London is 'angry' over the use of stolen identities by the Dubai assassins and points its finger at the Jewish state and its notorious Mossad espionage agency. The Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, was summoned yesterday by the foreign minister to “share information”. In practice Britain has stopped short of accusing Israel of involvement in the scandalous assassination, however to signal its displeasure the Foreign Office ignored an Israeli plea to keep the summons secret. "Relations were in the freezer before this. They are in the deep freeze now," a British official told the Guardian.

I was going to stop writing about political things and concentrate on fiction. Fiction is an easier venue because most of the time it doesn’t get you wrapped around the proverbial axle and make you want to blow your head off.

by Jacob G. Hornberger

I tuned into conservative Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox News last night to see what libertarian John Stossel had to say, and in the process I was treated to one of the most inane arguments I have ever heard in my life, not from Stossel, of course, but rather from arch-conservative Ann Coulter, who was appearing as a guest in a separate segment.

Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz on Obama's Stimulus Plan, Debt, Climate Change, and 'Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy'

As President Obama defends the success of his one-year-old $787 billion stimulus package, we speak to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who says the stimulus was both not big enough and too focused on tax cuts. Stiglitz is the author of the new book Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, which analyzes the causes of the Great Recession of 2008 and calls for overcoming what he calls an “ersatz capitalism” that socializes losses but privatizes gains.

B'Tselem is the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Hamoked is the Center for the Defence of the Individual, an Israeli human rights organization, aiding Palestinians whose rights Israel violates. In October 2009, they jointly published a report titled, "Without Trial: Administrative detention of Palestinians by Israel and the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law," covering Israel's policy of imprisoning hundreds of uncharged Palestinians without trial "by order of an administrative official," not a judge.

The African Union, France, and ECOWAS, a West African economic bloc, have condemned a military coup in Niger, a day after dissident soldiers seized the president and dissolved the constitution.

August 1960: Niger gains full independence from France. A single-party civilian govermnent under the presidency of Hamani Diori runs the West African country.

The United Nations has launched its largest appeal ever for a natural disaster to help millions of Haitians displaced by last month's earthquake.

A pilot furious with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has crashed his small plane into a seven-storey building in apparent suicide.

The brother of a senior pro-Taliban commander has been killed in a suspected US missile strike in northwestern Pakistan, intelligence officials and Taliban sources have said.

Six Nato soldiers have been killed on the sixth day of a military offensive to gain control of a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan.

An explosion at a mosque in northwestern Pakistan has killed at least 29 people and wounded dozens more.

A Nato air strike has mistakenly killed at least seven Afghan policemen and wounded two others in Imam Sahib district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan.

Yvo de Boer, the UN climate chief, has announced that he will step down from his position to take up a role in the private sector.

The UN's nuclear watchdog group, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has for the first time expressed fears that Iran may be trying to develop a nuclear warhead.

Tensions between Israel and its European allies have mounted in the wake of the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas commander, in a Dubai hotel room.

Israeli security forces have fired tear gas and munitions at a group of Palestinians staging a protest in the West Bank town of Bi'lin to mark the fifth anniversary of a separation wall built by Israel.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, has received a hero's welcome upon his return to Egypt.

Toyota's president has confirmed that he will appear before a US congressional panel next week, to explain the Japanese carmaker's handling of a series of damaging safety recalls.

World number one golfer Tiger Woods has made an emotional public apology three months after details of his extramarital affairs emerged.