The mind has a way of making traumatic experiences seem like distant dreams to those who survive them. As it goes, the more traumatic the experience, the quicker the paramedics in one's mind rush to dress wounds, resuscitate and stabilize the victim; the victim being you.

Since returning from Palestine 36 hours ago, I find myself confronted with feelings of detachment and minimization of what I encountered. My subconscious has decided the horrors I witnessed in the 'Holy Land' were nothing serious-horrors which include a 26-foot-tall concrete wall enclosing the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank, and the sniper towers seemingly on every other corner of this open-air prison.

This was my first trip to Palestine-most westerners call it Israel, but I'll address that topic shortly. I had never been to the country, but I read enough to know the basics: Palestinians and Israelis were fighting over land. The Israeli government was formed in 1948 as part of a vision set forth by a secular European colonial political movement called Zionism, founded by Hungarian Theodor Herzl in 1896. Herzl, an atheist, sought to free the Jews from European oppression and anti-Semitism, with the ultimate goal being the creation of a Jewish state. He first proposed East Africa's Uganda as the location of the Jewish state. This proposal also found the approval of the British government which controlled Palestine since the First World War. Herzl, however, later identified Palestine as the country of choice. I knew this.

The history of Palestinians was something I was familiar with as well, only because in high school, my friend's parents were Moroccan Jews with staunch right-wing Zionist views. They'd go on about how Palestinians were worth shit and how they were sucking off the land they stole, and how they were not from Palestine, but Jordan. Truth be told, my friend's parents' passion about their 'homeland' made me sick. As a black person living in the United States, I could not relate to their love for their proclaimed homeland because I never had one. My ancestors were captured from various regions of Africa and forced onto ships bound for the Americas. Therefore, when questioned about the geographic origins of my ancestors, my answers were as vague as Africa is big.

Military surgeons are being sent to Denmark for the controversial training on live animals - even though the practice is illegal in the UK.
Pigs are being shot so British Army medics can learn to treat battle wounds.

Military surgeons are sent to Denmark for the controversial training on live animals - even though the practice is illegal in the UK.

Animal rights group PETA has slammed the "cruel" practice.

A live pig dangles from a wooden frame as a soldier shoots it to inflict horrific injuries.

Military medics then operate on the animal's traumatic gunshot wounds while it is still breathing.

The shocking photos taken in Denmark have put the country at the centre of another animal cruelty row after the controversial killing of a giraffe at Copenhagen Zoo.

The Israeli army is both respected and feared as a fighting force. But now the country's military is facing a backlash at home and abroad for its treatment of children in the West Bank, occupied territory.

Coming up, a joint investigation by Four Corners and The Australian newspaper reveals evidence that shows the army is targeting Palestinian boys for arrest and detention. Reporter John Lyons travels to the West Bank to hear the story of children who claim they have been taken into custody, ruthlessly questioned and then allegedly forced to sign confessions before being taken to court for sentencing.

He meets Australian lawyer Gerard Horton, who's trying to help the boys who are arrested, and talks to senior Israeli officials to examine what's driving the army's strategy.

The program focuses on the stories of three boys. In two cases the army came for the children in the middle of the night, before taking them to unknown locations where they are questioned. A mother of one of the boys described the scene

"Every soldier stood at the door of a room. I was telling him 'What do you want with him?' He said 'Shut up woman.' And then they started hitting him and pulling him out of bed."

"They started kicking me with their boots in my stomach, slaps on my face. They pulled me up by my t-shirt and took me out of bed." - Arrested boy

A federal investigation into a county courthouse has revealed a shocking catalogue of claims that sex assault victims were routinely discriminated against and ignored.

In one case, it is alleged a prosecutor in Montana left a five-year-old rape victim's mother horrified when he explained away the attack by saying 'boys will be boys'.

According to a report, the mother of the child said she wanted to know why the boy who raped her daughter was only getting a slap on the wrist.

Hundreds of children are dying needlessly from cancer or being left with debilitating conditions because life-saving drugs are only tested on adults, health experts have warned.

Since 2007, of the 28 new cancer drugs which have been given European approval, half cannot be licensed for children because youngsters were not included in their trials.

Pharmaceutical companies argue that it is pointless testing drugs for adult cancers, such as lung cancer, on children because they do not develop them in childhood.

But oncologists say that the underlying genetic triggers are the same and so the new treatments would be beneficial.

The lung cancer drug Gefitinib, for example, which has been approved by Nice, targets mutations of the EGFR gene. The same mutations appear in the childhood cancer neuroblastoma, which affects around 100 children each year in Britain and the drug is likely to be effective, but cannot be prescribed.

The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London is urging the EU to change the law so that drug companies are forced to test all new medications on youngsters.

"Kids are dying," said Professor Alan Ashworth, Chief Executive of the ICR. "We are getting to a situation where there are effectively no new drugs for children, and we are no longer advancing in the treatment of childhood cancer.

The century is still young and the Bush-Bama administration were such masters of lying its hard to pick one...Iraq...9/11...the "healthy: economy... swine flu

But one of the most amazing - and vicious - lies of all time has to be that Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city of New Orleans.

Amazing because it flies in the face of all evidence and eye witness accounts.

Vicious because it removes the liability (and thus the potential of compensation) from the guilty parties: the US Army Corps of Engineers, the US Federal Government, and the Wall Street Corporate interests that own both.

Changing public opinion after a well-crafted and heavily promote lie has made its way around the world is one of the hardest things on earth to do, but if you stick with it long enough, you can do it.

Last week, as the result of a relentless, grass roots campaign, a judge finally agreed: It wasn't Katrina that devastated New Orleans, it was the systematic failure of the multi-billion dollar tax payer federal levee system.

A bullied teenager has been jailed after stabbing a girl in the face and smashing another's head against a fence - because they called him Harry Potter.

Ryan Walker, 19, wears glasses and has short dark hair, just like actor Daniel Radcliffe who plays the young wizard in the hit film series.

A court heard how after two girls called Walker Harry Potter, he snapped, stabbing one of them in the face so hard that the blade of his vegetable knife broke.

Walker then pushed the other girl's head into a nearby fence and shouted: 'Die, die'.

He claimed he launched the ferocious attacks in Southampton, Hampshire, after being goaded repeatedly by the girls who called him Potter.

Southampton Crown Court heard how Walker returned to his family flat after shopping for his mother and he had to pass 15-year-old Emma Keeble and 16-year-old Leah Pearce sitting on the stairs.

One of the girls touched his shopping bag before verbally abusing him and telling him he resembled Harry Potter.

Outraged Walker saw red, rushed to his flat before coming back downstairs with a milk bottle full of water and threw it over the girls.

• Shannon Bowley can only move around on her bottom or with a frame
• Was due to have surgery this Friday to loosen her muscles to help her walk
• But now NHS England says there is no funding for the operation
• Family now fear they will have to raise £7,000 for treatment in America

The family of a six-year-old girl with cerebral palsy have condemned 'cruel' NHS bosses after an operation to help her walk was cancelled at the last moment - because of budget cuts.

Shannon Bowley can only shuffle around on her bottom or take a few slow steps with the aid of a walking frame.

She was due to have a life-changing operation this Friday which would have loosened her muscles to help her walk independently. But just six days before surgery, her family were dealt a devastating blow when they received a letter informing them that NHS England had cancelled funding for the operation.

Shannon's grandmother and full-time carer Samantha Jones, 42, said her grand-daughter had also been through a year of painful procedures in preparation for the surgery.

Seventy students have been arrested at the University of KwaZulu Natal's Edgewood Campus in Pinetown, west of Durban. This follows a students' protest which turned violent.

Students have been on strike since last week. They are protesting against the way the National Students' Financial Aid Scheme allocates funding.

Monday morning students went on the rampage, forcing other students from lecture rooms. Earlier police used rubber bullets and teargas to disperse protesting students.

Provincial police spokesperson Thulani Zwane explains, "Students were protesting and they were also damaging the classes at the campus. Seventy of them were then arrested and charged for public violence. Those who were arrested will appear tomorrow in the Pinetown Magistrate's Court facing charges of public violence. The police are still monitoring the situation in the area."

Chinese zoo keepers managed to save the life of a mentally disturbed man after he announced he wanted to improve the lives of caged tigers at a local zoo by offering them his own body to eat.

Yang Jinhai, 27, had posted several online messages about how optimistic he was about starting a new life after getting a job as a security guard in Chengdu in southwest China's Sichuan province.

But he quickly found the job boring and monotonous and moved instead to a job in a printing factory where he also then resigned, saying that he felt there was more to life.

After going to the local zoo he wrote how depressing it was to see the 'noble and magnificent tigers' living in such humble surroundings, where they were caged and unable to follow their natural instincts to hunt and kill.

He then announced that he had decided to sacrifice himself in order to provide the Bengal tigers with support.