Witnesses said the driver, Ziad Jilani, 41, had been shot at least once and was lying in the road when the Israeli officer walked up next to him and fired at his head with an M16 rifle, killing him instantly. Jilani’s widow, Texas-born Moira Jilani, called the ministry’s decision not to prosecute “ridiculous. That man executed my husband by shooting him point-blank. If that’s not criminal, what is?” She criticized Israeli officials for taking seven months to reach the decision and said she planned to meet with her attorney to discuss their next step, which might include a private lawsuit. “This shows the racism in Israel,” said Jilani, a mother of three. She said Israeli soldiers and police officers are rarely punished for killing or injuring Palestinians.

Following a significant hike in oil prices, an angry Fox News host has exclaimed that the United States has every right to take the oil from Iraq and Kuwait. On his Friday show, the Great American Panel, Sean Hannity, said that Iraq and Kuwait should "pay for their own liberation" by the United States.

"I say why isn't Iraq paying us back with oil, and paying every American family and their soldiers that lost loved ones or have injured soldiers - and why didn't they pay for their own liberation?" Hannity asked.

He added that the United States has every right to go into Kuwait and Iraq and "take all their oil."

Goldman Sachs has set aside $15.3bn (£9.5bn) to pay its staff in 2010 – an average of $430,000 each – in a move that re-ignites the controversy over City pay and bonuses at a time when youth unemployment is hitting record highs in the UK. The best known of all the Wall Street firms did not attempt to show the restraint of last year when it reduced the amount being paid into its bonus pool in the fourth quarter of 2009 to make a $500m public donation to a charitable foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives. The $15.3bn set aside for bonuses and salaries was down 5% on the $16bn for the previous year but did not fall as fast as revenues, which dropped 13% to $39.1bn in 2010.

Beginning in December of last year, a series of ongoing protests in the streets of Tunisia escalated to the point where President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali - who had ruled the country for 23 years - at first declared he would not seek re-election, then fled the country on January 14th. An interim government was assembled, but protesters remain in the streets, demanding removal of all traces of Ben Ali's old RCD party. Protesters' frustrations with high unemployment, inflation and corruption drove them to the streets after a pivotal event, when a young Tunisian vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire after police confiscated his produce cart. Bouazizi died of his injuries days later. Collected here are images of the turmoil in Tunisia over the past couple of weeks. (40 photos total)

Three weeks after the publication of a petition calling on Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar to take action against racism spreading within schools and the general public, teachers told Ynet about the harsh reality they are forced to face daily. In one case, a 12th grade student of a northern Israeli school wrote "Death to the Arabs" on a test in civics class. In another case, a high school student from Tel Aviv stood up during class, and to the horror of his teacher declared that his dream is to volunteer for the Border Guard, "so that I can spray Arabs to death." His friends welcomed the announcement with applause. Moreover, civics teachers around the country have been finding graffiti on the walls of their classrooms, bearing slogans ranging from "Kahane was right" to "A good Arab is a dead Arab." Other statements incite against the ultra-Orthodox sector and against refugees.

A federal appeals court today ruled that the government can continue suppressing transcripts in which former CIA prisoners now held at Guantánamo Bay describe abuse and torture they suffered in CIA custody. The ruling came in an ACLU Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to obtain uncensored transcripts from Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) used to determine if Guantánamo detainees qualify as "enemy combatants."

“The American people have a right to know what the government has done in their name, and these transcripts, which include the direct testimony of the victims themselves, are essential to a full understanding of the Bush administration’s torture program,” said Ben Wizner, Litigation Director of the ACLU National Security Project, who argued the appeal for the ACLU. “The court’s decision undermines the Freedom of Information Act and condones a cover-up. These transcripts are being suppressed not to protect national security, but to shield former government officials from accountability.”

Your brain’s been cobbled together over millions of years of blind evolution and it shows. You’re clumsy, stupid, weak and motivated by the basest of urges. Your MO is both grotesquely selfish and unquestionably deferential to questionable authority. You’re not in control of your life. You wear your ignorance like a badge of honor and gleefully submit to oppression, malfeasance and kleptocracy. You will buy anything. You will believe anything. You believe that evolution is a matter of belief. You likely scrolled down to #1, without reading the rest, because you’re an impatient, semi-literate Philistine who’s either unable or unwilling to digest more than 140 characters at a time. You think Epic Beard Man is a national hero and that Bradley Manning might be Eli and Payton’s brother. You believe in American exceptionalism despite the contrary, compelling and overwhelming evidence. You tacitly partake in all manner of atrocity without batting a lash. You’re actively participating in our species’ extinction and you’re either in denial or you just don’t give a shit. You escape into every sort of mind-numbing distraction and ridiculous, convoluted fantasy, so you don’t have to face the bitter, terrifying fact that your life is utterly meaningless...

[Jennifer Rubin/Washington Post: ] The left-leaning Glenn Greewald, who unlike virtually all other liberal bloggers has taken a consistent position on the war on terror (criticizing Obama on the same basis on which he excoriated the Bush administration), writes:

Obama has single-handedly eliminated virtually all mainstream debate over these War on Terror policies. At least during the Bush years, we had one party which steadfastly supported them but one party which claimed (albeit not very persuasively) to vehemently oppose them. At least there was a pretense of vigorous debate over their legality, morality, efficacy, and compatibility with our national values. Those debates are no more. Even the hardest-core right-wing polemicists -- Gen. Hayden, the Heritage Foundation, Dick Cheney -- now praise Obama's actions in these areas. Opposition from national Democrats has faded away to almost complete nonexistence now that it's a Democratic President doing these things. What was once viewed as the signature of Bush/Cheney radicalism is now official, bipartisan Washington consensus: the policies equally of both parties and all Serious people. Thanks to Barack Obama, this architecture is firmly embedded in place and invulnerable to meaningful political challenge.

Well, he does have a compelling argument, even considering differences with the Bush administration over enhanced interrogation techniques.