Human Rights Glance
Since 2004, 19 people, about half of them children, have been killed in protests against the barrier. The rights groups found that in four small Palestinian villages – Bil’in, Ni’lin, Ma’sara and Jayyous – 1,566 Palestinians have been injured in demonstrations against the wall.
In five villages alone, 176 Palestinians have been arrested for protesting against the annexation, with children and youth specifically targeted during these arrest campaigns. The actual numbers of those who were injured and arrested are no doubt greater considering that these are just the incidents that took place in a few villages.
Israel is threatening to kill off a crucial West Bank economic project unless the Palestinian Authority withdraws a request to the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged Israeli crimes during last winter's Gaza war.
A U.S. federal judge refused Wednesday to release records describing interrogation techniques authorized for overseas use by the CIA, saying it was up to the agency to decide if they should remain secret.
For the CIA supervisors and operatives responsible for torture, the chickens are coming home to roost; that is, if President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder mean it when they say no one is above the law – and if they don’t fall victim to brazen intimidation.
The Obama administration has decided not to seek legislation to establish a new system of preventive detention to hold terrorism suspects and will instead rely on a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban to continue to detain people indefinitely and without charge, according to administration officials.
These 1948 questions are even knottier and more sensitive than the 1967 ones: among them, whether Palestinians can at last come to terms with what was established in that fateful year, namely Israel as a Jewish state, and whether Israelis can at last acknowledge the impact of that event on Palestinians, including the creation of at least 700,000 Palestinian refugees.
A report by the International Organization for Migration finds most of the 1.6 million Iraqis who were forced to flee their homes in the wake of the 2006 bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra still lack the most basic needs. IOM surveyed nearly 224,000 internally displaced families in Iraq's 18 governorates. 
