Reports of extrajudicial killings by Nigerian security forces circulated widely in the aftermath of clashes last year between the police and members of Boko Haram, a group that called for the enforcement of Islamic law, or sharia, across Nigeria. Now Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive footage that appears to show Nigerian security forces ordering a number of people to lie in the road and then shooting them at close range. Human rights groups allege that many of those killed following the clashes were unarmed civilians.

Tony Blair yesterday launched an extraordinary attack on the Iraq inquiry - as the chairman warned that he and others could be recalled over 'gaps' in their evidence. In an outspoken interview in the U.S., the former prime minister dismissed the inquiry as part of a ' continual desire to sort of uncover some great conspiracy'. Speaking on Fox News he said critics of the war were obsessed with conspiracy theories, and refused to accept that his motives were 'genuine'. Stephen Walt: I don't mean to say I told you so, but... AWIP/Mehdi Hasan: What role did Israel play in the run-up to the Iraq war? Len Hart: 'Conspiracies of Rich Men' to Commit War Crimes and Aggression. PressTV: UK: Iraq inquiry to question US officials. Daily Telegraph: Slippery Jack Straw leaves Iraq Inquiry grasping for answers. Blair acknowledged that Israel was part of the equation on invading Iraq, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war. London Evening Standard: French accuse Tony Blair of ‘Soviet-style' propaganda in run-up to Iraq war.

"Therefore, we must prepare for the chance that Israel will do something crazy against everyone in the region; the Syrians, the Lebanese and the Palestinians." AntiWar: AP Article Fuels Iran War Hysteria: Article Speculates Medical Uranium Enrichment a Weapons Plot: In a widely-circulated article which has further fueled Western hysteria about the prospect of an imminent war with Iran, the Associated Press today claimed that Iran’s uranium enrichment program move, an effort to produce medical isotopes which are rapidly running out in the nation, was a secret plot to build nuclear weapons. WRH: Iran vs Israel: What The Media Wants You To Forget.

At least 28 people have died and hundreds left trapped after avalanches closed a mountain highway tunnel in Northern Afghanistan. Passengers trapped in the Salang pass, the main route across the Hindu Kush mountains, said they were left freezing to death and suffocated by car fumes. They also reported to have seen cars filled with dead bodies.

The head of Afghanistan's National Disaster and Preparedness Centre said that the greatest fears were for passengers stuck in cars exposed to the extreme cold. Emergency workers had managed to evacuate 1,500 people who were trapped, including at least 70 injured, the Defence Ministry said. Days of heavy snow triggered avalanches blocking the 1.6 mile long Soviet-built tunnel, a historic engineering feat that links Kabul and Afghanistan's north. President Hamid Karzai said he was saddened by the deaths and ordered government workers to do everything possible to open the pass. NYT: Afghan Avalanches Kill Dozens, Trap Hundreds.

Nato and Afghan officials today urged Taliban militants holding a southern town to lay down their arms and warned civilians there to "keep your heads down" as US and Afghan troops prepare their first major offensive of the US. troop surge. Nato's civilian chief in Afghanistan, former British Ambassador Mark Sedwill, said authorities were prepared to deal with an influx of refugees who may flee fighting in Marjah, the biggest town in the south under Taliban Afghan control.

Nato and Afghan troops are preparing for a major offensive against Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan. Ahead of the operation, thousands of civilians have fled their homes near the Marjah area of Helmand province. Many will be going to displacement camps near the capital, Kabul. But as Al Jazeera's David Chater reports, conditions there are dismal. Rations of firewood are scarce as temperatures plummet below zero at night.

Viktor Yanukovych, the ursine eastern Ukrainian party boss who suffered a humiliating defeat five years ago, has triumphed in a presidential election on Sunday that was surprising not so much for its outcome as for its cleanliness. After a brutal and bruising campaign during which both sides hurled accusations of corruption, incompetence and outright lying at each other, Yanukovych held a slim margin over his challenger, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, 48.8 percent to 45.6. (Some 4.3 percent of voters exercised a purely Ukrainian option and voted "against everyone.") It marked a breathtaking comeback — as well as a metamorphosis — for a man who it seemed would be forever labeled as the loser of the Orange Revolution.

The number of women raped in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where sexual violence committed by warring factions has reached endemic proportions, topped 8,000 last year, according to fresh estimates released by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) today.

