Israel may build more settlements before weighing housing freeze

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to approve building hundreds of new settlements in the West Bank before considering a freeze on construction in the area, a senior Israeli government official said Friday. The move comes as Israel and the United States have been increasingly at odds over President Obama’s insistence that Israel’s government freeze all settlement activity as a necessary step toward advancing negotiations with Palestinians.

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Saro-Wiwa’s son welcomes Shell payout

A $15.5 million payout made by oil giant Shell to settle a lawsuit brought against it by relations of executed Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and other activists will allow the families of the victims to move on with their lives, Saro-Wiwa’s son has told CNN. The New York lawsuit — brought to court by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Saro-Wiwa’s family and others in 1996 — accused Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary of complicity in the writer’s 1995 hanging and the killings or persecution of other environmental activists in the Niger Delta. Nigeria’s Ogoni people have complained for years that Shell was allowed to pollute its land without consequences

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