Israeli media say an Iron Dome missile fired to intercept Palestinian Grad rockets missed its target and landed near one of the busiest highways in the Israeli city of Ashdod on November 21.

The Iron Dome missile shield marked another failure as its missile went in a wrong direction toward a busy highway instead of heading upwards to the Palestinian rockets, and caused an explosion only 30 meters from the road, the media stated.

An Egypt-mediated ceasefire agreement on Wednesday ended eight days of Israeli attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip that killed more than 160 Palestinians and injured about 1,200 others.

At least one Palestinian has been killed and seven others injured by Israeli fire in the southern Gaza Strip despite an Egypt-mediated ceasefire.

Medical sources said a 21-year-old Palestinian lost his life on Friday as Israeli forces opened fire in the village of Khuzaa, east of Khan Yunis.

The Palestinian emergency service identified the dead man as Abdelhadi Qdeih Anwar, a farmer who wanted to check on his farm which lies adjacent to the heavily-guarded border with the occupied lands.

Reports say seven other Palestinians also suffered gunshot wounds.

Only 36% of Singaporeans report feeling positive or negative emotions on a daily basis, compared to 60% in the Philippines

Never mind its temperate 28C weather, low unemployment rate and high per-capita GDP - Singapore is the most emotionless society in the world, according to a new Gallup poll, beating the traditionally po-faced Georgia, Lithuania and Russia in a survey of more than 150 nations.

Asking respondents questions such as "Did you feel well-rested yesterday?", "Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?" and "Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?", the survey found that Singaporeans were the least likely to reveal experiencing any emotions at all.

Just 36% of Singaporeans reported feeling positive or negative emotions on a daily basis, while 60% of Filipinos recorded regularly feeling both - the highest response rate of any country worldwide.

In 2010, the Belarussian opposition leader Andrei Sannikov took part in the country's presidential election. He was under no illusions he might "win".

Since taking power in 1994, the country's hardline president, Alexander Lukashenko, had maintained an iron grip on power. But Sannikov was unprepared for the regime's sudden, violent crackdown, the worst in 20 years.

On the evening of the vote, Sannikov and nearly 30,000 opposition supporters rallied in Minsk's freezing central square. His recollection of what happened next is hazy.

Riot police grabbed Sannikov, pushed him to the ground and then beat him savagely. "I lost consciousness," he says, speaking in his first newspaper interview since fleeing Belarus. "My wife and friend covered me with their bodies. They saved my life."

When he came round, Sannikov couldn't walk. A secret police officer had smashed his knees with a metal shield, he says - his leg was in agony. Friends helped him stagger into a journalist's car.

Former French president denies taking £120,000 from L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt to help his re-election campaign

Nicolas Sarkozy has been questioned by a judge over allegations that he received envelopes stuffed with cash to fund his successful 2007 election campaign.

The donations are said to have come from the L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, the richest woman in France. The former president was also questioned over allegations that he and his supporters took advantage of the 90-year-old billionaire's frail state of mind, and that he used his presidential power to hamper criminal investigations into the scandal.

Sarkozy, who lost his immunity from prosecution when he failed to secure a second term in office in May, has denied any wrongdoing.

The National Security Agency has shot down a Freedom of Information Act request for details about an elusive presidential order that may allow the government to deploy the military within the United States for the supposed sake of cybersecurity.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reports on Tuesday that their recent FOIA request for information about a top-secret memo signed last month by US President Barack Obama has been rejected [PDF]. Now attorneys for EPIC say they plan to file an appeal to get to the bottom of Presidential Policy Directive 20.

Although the executive order has been on the books for a month now, only last week did details emerge about the order after the Washington Post reported that Pres. Obama's signature to the top-secret directive could allow the White House to send in recruits from the Pentagon to protect America's cyber-infrastructure.

Because Presidential Policy Directive 20 is classified, the exact wording of the elusive document has been a secret kept only by those with first-hand knowledge of the memo. For their November 14 article, the Post spoke with sources that saw the document to report that the directive "effectively enables the military to act more aggressively to thwart cyberattacks on the nation's web of government and private computer networks."

In response to the Post's report, EPIC filed a FOIA request to find out if the policy directive could mean military deployment within the United States, especially since the sources who have seen the memo say it allows the Pentagon to pursue actions against adversaries within a vaguely described terrain known only as "cyberspace."

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has issued a new constitutional declaration to expand his powers, ordering retrials of the ex-regime officials over the 2011 clampdown on protesters.

Under the new declaration, no judicial body can dissolve the Constituent Assembly that is currently writing a new constitution.

"The president can issue any decision or measure to protect the revolution," Presidential Spokesman Yasser Ali said while reading out the constitutional declaration on television on Thursday.

"The constitutional declarations, decisions and laws issued by the president are final and not subject to appeal," he added.

At least one Palestinian has been killed and seven others wounded by Israeli fire east of Khan Yunis located in the southwestern Gaza Strip despite an Egypt-brokered ceasefire agreement which went into effect on Wednesday.

The United State Department of Agriculture has finalized a report to address concerns from farmers who fear they'll be next on an ever-expanding list of defendants sued by biotech giants Monsanto, but those worries aren't about to end.

The Monsanto Company dominates more than just grow fields across the US, as evident in their stellar track record of taking small-time farmers to court and winning cases, an occurrence that Think Progress acknowledges happens roughly a dozen times a year. Time and time again, Monsanto's patented, lab-made genetically engineered seeds are sold to one farmer, only for Mother Nature to move the crop onto neighboring fields with the help of a bit of wind. Just as often, of course, Monsanto's team of high-paid litigators take the little guys to court, only to triumph thanks to a legal counsel that collects around $10 million a year just to take other farmers to court.

With Monsanto-led lawsuits all too common, the USDA was tasked with putting together a panel - the Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture, or AC21 - to analyze, among other items, "What types of compensation mechanisms, if any, would be appropriate to address economic losses1 by farmers in which the value of their crops is reduced by unintended presence of genetically engineered(GE) material(s)?"

The AC21 panel released their findings in a report [PDF] entitled 'Enhancing Coexistence' that was sent to the secretary of agriculture this week. In it, however, they have little to say to the farmers who are likely to be brought before a judge while Monsanto and other biotech kings come out on top.

According to the AC21 group, the best maneuver for any Monsanto foe to take right now is to simply buy insurance, suggesting that the top guns will be given the go-ahead to continue with their contested habit of near endless litigation, a practice that has a tendency to leave the little guys bankrupt and out of business - only to be bought up by the billion-dollar Monsanto corporation after their bills can't be paid.

Israeli security forces have arrested the suspects they allege were behind the bombing attack on a Tel Aviv bus. Authorities claim the attack was planned by Hamas operatives.

­Those arrested admitted during an interrogation that they were responsible for both preparing the bomb and choosing the target of the attack.

Israeli security sources announced on Thursday that they had arrested the perpetrators of the attack during an extensive operation the day before. Most of the men arrested were from the Beit Lakiya village in the West Bank, Haaretz reports.

The Israeli Security Agency, also known as Shin Bet, said one of those arrested is an Arab-Israeli from a town of Taibeh, who was granted citizenship by marriage.