"Just when the Palestinians in Gaza thought they were facing this new Israeli attacks alone and with their backs against the wall, they found out they forgot, over the years, that they had brothers in Egypt who are willing not only to accompany them in their struggle against Israel but to protect their backs as well"

Editor's notes: The western press and even Al Jazeera have failed to report today's demonstrations in Tahir Square, Cairo accurately. Thousands of Egyptians marched from the square to the Israeli Embassy, demanding that the current military government end diplomatic relations with Israel in wake of the recent assault on Gaza by the IDF.

Israel claims that a school bus was attacked with a mortar round this week and it was necessary for the army to respond with tanks, helicopters, rockets and a step-up of the nightly bombing campaign that has gone on for months.

Skeptics doubt Israel's claim of an attack from Gaza, citing Israel's propensity for fabricating threats and the bizarre choice of weapons. From an American intelligence source who has worked with Israel for decades:

Israel has been using the "mortar attack" story more and more. Any small explosive charge can be made to look like a mortar attack. even a hand grenade. You only need to throw a few shards of metal around, the cheapest and dirtiest "false flag" possible and Israel has done this dozens of times.

Hamas has mortars but they also have thousands of RPGs. That's the weapon used to go after a vehicle. Saying someone shot a mortar at a bus is simply idiotic. If Gaza has the weapons Israel claims, Russian Kornet and RPG 29s which are capable of destroying Israel's Merkava tanks quite readily, as Hizbollah proved, the "school bus" story is even more fictional.

Benicia -- -- Just inside Benicia's city limits, tucked in one of the winding coils of Lake Herman Road, is a small turnout that was once a scene of bloody carnage.

"Nothing has changed here," said Tom Voigt, founder of www.ZodiacKiller.com, as he surveyed the gravel floor, the pristine rolling hills and the shadowy face of Mt. Diablo across the fields and waterways.

It was in that picturesque turnout that the mysterious Zodiac killer -- perhaps Vallejo's most notorious son (if the unknown killer is actually a male) -- began a killing spree that gripped the Bay Area in fearful paranoia during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Attacks attributed to the elusive Zodiac killer spanned at least Solano, Napa and San Francisco counties. The alleged serial killer sent encrypted messages to several newspapers, including the Times-Herald.

By the time the high-profile case faded with the public hysteria, at least five people were killed and two wounded. Authorities remain perplexed at the mysterious killer's identity.

And it's that mystery that drives Voigt, 44, who was just 1 year old when the slayings began.

"God, I hope they ID him in my lifetime," said Voigt, standing just on the other side of barbed wire fence and a "No Trespassing" sign that has been graffitied with the Zodiac's infamous cross-hair symbol.

The case remains open in the Vallejo Police Department, which maintains an active Zodiac crime tips link on its website.

Perth's black market in prescription drugs is booming and health professionals say they cannot control it.

With a single tablet of the powerful painkiller oxycodone selling on the street for $50, trade is thriving and doctors and pharmacists say they do not have the powers or the tools they need to identify dealers and addicts.

"Every doctor and every pharmacy in this State has stand-alone computers, but these computers don't talk to each other so there is no simple centralised record of who is getting what," Lenette Mullen, of the Pharmacy Guild of WA, said.

Without that information there is no way to stop doctor-shopping - where people visit a string of GPs and collect numerous prescriptions for powerful drugs.

Addiction specialist Dr George O'Neil says he is seeing more and more people addicted to prescription drugs.

"Prescription drug addicts use doctors and pharmacists in the same way as heroin addicts use street dealers," he said.

Figures from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme show nearly 134,000 scripts for oxycodone were dispensed in WA last year costing taxpayers $5.78 million.

No-one can say how many of these scripts ended up on the black market.

"Addicts get the same high from many prescription drugs as you get from heroin and we all know that doctors and pharmacists don't share their records - so doctor-shopping is a low-risk way of getting safe drugs," former drug addict and "doctor-shopper" Mike Desbouvrie said.

Fukushima Gov. Yuhei Sato has expressed anger at the central government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., saying both "betrayed" the people of Fukushima Prefecture with repeated assurances about the safety of nuclear power plants.

"We feel we were betrayed [by the central government and TEPCO]," Sato said during an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun on Thursday, nearly a month after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and the outbreak of a series of accidents at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant.

"The central government and TEPCO repeatedly told us, 'Nuclear power plants are safe because they've got multiple protection systems,' and, 'Earthquake-proof measures have been taken,'" Sato said.

About 17,500 people gathered Sunday for two rallies held in Tokyo against nuclear power plants amid the prolonged crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station some 220 kilometers to the northeast.

