Repots say Israel planned to build hundreds of new housing units in occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds as tensions mount in the city over the regime's settlement works. Citing the Israeli media, Ma'an news agency reported Wednesday that the Israeli housing ministry plans to build 1,300 new buildings across the Pisgat Ze'ev, Nabi Yakov and Har Homa neighborhoods in East Jerusalem al-Quds.

The plan, however, requires an approval from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who had formerly vowed to continue settlement work in the occupied city "in the same way that has been customary over the last 42 years." Palestinians says the reconstruction is part of an Israeli plot to replace Palestinian mosques and churches with Jewish sites in the city. AWIP: Spain predicts Israeli annexation of entire West Bank. Al Jazeera: Obama: 'No crisis' in Israel ties.

Ramallah residents have named a street after an activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003 while protesting against Tel Aviv's demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza. Family, friends and supporters including students from a local secondary school participated in the dedication ceremony on Tuesday - the seventh anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death. Corrie's mother, Cindy, said her daughter stood for many other foreign activists who have come to the West Bank and Gaza in recent years to serve as a buffer between Palestinians and Israeli troops. "I just wanted you to know ... that you do not stand alone," she told a small group of Palestinians, including the mayor and governor of Ramallah. "People are stepping up. They will not be silent."

A Pakistani court has indicted five Americans on terror charges that could see them jailed for life if found guilty of plotting attacks with Al Qaeda-linked groups. The five US citizens aged 18 to 25 denied the charges, which were read out in an anti-terrorism court convened in the district jail of the eastern city Sargodha where they were arrested in December. "Charges have been laid against all the accused. All these charges are terrorism related. The offences are punishable by life imprisonment," defence lawyer Shahid Kamal said.

The US Department of Justice has been formally asked to begin regulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A 392 page legal filing presented by a four person IRmep delegation in a two hour meeting with top officials of the Internal Security Section substantiated the following case for AIPAC's immediate registration:

Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU. The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney. In the message, the officials denied the bipartisan commission's request to question terrorist detainees, informing its two senior-most members that doing so would "cross" a "line" and obstruct the administration's ability "to protect the nation". PressTV: '9/11 panel was warned not to probe too deeply'.

On this episode of the Riz Khan show we ask if US weapons are behind the sharp rise in birth defects in Falluja. Residents of the Iraqi city blame the surge in chronic deformities on controversial weapons used by US forces against Sunni fighters in 2004. AWIP/Abel Bult-Ito: Nothing depleted about 'depleted uranium'.

The spokesman for Danish association Foreningen Opror has been sentenced by a district court to a suspended six-month prison term over allegations of supporting terrorism. The Copenhagen District Court declared that associations within Denmark cannot by law obtain funding or encourage others to financially support rebel terrorist groups such as the PFLP or FARC, and has handed down the suspended sentence against the Opror group’s spokesman, Patrick McManus, accordingly. Copenhagen Post: Terror accused found guilty of FARC support. VHeadline.com: Danish Anti-terror law imprisons Irish writer for supporting FARC and Venezuela's Bolivarian process. Colombia Reports: Danish FARC supporter jailed for 6 months. AWIP: PFLP salutes Danish comrades' challenge to "anti-terrorist" listings.

Hindus condemn Molotov attack on a Roma family in Czech Republic. Hindus have strongly condemned recent reported Molotov cocktail attack on a Roma family in an Ostrava settlement in Czech Republic. Expressing shock, acclaimed Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, asked for its early investigation and taking preventive measures nationwide that such things did not happen in future frightening the Roma community. Zed argued that Roma faced apartheid like conditions in Czech Republic. AWIP/Michaela Stanková: A wall to keep out Roma + The cost of excluding the Roma minority.

The harnessing of solar energy is expanding on every front as concerns about climate change and energy security escalate, as government incentives for harnessing solar energy expand, and as these costs decline while those of fossil fuels rise. One solar technology that is really beginning to take off is the use of solar thermal collectors to convert sunlight into heat that can be used to warm both water and space.

