In October, the US launched an airstrike in Afghanistan that killed three children - ages 8, 10, and 12 -while they were gathering firewood (or by some accounts, dung to burn as fuel). NATO issued its usual dismissive statement, admitting it may have "accidentally killed three innocent Afghan civilians."

But now, according to the Military Times, the US military includes children on their list of who they're allowed to murder with impunity.

...a Marine official here raised questions about whether the children were "innocent." Before calling for the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System mission in mid-October, Marines observed the children digging a hole in a dirt road in Nawa district, the official said, and the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission.

So digging holes in Afghanistan is now grounds for getting bombed? The children's relatives and local tribal elders had confirmed at the time that they were not Taliban recruits and were not planting any roadside bombs.

Cairo - Supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi battled late Wednesday in Cairo with rocks and firebombs, as three key presidential advisors quit to protest the president's handling of the country's constitutional crisis.

Reporting from the scene, VOA correspondent Elizabeth Arrott said the new violence erupted when Morsi's Islamist supporters attacked demonstrators protesting what they describe as a presidential power grab.

"I've seen Molotov cocktails, people armed with iron bars and rocks, some people even pulling branches off of trees in terms of trying to find some kind of weapon to fight with, the crowds pushing back and forth and there are reports of live ammunition being used and again, unconfirmed reports of casualties, of fatalities among the people who are fighting," she said.

Arrott said most of the presidential supporters are men with beards typical of members of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, while opponents of the president appeared younger and had some women present.

As clashes continued late Wednesday, there were reports of Muslim Brotherhood supporters attacking journalists outside the presidential palace. Separately, three more presidential advisors announced their resignations to protest the decrees granting Mr. Morsi expanded powers. Five of the president's 17 advisors have quit since November 22.

Opposition protesters want Morsi to abolish a decree he issued last month granting himself sweeping powers that place him above review by the judiciary. Many also oppose a new draft constitution drawn up by a mainly Islamist committee. The draft is set for a December 15 referendum.

Israel has rebuffed a UN call to adhere to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and open itself to international inspectors, calling the suggestion a "meaningless mechanical vote" of a body that "lost all its credibility regarding Israel."

­In a 174-6 vote, the United Nations General Assembly demanded in a non-binding call that Tel Aviv join the NPT "without further delay," in an effort to create a legally binding nuclear-free Middle East.

Washington, Israel's strongest ally, surprised no one by voting against the resolution - but did approve two paragraphs that were voted on separately, which called for universal adherence to the NPT and for all non-signatory governments to join.

The UN body "has lost all its credibility regarding Israel with these types of routine votes that are ensured passage by an automatic majority and which single out Israel," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor was quoted by Jerusalem Post as saying.

When financial markets in the United States crash, so does the U.S. economy. Just remember what happened back in 2008. The financial markets crashed, the credit markets froze up, and suddenly the economy went into cardiac arrest. Well, there are very few things that could cause the financial markets to crash harder or farther than a derivatives panic.

Sadly, most Americans don't even understand what derivatives are. Unlike stocks and bonds, a derivative is not an investment in anything real. Rather, a derivative is a legal bet on the future value or performance of something else. Just like you can go to Las Vegas and bet on who will win the football games this weekend, bankers on Wall Street make trillions of dollars of bets about how interest rates will perform in the future and about what credit instruments are likely to default.

Wall Street has been transformed into a gigantic casino where people are betting on just about anything that you can imagine. This works fine as long as there are not any wild swings in the economy and risk is managed with strict discipline, but as we have seen, there have been times when derivatives have caused massive problems in recent years. For example, do you know why the largest insurance company in the world, AIG, crashed back in 2008 and required a government bailout?

It was because of derivatives. Bad derivatives trades also caused the failure of MF Global, and the 6 billion dollar loss that JPMorgan Chase recently suffered because of derivatives made headlines all over the globe. But all of those incidents were just warm up acts for the coming derivatives panic that will destroy global financial markets. The largest casino in the history of the world is going to go "bust" and the economic fallout from the financial crash that will happen as a result will be absolutely horrific.

There is a reason why Warren Buffett once referred to derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction". Nobody really knows the total value of all the derivatives that are floating around out there, but estimates place the notional value of the global derivatives market anywhere from 600 trillion dollars all the way up to 1.5 quadrillion dollars.

Keep in mind that global GDP is somewhere around 70 trillion dollars for an entire year. So we are talking about an amount of money that is absolutely mind blowing.

So who is buying and selling all of these derivatives?

Time for every one to sober up and come down from their highs. I do not want to throw cold water on the UN vote last week, nor do I want to dismiss the good will of the majority of the world that voted for "Palestine" as an observer state. However time for the Palestinians under Jewish Occupation and in the Diaspora to take a second look at 45 years of a failing national project and a failing leadership and make a difference for the future.

Every Palestinian should remember, Mahmoud Abbas who returned to Ramallah to a hero's welcome after the UN vote is the same man who with Yasser Arafat and Ahmed Qurai negotiated and signed the Oslo Accord, which legally and permanently perpetuate the Jewish Occupation and created a management company (Palestinian National Authority) to manage the Jewish Occupation.

