Israeli policemen arrested 12 Palestinians in Silwan town in occupied Jerusalem on Wednesday including 11 minors on charges they threw stones, firecrackers, and firebombs at Beit Yonatan settlement outpost.

The Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot website said that the policemen stormed a number of suburbs in Silwan town and arrested the 11 minors who did not exceed 17 years of age.

It said that the police force also arrested a shop owner at the pretext he was selling the children material that they used in making the firebombs, which they threw at Beit Yonatan in Wadi Hilwa suburb.

Local sources said that a big number of policemen stormed the homes of those minors, adding that they range in age from 14 to 17 years old.

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that an air strike had targeted a Palestinian Gaza City, Palestinian Territories: Israeli aircraft struck Gaza overnight for the fourth time in as many days, wounding a militant who was about to fire a rocket, Palestinian security sources said on Saturday.

The Palestinian was admitted to hospital but his injuries were not life-threatening, the sources said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that an air strike had targeted a Palestinian. The raid was followed by the firing of two rockets from Gaza into Israel, neither of which caused casualties or damage, she added.

Up until the mid-20th century, Western attitudes regarding national freedom essentially went like this: the independence of white Western nations (Great Britain, France, the United States etc.) was a given. Independence for nonwhite, non-Western nations (such as those in Africa, the Middle East and Asia), however, could only be under conditions granted by the occupying powers. The time at which these nations could be free, their specific boundaries and the conditions of their independence could only be reached through negotiations between the colonial occupiers and representatives (if approved by the colonial powers) of the conquered peoples. It was not the purview of the League of Nations, the United Nations, or any other international legal authority to adjudicate such matters, so went the argument, since the rights of those in the colonies were limited to what was willingly agreed to by the colonizers.

Based on a resolution unanimously adopted by the Senate (S.Res. 185) on July 29 and by a 407-6 majority in the House (H.Res. 268) on July 7, Congress went on record reiterating their "strong opposition to any attempt to establish or seek recognition of a Palestinian state outside of an agreement negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians." It called on Palestinian leaders to "cease all efforts at circumventing the negotiation process, including through a unilateral declaration of statehood or by seeking recognition of a Palestinian state from other nations or the United Nations." It called upon President Obama to "announce that the United States will veto any resolution on Palestinian statehood that comes before the United Nations Security Council which is not a result of agreements reached between the Government of Israel and the Palestinians" and to "lead a diplomatic effort to oppose a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state and to oppose recognition of a Palestinian state by other nations, within the United Nations and in other international forums prior to achievement of a final agreement between the Government of Israel and the Palestinians."

NATO has been bombing Libya for months now, but it has not been able to break Muammar Gaddafi's grip on the oil-rich North African country.

Press TV talks with Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley, an author and historian in Washington, who argues that it is NATO's "imperialist coalition" that is nearing its breaking point.

What follows is the text of the interview:

Press TV: This looks like just another war waged by the West that civilians are bearing the brunt of it, doesn't it?

Tarpley: Well, the difference here is of course that the NATO and the CIA have an infantry and in that case it is made of people with heavy representation from al-Qaeda, the Libyan­­­­ Islamic fighting group and various Islamist rebels and that is pretty much what the Benghazi rebel council is made up of. Their infantry is obviously a kind of rabble in arms as long as they are up in these mountains of the west and as long as they are getting plenty of arm shipments from the French which they have been getting and of course NATO airstrikes, they are able to make a certain amount of progress but what you see now as soon as they get down into that plain where Tripoli is 60 or 70 miles away they are subjected to counter attacks and I think they are going basically nowhere.

A Japanese nuclear power plant has come under fire for trying to sway the outcome of a public forum on atomic safety, dealing a fresh blow to the industry's credibility four months after the world's biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

An employee with Kyushu Electric Power Co instructed workers at the utility and its affiliates to pose as ordinary citizens and send e-mails backing the restart of nuclear reactors in southern Japan to a televised public hearing.

A massive earthquake and tsunami crippled the coastal Fukushima-Daiichi power plant in northeast Japan on March 13, sparking a fuel-rod meltdown and the biggest nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986.

The plant is still leaking radiation in a protracted disaster which prompted the government to go back to "scratch" on its nuclear energy policy. Only 19 of Japan's 54 reactors are still running.

Every household in Britain faces having to pay £42,000 to cover the cost of public sector pensions, official figures show.