Rising wave of anger in response to virtual strip-search contradicts media spin. Despite establishment media spin that naked body scanners are being meekly accepted by a compliant public, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that there have been more than 600 formal complaints about the devices in the last year. Furthermore, the documents reveal anger at TSA officials for refusing to offer passengers a pat-down alternative, as well as forcing children to go through machines which provide crisp images of genitalia, a particularly outrageous scenario in light of last week's story concerning a TSA worker who was charged with multiple child sex crimes having raped an underage girl. "Hundreds of U.S. air travelers have lodged complaints over use of full-body security scanners in the past year, charging they violate personal privacy and may be harmful to their health, documents released on Tuesday showed," reports Reuters.

Liz Cheney could one day become the first female US President. But she is even more right-wing than her dad. Given that Hillary Clinton has just missed the boat, Cheney would probably be the first female US president in history. But (and sit down before you read this, please) she is probably even more right-wing, and even more of a warmonger, than the dad to whom she is so devoted. This month, indeed, she has truly come into her own.

Washington's ambassador to Beijing said Thursday bilateral disputes should not interfere with cooperation between the U.S. and China on international issues such as global warning and Iran's nuclear program. Jon Huntsman's remarks come amid lingering Chinese anger over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and a meeting between President Barack Obama and Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama. Tensions are also rising over trade disputes and U.S. pressure on China to allow its currency to appreciate.

A 50-year mystery over the 'cursed bread' of Pont-Saint-Esprit, which left residents suffering hallucinations, has been solved after a writer discovered the US had spiked the bread with LSD as part of an experiment.

Rasmussen has been in the field the last few days, polling 1,000 U.S. voters about their attitudes toward Israel, its settlements in the West Bank and its relationship with the United States. According to the poll, 49 percent of Americans believe that “Israel (should) be required to stop building new settlements in occupied Palestinian territory,” while only 22 percent believe it should not. That represents a strong endorsement of the position taken by the Obama administration.

An even-more overwhelming percentage of Americans — 75 percent — believe that “Palestinian leaders (should) be required to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state” as part of a peace agreement.

Recently released FBI documents prove the existence of highly sensitive National Security and criminal investigations of “Turkish Activities” in Chicago prior to September 11, 2001. These documents add further support to many of the allegations that former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has claimed, in public and in Congress, since 2002. The documents were released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into an organization called the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA), an organization repeatedly named by Ms. Edmonds as being complicit in the crimes that she became aware of when she was a translator at the FBI. The documents released under FOIA are almost completely redacted. Sibel Edmonds' website Boiling Frogs here: Official Documents Confirm Major Criminal Investigations of Turkish Operatives in Chicago.

Equipment designed for torturing prisoners is still being exported from European Union (EU) countries despite a four-year-old ban on such trade, according to a new report by Amnesty International. The human rights group has found that companies active in several of the EU’s 27 states have exploited loopholes in controls aimed at putting an end to the selling of instruments of torture.

The British historian Tony Judt is dying, slowly and painfully, from a variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (A.L.S.), better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He has written matter-of-factly about his condition — he is now, essentially, a quadriplegic — in The New York Review of Books. At some point he will be able to communicate only by blinking an eye. For now he is dictating his words to assistants.

Best known for his book “Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945” (2005), Mr. Judt has long been an engaged and unpredictable intellectual of the left, one who is sometimes given to controversial opinions. Mr. Judt, who is Jewish, has argued, for example, that Israel is an “anachronism” that should convert “from a Jewish state to a binational one” including Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. His prose tends to be as biting as his ideas.

Mr. Judt’s new book, “Ill Fares the Land,” is a slim and penetrating work, a dying man’s sense of a dying idea: the notion that the state can play a significant role in its citizens’ lives without imperiling their liberties. It makes sense that this book arrives now, not merely during the hideous endgame of the national health-care debate but during mud season; this book’s bleak assessment of the selfishness and materialism that have taken root in Western societies will stick to your feet and muddy your floors. But “Ill Fares the Land” is also optimistic, raw and patriotic in its sense of what countries like the United States and Britain have meant — and can continue to mean — to their people and to the world.