Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/13/israel-palestine-obama-biden-america

Politics is ultimately about interests. Morals and highfalutin principles have their place, but a more reliable truth is that governments and countries usually act in their own self-interest. Usually. The way Israel greeted the visiting US vice-president, Joe Biden, this week offers an intriguing exception to the rule, a rare instance of a state acting in a way that brings itself almost no benefit and delivers a huge amount of self-inflicted harm.

Link: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article7060521.ece

Dick Fuld, chief executive of Lehman Brothers, spent a career instilling into his traders that new business was like “blood in the water — go get it”.

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7060395.ece

A night raid carried out by US and Afghan gunmen led to the deaths of two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials in an atrocity which Nato then tried to cover up, survivors have told The Times.

Link: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article7060516.ece

Lewis Carroll would surely have approved. In the topsy-turvy world of American accounting, 105 equals 100, or possibly whatever Humpty Dumpty wants it to mean.

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7060329.ece

The man known for much of his career as “Bush’s brain” has caused a storm of protest by saying that he is proud of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on prisoners by the US and internationally condemned as torture. Karl Rove said that the Administration “broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information”.