move fast."

The final decision is up to Abbas.

The Spanish government said on Thursday that it had arrested three men suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and believed to have been planning attacks in Europe.

The Spanish Interior Ministry released photographs of the three but offered only minimal details. The Associated Press, quoting the Spanish police, said that one was Russian, the second a Russian of Chechen descent and the third a Turk. They were arrested as part of a 24-hour police operation carried out between Tuesday night and Wednesday.

The Spanish interior minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, said in an interview by telephone that the men had been in Spain for about two months and under close surveillance for several weeks. "We have clear indications that an attack was being planned, whether in Spain or another European country or even both," Mr. Fernández Díaz said.

He would not discuss the suspects' likely targets, but said that they had received military-style training and were "clearly not acting as lone wolves." Among the evidence gathered by the police was "documentation about flying ultralight aircraft," he said.

The Turk, who appeared to be acting as a facilitator, was arrested in La Línea de la Concepción, a town in southern Spain just north of Gibraltar, in a rented home where the police also found explosives, officials said. The two others were intercepted while traveling by bus near Valdepeñas in central Spain on their way from southern Spain to the northeastern border with France. At least one fiercely resisted arrest, although the minister said that no gun was fired.

He said it was apparently their effort to leave Spain that set off the operation.

Citing the Syrian government's intractability, increasing violence and the international community's lack of consensus, former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan announced his resignation. He says there is still a chance for Syria to avoid the worst, 'if the international community can show the courage and leadership necessary.'

The resignation of Kofi Annan, the point man for international efforts to bring peace to Syria, emphatically confirmed what events on the ground had already been making clear: The country's fate is far more likely to be decided by force than by negotiations.

The former U.N. secretary-general's announcement Thursday that he was ending his attempt to negotiate an end to the conflict came amid a sharp increase in fighting that began after a bomb killed four top security aides to President Bashar Assad last month.

While government forces subsequently pushed insurgent bands out of the capital, Damascus, they are now locked in what could be a decisive battle for the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub and most populous urban center.

The former deputy director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has left the agency in the wake of the fallout from the Fast and Furious gun walking scandal. William Hoover was no longer employed at the agency as of Aug, 1, 2012, according to an ATF spokesman. Officials declined to comment further, citing the Privacy Act.

Hoover had served as the deputy director of the bureau since February 2007 and was in that position during the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal. Prior to being the No. 2 at the ATF, Hoover had served as the assistant director for field operations. He joined the ATF in 1987 after having worked in Virginia at several law enforcement agencies. He had also served as special agent in charge of Boston and Washington field offices before going to ATF headquarters.

Under Fast and Furious, ATF agents recorded and tracked straw purchases of weapons, which eventually "walked" across the U.S. border into Mexico. ATF agents were tracking the purchases in a failed effort to locate major weapons traffickers, rather than catching low-level buyers. The ATF operation took a tragic toll when two guns linked to the operation were found near slain U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry on Dec. 14, 2010.

Hoover had been briefed on Fast and Furious by ATF agent William Newell, the special agent in charge overseeing the case. In March 2010 Hoover became concerned about the number of guns involved in the case and ordered ATF agents in Phoenix to wrap the case up in 90 days.