Israel

A cat-bot that climbs the walls using its claws, a dog-droid that responds to human movements, and a robot which releases glue through its wheels while scaling buildings met Wednesday in Herzliya. This might sound like the beginning of a joke or a description of the scene of a science fiction movie like Star Wars. In reality though, this was the scene at a robot exhibition held on Wednesday at a conference in the central coastal town.
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Violent clashes erupted late Wednesday between settler activists and Israeli security forces at a disputed house slated for evacuation in the West Bank city of Hebron.
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AP - A pair of polls published Thursday showed opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu's hardline Likud party leading Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's moderate Kadima party in the run-up to Israel's Feb. 10 elections.

Reuters - The PLO took the unprecedented step of placing advertisements in Israeli newspapers on Thursday to promote a six-year-old Arab peace plan for the region.

Israeli arms dealers have negotiated and sold military equipment to a number of countries defined by Israeli law as enemy states in recent years with the full acknowledgment and approval of the Defense Ministry, Haaretz has learned.
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An explosion in the Gaza Strip killed a member of the Hamas Islamist group on Thursday, hospital staff and witnesses said.
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AP - While an Israeli cutoff in fuel shipments has closed down a dozen of his competitors, baker Khalil Awad stays in business thanks to a little creativity and dirty black oil drained from car engines. The cutoff in fuel shipments to the Gaza Strip's sole power plant started a week ago in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.