The Treasury will today reveal that the liabilities from the pensions of public sector workers have jumped from £770 billion to £1,100 billion in two years. The figures are contained in full accounts for all Whitehall departments, which are being published together for the first time to show what public finances would look like if they were subjected to the same scrutiny as a private company.

The accounts will also disclose the future costs of schools and hospitals built using the Private Finance Initiative for the first time.

They will show that the costs of PFI deals have increased seven-fold, from £5.1 billion to more than £40 billion, including future liabilities, and that the total "hidden" debt of 1,500 public bodies has reached an estimated £2,000 billion.

Where did all the jobs go? Small and medium-sized businesses are the major source of new job creation, and they are not hiring. Startup businesses, which contribute a fifth of the nation's new jobs, often can't even get off the ground. Why?

In a June 30 article in The Wall Street Journal titled "Smaller Businesses Seeking Loans Still Come Up Empty," Emily Maltby reported that business owners rank access to capital as the most important issue facing them today; and only 17 percent of smaller businesses said they were able to land needed bank financing. Businesses have to pay for workers and materials before they can get paid for the products they produce and for that they need bank credit; but they are reporting that their credit lines are being cut. They are being pushed instead into credit card accounts that average 16 percent interest, more than double the rate of the average business loan. It is one of many changes in banking trends that have been very lucrative for Wall Street banks, but are killing local businesses.

The Travesty of the $1.6 Trillion in "Excess Reserves"

The bank bailout and the Federal Reserve's two "quantitative easing" programs were supposedly intended to keep credit flowing to the local economy; but despite trillions of dollars thrown at Wall Street banks, these programs have succeeded only in producing mountains of "excess reserves" that are now sitting idle in Federal Reserve bank accounts. A stunning $1.6 trillion in excess reserves has accumulated in bank reserve accounts since the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008.

'Court is not to conduct detailed inquiry to decide whether it agrees with agency'

A federal judge has ordered that whether Google is spying for National Security Agency or not, you have no right to know.

"The NSA need not disclose 'the organization or any function of the National Security Agency, [or] any information with respect to the activities thereof,'" U.S. District Judged Richard Leon has ordered.

"Once the agency, through affidavits, has created 'as complete a public record as is possible' and explained 'in as much detail as is possible the basis for its claim,' ... 'the court is not to conduct a detailed inquiry to decide whether it agrees with the agency's opinions,'" he said.

A foreign intelligence service swiped 24,000 computer files from a US defense contractor in March in one of the largest ever cyberattacks on a Pentagon supplier, a top Defense Department official revealed on Thursday.

"It is a significant concern that over the past decade, terabytes of data have been extracted by foreign intruders from corporate networks of defense companies," Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said.

"In a single intrusion this March, 24,000 files were taken," Lynn said in a speech at National Defense University here outlining the Pentagon's strategy in cyberspace.

Speaking to reporters after his speech, Lynn described the theft of data from the unidentified defense contractor as "significant" and one of the largest ever.

On the eve of his visit to Israel, Greek President Karolos Papoulias spoke of the "strong relationship in all aspects" between his country and the Zionist state. The fact that Israel continues to occupy Palestine, expand Jewish-only colonies on occupied territory and persecute millions of Palestinians, including many who practice Greek Orthodox Christianity in the West Bank, seems to have little or no bearing on the evolving relations between the Greek and Israeli governments.

"We are now involved in an intensive process of cooperation. Our ministers and officials systematically consult and work together on all levels and in key areas, including energy, defence and security, as well as agriculture and tourism," said the Greek president.

He added that "we are also working together on international issues and matters of regional concern to both countries. We are pursuing a strong relationship on trade, investment, political and security cooperation."

Greece is a sovereign state and should be free to pursue its various interests as its sees fit. However, it must also be aware of the negative ramifications that come with having close ties with what is essentially a rogue state whose modus operandi is based on ethnic cleansing, land theft and organised state terror against the Palestinians native to the Holy Land.

In recent months and weeks, the Greek air force has held joint exercises with its Israeli counterparts in the eastern Mediterranean. Moreover, the Greek authorities are widely believed to have connived with Israeli intelligence agents to thwart the Freedom Flotilla II planning to take much-needed humanitarian aid to Gaza, still in the grip of Israel's siege. The flotilla was set to highlight the illegitimacy, illegality and utter criminality of the 5-year-blockade on the coastal enclave.