Arafat and the PA corruption and incompetence and the security cooperation with Israel were the main cause for factional divisions between Fatah and Hamas with the PLO/Fatah aborting the first transparent and democratic election under Jewish Occupation.

Fresh on the heels of the fallout from revelations regarding former BBC entertainer Jimmy Savile and his unbelievably sickening and innumerable instances of child molestation as well as the "look the other way" approach taken by the BBC, more and more questions are now emerging in regards to the connection between Savile and British Royalty, most notably Prince Charles.

At least, more questions should be emerging.

Unfortunately, however, the British mainstream media is deeming Prince Charles and the rest of his ilk in positions of power and perceived genetic royalty as if they are beyond reproach. This approach is typical and to be expected, yet it is also highly ironic considering the fact that such is the same position the mainstream media took with the allegations against Jimmy Savile for so many years.

As a result of the Savile affair, mainstream outlets, particularly the BBC, now have a lot of egg on their faces in the areas of credibility and respect.In short, any connections placing Prince Charles in an uncompromising position regarding his connections with Savile or his potential for sharing a penchant for unnatural relationships with children is being completely ignored if not officially covered up.

NATO agreed on Tuesday to send Patriot missiles to Turkey to defend against a possible Syrian missile attack and voiced grave concern about reports that Damascus may be preparing to use chemical weapons.

"To the Turkish people we say: We are determined to defend you and your territory. To anyone who would want to attack Turkey we say: Don't even think about it," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after the 28-nation alliance foreign ministers took the decision at a meeting in Brussels.

NATO-member Turkey repeatedly has scrambled jets along the countries' joint frontier and responded in kind when shells from the Syrian conflict came down inside its borders, fuelling fears that the civil war could spread to destabilize the region.

It quickly welcomed the move. "This decision is important, as it demonstrates and re-confirms allied solidarity and unity in practical terms," Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Germany, the Netherlands and the United States plan to provide Patriot missile batteries, the ministers said, but they gave no details on numbers. Deployment is expected to take several weeks, given the need for approval by national parliaments and the logistics of delivering the missiles.

NATO ministers unanimously expressed "grave concern" about reports that the Syrian government may be prepared to use its chemical weapons, Rasmussen said. He warned earlier that any use of chemical weapons by Syria would prompt an immediate international response.

The lawyer for accused WikiLeaks collaborator Bradley Manning suggested Monday that President Barack Obama's position on protecting government whistleblowers is hypocritical.

Obama put his signature on a new law designed to stiffen protections for whistleblowers on Nov. 27. "As President Obama was signing this bill into law, Brad and I were in a courtroom," Manning's defense attorney, David E. Coombs, said Monday at the All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington, D.C., in his first public appearance since taking the case more than two years ago. "How can you reconcile the two? I don't know the answer to that question."

Manning, 24, is the Army private who allegedly gave WikiLeaks thousands of classified diplomatic cables about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, along with videos of two deadly airstrikes that killed non-combatants. When revealed by the controversial whistleblower website WikiLeaks, the documents sent diplomatic shockwaves that reverberated across the world.

Manning was eventually arrested by the Army, and he has now been charged with a variety of offenses, including "aiding the enemy," which could result in a life sentence.

At the heart of the controversy over Manning is whether his alleged actions represented those of a whistleblower uncovering serious government misdeeds -- or of a soldier who was breaking the law.

As nuclear peace talks are cancelled, overwhelming vote by general assembly calls for Israel to join nonproliferation treaty

The UN general assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on Israel to open its nuclear programme for inspection.

The resolution, approved by a vote of 174 to six with six abstentions, calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) "without further delay" and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Those voting against were Israel, the US, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.

Resolutions adopted by the 193-member general assembly are not legally binding but they do reflect world opinion and carry moral and political weight. And the resolution adds to pressure on Israel as it faces criticism over plans to increase settlement in the West Bank, a move seen as retaliation for the assembly recognising Palestinian statehood.

Israel refuses to confirm or deny possessing nuclear bombs though it is widely believed to have them. It has refused to join the non-proliferation treaty along with three nuclear weapon states: India, Pakistan and North Korea.

Up on the planet Mars, there is a complex new rover named Curiosity that is driving around looking for evidence of possible life. Its every little finding is readily broadcast around the world, as was done today at a televised conference in California, to be analyzed by scientists in the US, in Europe, in China, and even in Iran.

The scientists and engineers who are managing that remarkable vehicle, as well as the fantastically successful Cassini probe orbiting Saturn, the Kepler satellite that is discovering all those planets orbiting distant stars, and all the other various satellites and space probes launched by NASA, however, are not as free as the space probes they are running.

Thanks to the zealous wackos at the Department of Homeland Security, back in 2007 during the latter part of the Bush administration an order went out that all workers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena--an organization that is run under contract to NASA by the California Institute of Technology, had to be vetted for high security clearance in order to continue doing their jobs. Never mind that not one of them was or is engaged in secret activities (NASA is a rigorously non-military, scientific agency which not only publishes all its findings, but which invites the active participation of scientists from around the world). In order to continue working at JPL, even scientists who had been with NASA for decades were told they would need a high-level security badge just to enter the premises. To be issued that badge, they were told they would need to agree undergo an intensive FBI check that would look into their prior life history, right back to college.