The past chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has joined the growing list of IPCC critics. According to the Sunday Telegraph, Rajendra Pachauri, the disgraced current IPCC chair, now faces criticism from his immediate predecessor, Robert Watson. The Telegraph reports that Watson “stressed that the chairman must take responsibility for correcting errors.” In another indication that Watson is taking pains to distance himself from the organization he once headed, the Sunday Times, in a story entitled Top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility, reports that Watson warned the IPCC that it must tackle its blunders. WUWT: Sir David King: Half Right on the IPCC and Global Warming Policies, Despite Bad Logic. AWIP: More Shame: UN Sea level blunder enrages Dutch minister -- UN 'wrongly claimed that more than half of Netherlands is currently below sea level'. Herald Sun: No, the Australian drought was not man-made either.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society has charged Israel with launching hundreds of attacks against Palestinian medical teams in 2009. The aid group, also known as PRCS, said that the Israeli troops fired 15 times at ambulances in the West Bank and Gaza last year, killing one medical worker and wounding 10 more. The PRCS also said that the Israeli troops obstructed its teams on 440 occasions in what the society denounced as "a blatant violation of international law."

Voters are deeply pessimistic about the state of Britain today, believing that society is broken and heading in the wrong direction, a Populus poll for The Times has found. Nearly three fifths of voters say that they hardly recognise the country they are living in, while 42 per cent say they would emigrate if they could.

The war in Afghanistan, jobs and health care. All big issues in America. And one man with strong opinions on all of them is U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

The story that everyone wants to tell is that the Democratic Party is disheartened and disintegrating. Teabagger Republicans are juiced up and on top. Or so the media says, over and over again. But the House candidate who raised the most money in the entire country during the last FEC reporting period -- $860,000 in three months -- is not a teabagger. He is not boosted relentlessly by Fox News. He's not even a Republican. He doesn't think that the Earth was created 6000 years ago, that President Obama was born in Kenya, or that global warming is a hoax.

"On her lapel, Palin wore a small pin with two flags -- for Israel and the United States." Along with the fact that she remains deeply unpopular with most Jewish-American voters, Palin's flamboyant display of her so-called love for Israel -- she previously boasted that the Israeli flag was the "only" one she kept in her Gubernatorial office -- is almost certainly grounded in her creepy desire to mold America's foreign policy to fit her evangelical belief that God demands that "Israeli land" be unified under Israeli control in order for Jesus to return and sweep all the good Christians up to heaven in Rapture (while banishing everyone else -- including the Jews she loves so much -- straight to hell forever). That's one major reason why neocons such as Bill Kristol love her.

Background In September of 2008 Aram Roston, then at NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, made several public records requests to the governor of the State of Alaska. Roston sought e-mails dated from January 2007 to September 24, 2008 that were copied to, directed to, or from Todd Palin and seven members of then Governor Sarah Palin’s staff, including Governor Palin. The records provided by the governor’s office consist of 2,544 pages and were subsequently provided to Bill Dedman, an MSNBC.com investigative reporter. In collaboration with MSNBC.com, Crivella West Incorporated, a knowledge discovery company, digitized, analyzed and arranged this Palin e-mail collection. Further, Crivella West categorized these documents into Special Collections for easy review. Bill Dedman detailed his findings from this production in an article published on February 5, 2010. The State of Alaska’s Response to Roston’s requests, as well as a listing of records the governor’s office withheld or redacted, can be accessed on the links below. Slate: Why haven't responsible Republicans spoken out against Sarah Palin? Raw Story: Fact check: Palin’s claims in Tea Party speech debunked. Olberman's Comment: A (Somewhat) Special Comment By Sarah Palin’s Left Hand. Marco Villa: 'Sarah Palin Is A F$#king Retard' (So said Stephen Colbert.).

'He who pays the piper calls the tune": That old saying captures perfectly America's growing dependence on our No. 1 creditor in the world, Communist China. By their carelessness Congress and the Obama administration are steadily handing over control of America's economic and financial future to a handful of Chinese officials and generals in Beijing. Those who think the Chinese won't use that control if they feel they have to are ignoring history -- and the Chinese. The ancient military strategist Sun Tzu said that the best strategy was to render an opponent's army helpless even before the battle began. America may still have the biggest and best military in the world.

UK death toll in Afghanistan now level with Falklands. Offensive will be the 'biggest of its kind since Vietnam'. AntiWar: British death toll in Afghan war matches Falklands. JNV: British soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since 7 October 2001 219 names - 28 pages (as of 1 October 2009)

A recent study offers the first evidence linking exceptional intellectual ability to bipolar disorder. Researchers found top students were almost four times as likely to develop bipolar disorder as adults, compared to those with average grades.

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Sweden's unemployment agency has been found guilty of discrimination for expelling a Muslim man from a job training program because he refused to shake hands with a woman. A Stockholm court Monday ordered the Public Employment Service to pay 50,000 kronor ($6,700) in damages to an immigrant from Bosnia who lost his jobless benefits when he was kicked out of the program.

A man pulled alive from the rubble of a building in Haiti's capital Monday may have been trapped since the January 12 quake that leveled much of the city, doctors reported. The 28-year-old man, identified as Evan Muncie, was found in the wreckage of a market where he sold rice, his family told staff at a University of Miami field hospital. He suffered from extreme dehydration and malnutrition, but did not appear to have significant crushing injuries, the doctors said.