When 20-year-old American student Yasir Afifi discovered a GPS tracking device on his car, he first thought it was a bomb. After sharing images of the device online, he learned that it was actually a tracking device placed by the FBI, but after being confronted about it, the bureau threatened prosecution if he did not return it. Now Afifi is suing, and the FBI still won’t say why they were tracking him. He appeared Wednesday on a state-sponsored Russian television network to explain his ordeal. Click here to read more about his case.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) announced Thursday that he was opening an exploratory bid for the Republican presidential campaign. He is the first major Republican to do so. Gingrich and his wife, Callista, released a statement on their new website newtexplore2012.com. "We are excited about exploring whether there is sufficient support for my potential candidacy for President of this exceptional country," the statement statement said. Gingrich outlined some of his core principles in a brief appearance at the Georgia state Capitol Thursday.

Eleven University of California students face criminal charges and possible jail terms for protesting and disrupting a speech by an Israeli official as the Orange County district attorney's office engages in what one of the students' attorneys calls "selective and discriminatory prosecution". In a University of California at Irvine auditorium on 8 February 2010, ten student activists nonviolently confronted Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the United States, with prepared statements of protest. They stood up and challenged Oren's defense of Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip in winter 2008-09 -- during which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed -- and the state's ongoing human rights violations.

"Propagating murder is not an expression of free speech," shouted one student before he was escorted out of the room. "You, sir, are an accomplice to genocide," another stood up and stated before he, too, was led away by police.

NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Settlers chopped down more than 500 olive trees owned by Palestinians in the West Bank district of Nablus on Friday, Palestinian Authority officials said. Residents of the illegal Shvut Rachel settlement raided Qusra village and chopped down the trees, said Ghassan Doughlas, PA official for settlement affairs in the northern West Bank. In a "day of rage" Thursday, right-wing Israelis and settlers blocked a road to Jerusalem and closed down train tracks to the country's airport. Settlers were protesting the demolition of several structures at an illegal outpost near Nablus by the Israeli government. They threatened to carry-out "price-tag" attacks against Palestinians in response to the government's "anti-settler" activity.

In the past, the "price tag" has included arson, shootings, beatings, burning fields, uprooting trees and poisoning water wells belonging to Palestinians. Following a recent surge in settler violence -- including fire-bombing Palestinian homes, smashing shops and damaging cars -- the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday urged the international community to intervene and stop the attacks.

Late last week there was a meeting at The Commons on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn that few attending will ever forget. Organized by Al-Awda, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild and several other groups, the speakers were Professor Ahmet Dogan of Erciyes University in Kayseri, Turkey – the father of Furkan Dogan, the 19 year old Turkish-American who was one of the 9 humanitarian aid workers murdered on the Mavi Marmara when Israeli commandos attacked the flotilla on it’s way to Gaza last May, Lamis Deek, Palestinian lawyer and activist, Dima Abi Saab, co-chair of Al-Awda, Katherine Gallagher, Sr. Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Felice Gelman from the US Boat to Gaza Campaign.

Deek spoke first saying that the tragedy on the Mavi Marmara was part of a long history of violence against Palestinians and their supporters perpetrated by the “rogue Israeli regime”. The rights of Palestinians have been abused from the very beginning.

AWIP: UN Fact-Finding Mission Says Israelis "Executed" US Citizen Furkan Dogan
Alternet: UN Report: American Citizen Executed By Israelis During Mavi Marmara Raid
Justin Raimondo: This Says It All: Israelis kill American – Joe Biden says: "What's the big deal?"

The government, along with religious and human rights groups, opposes capital punishment but most victims' families are in favour of it. Surveys show most of the population also support the death penalty. Taiwan's government adopted an informal moratorium on executions in 2005, but dropped it following an outcry. In the 1980s and 1990s Taiwan put to death 505 criminals - a figure which dropped to 36 over the past decade. Instead, judges were given the ability to sentence violent criminals to life in prison. But last year, Taiwanese justice minister Wang Ching-feng was forced to resign following an outcry from victims' families when she tried to insist on extending the informal moratorium on the death penalty. Four convicts were executed, bringing the moratorium to an end. On Friday, the new justice minister signed the execution orders for another five.

At least thirty people have been killed and dozens injured after the army opened fire on protesters in the Libyan city of Zawiyah, residents have reported. Although the facts cannot be verified, it is thought pro-Gaddafi forces entered the city and fired at around 60 protesters, who then returned fire. A number of people were shot, including a main rebel commander who was killed. This then set off another march of thousands of people, many of whom were unarmed, who were subsequently shot at by the military. Many of the demonstrators were shot in the head, neck and chest. The western port city, which is about 30 miles from the capital Tripoli, has been surrounded by the dictator's security forces and is under siege. Meanwhile in the east, rebels said at least four people were killed in clashes with pro-regime forces near the oil town of Ras Lanuf.

In London, it will soon be illegal to: lie down on the ground, give away food or drink for free or be homeless. On the plus side, these laws are totally impossible to enforce and you don’t need to be genius to see more loopholes than a tuna net but shh, nobody tell Boris.