Around the JR Koenji Station in Suginami Ward, some 15,000 people took part in a demonstration march organized by local shop owners and reported online as a call for joining the event had spread on Twitter, organizers said.

''I learned of the event on Twitter. Now is the time to stop nuclear plants,'' said Takashi Kamiyama, who took part with his 2- and 6-year-old children among participants. ''I want to do what I can do for these kids.''

As an organizer, Hajime Matsumoto said, ''It's epoch-making that so many people gathered without being mobilized by a large organization. It's become big power as we joined hands over the Internet.''

Thousands of Americans have staged a protest rally in New York City to voice concerns over US war and foreign policies as well as the economy and the persisting reduction of social programs.

Scores of peace, labor and community activists took to the streets of the major commercial city on Saturday to call for peace and solidarity with Muslims and an end to US wars abroad, a Press TV correspondent reported.

"I am sick and tired of the elite trying to rule the country, the elite that is only one percent (of the society), ruling the country and getting us into wars that we do not need. Not paying their fair share of taxes while we suffer cutbacks in social programs," a demonstrator said.

The protesters called on Washington to create more job opportunities in a bid to revive the fragile US economy.

More than 500 organizations also came together from communities across the US to call for an end to government harassment of Muslim immigrants and people of color.

They also called for the restoration of peace and democracy.

An Alaska Airlines flight headed from Sacramento to Hawaii turned around and landed safely after striking a bird this morning, airport officials reported.

Flight 869 reportedly had engine trouble after the bird strike, but no damage details were available.

The plane, which took off at about 10 a.m., landed safely at Sacramento International Airport and the passengers deplaned.

There was no information available on reboarding or rescheduling for the passengers.

Why progressives need to think beyond the mantra of creating a "middle class America."

We want a decent home to call our own, healthcare to heal us when we are sick or old, education to improve our minds and job prospects, healthy food and clean water to nourish us, income to provide for all our needs and even some affordable luxuries, a career to give us social status and a sense of self-worth, and a pension for our golden years.

These seemingly universal desires define the post-WWII American Dream, and are still the reference point for both left and right. The "Golden Age of American Capitalism" from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s is commonly seen as the triumph of the middle class, a time when the fruits of a robust capitalist economy extended to tens of millions.

But today we are trapped in the fault lines of a violent global economy, and these dreams seem as archaic as waking up at dawn with the grandparents, children and cousins to milk cows, bake pies and plow fields.

However outdated the American Dream, organized labor and liberals desperately cling to it as they retreat in the face of the Republican and corporate blitzkrieg. In this war, the battlefield is social spending and the public sector, and for the losing side the situation is dire. (The critique that follows is not of the rank and file or all unions, but rather the dominant tendencies among many labor leaders and large national unions.)

Bangor, Me. - The mother got the call in the middle of the night: her 3-day-old baby was going through opiate withdrawal in a hospital here and had to start taking methadone, a drug best known for treating heroin addiction, to ease his suffering.

The mother had abused prescription painkillers like OxyContin for the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy, buying them on the street in rural northern Maine, and then tried to quit cold turkey - a dangerous course, doctors say, that could have ended in miscarriage. The baby had seizures in utero as a result, and his mother, Tonya, turned to methadone treatment, with daily doses to keep her cravings and withdrawal symptoms at bay.

As prescription drug abuse ravages communities across the country, doctors are confronting an emerging challenge: newborns dependent on painkillers. While methadone may have saved Tonya's pregnancy, her son, Matthew, needed to be painstakingly weaned from it.

Infants like him may cry excessively and have stiff limbs, tremors, diarrhea and other problems that make their first days of life excruciating. Many have to stay in the hospital for weeks while they are weaned off the drugs, taxing neonatal units and driving the cost of their medical care into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Like the cocaine-exposed babies of the 1980s, those born dependent on prescription opiates - narcotics that contain opium or its derivatives - are entering a world in which little is known about the long-term effects on their development. Few doctors are even willing to treat pregnant opiate addicts, and there is no universally accepted standard of care for their babies, partly because of the difficulty of conducting research on pregnant women and newborns.

• Calls to vice girls made on untraceable cell phones
• He thwarted police with three-minute calls to sister of victim
• They believe he may have murdered four prostitutes in Atlantic City in 2006
• Search widened to Nassau County

The serial killer dubbed the Craigslist Ripper has a sophisticated understanding of police investigation techniques and 'may be a cop', it was claimed today.

The startling new theory emerged as it was revealed the last man to see suspected victim Shannan Gilbert believes the prostitute is still alive.

Officers in Long Island where four bodies of of vice girls have been dug up, are convinced the killer could be in law enforcement because: