Latin America

Welcome to this Week in Palestine, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, for July 21st to 27th, 2012. A world bank report says Palestinian economy is not ready for statehood, meanwhile Israeli settler attempts to grab more Palestinian lands continues.

As researchers continue to look for a possible cure for HIV/AIDS, we turn to the remarkable story of Timothy Ray Brown, known in the medical world as the “Berlin patient.” He is the first person believed to have been cured of HIV.

Britain has launched its biggest peacetime security operation ever ahead of the opening of the Summer Olympics. Nearly 20,000 armed forces personnel are now providing security — almost double the number of British troops currently serving in Afghanistan.

The governing body of U.S. college sports Monday announced a series of unprecedented sanctions against Penn State University following an independent investigation into the widespread cover-up of child sexual abuse by former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

The past week in Palestine has been headlined by a series of major ministerial conferences – American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Israel and Palestine on Monday led off a week that culminated with the first meeting ever between Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood with both parties in positions of legitimate authority.

As the oil giant Shell prepares to begin exploratory drilling in the Arctic, activists across the world have begun holding protests. The Obama administration has set a deadline for next month to decide on whether to grant the final drilling permits.

In the wake of Wednesday’s bomb blast that killed top Syrian officials, we continue our Syria coverage with David Lesch, author of the biography, “The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria,” as well as the forthcoming book, “Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad.”

The UN Security Council meets on Syria, the Taliban destroy NATO fuel trucks, HSBC’s dealings regarding Iran, etc. are in the headline news presented today by Democracy Now!

A suicide bomber has struck a meeting of top Syrian officials in Damascus, killing Syria’s defense minister and the brother-in-law of President Bashar-al-Assad and dealing a major blow to the Assad regime.