The past several months in Afghanistan have witnessed a rise in the level of violence caused by the ramification of U.S.-committed crimes in the country.

In January, a video of four U.S soldiers in uniform urinating on three dead bodies sparked anger and outrage around the world.Russia Today reported on this incident with a statement from authorities refuting this video saying: "While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticities of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps."

In February, violence broke out in Kabul over the burning of copies of the Quran at the Bagram military base.This led to protests by thousands of Afghans demanding the departure of foreign troops from Afghanistan. Demonstrators also burned the American flag and expressed rage over the ongoing desecration of Muslim sanctities; thirty Afghans were killed in the protests. 

Finally, on Sunday, anger reached a tipping point after a U.S. soldier killed over a dozen civilians on a late-night shooting spree.This latest massacre left 16 civilians dead, most of them children and women.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the shooting and demanded an explanation from the U.S., stating, "This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven."

While mainstream media are reporting on just one U.S. soldier, the prime suspect whose identity was just released as Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, an Afghan committee investigated the crime and concluded that up to 20 people may have been involved in the massacre.The committee explained, "The villages are one and a half kilometers from the American military base. We are convinced that one soldier cannot kill so many people in two villages within one hour at the same time", but accounts by the massacre's survivors have yet to be reported by most outlets.  

The number of Afghan casualties has steadily increased since 2009. The 2011 UNAMA report documents, "2,332 civilian deaths and 3,649 injuries by the Taliban for a total 5,981 civilian casualties, an increase of 10% in deaths and injuries attributed to anti-government forces compared to 2010. This accounted for 77% of all deaths whereas Nato and government forces totalled 410 civilian killings and 335 injuries."

These figures indicate the Afghan people are subject to regular violence from multiple forces, both local and foreign.

Image: Afghan protesters shout anti-U.S. slogans during a demonstration in Jalalabad province March 13, 2012. The shootings triggered a protest by around 2,000 students in the eastern city of Jalalabad, the first since Sunday's attack, calling for the U.S. soldier to be prosecuted by Afghan authorities in Kandahar. REUTERS/Parwiz

Tonight, al-Jazeera brings us the latest developments from Lybia, where Gaddafi's battalions have bombed central Misurata, killing a number of civilians including four children. Local residents are hoping to set up a floating hospital near the city's port in order to treat the increasing number of wounded. According to an al-Jazeera correspondent, international coalition fighter jets intercepted a Gaddafi warplane carrying soldiers and munitions 60 kilometers east of Benghazi. In Ajdabiya, clashes continue between the revolutionaries and Gaddafi’s battalions. Revolutionaries in the outskirts of Ajdabiya were determined to liberate the city from the Colonel's battalions.

The BBC reports that four people were killed and 12 injured in the shelling of al-Houlu’s family home in eastern Gaza. Three of the four killed were children, and of the injured, four are in critical condition and seven are children. The Israeli air raids came after Hamas fighters launched a number of mortar shells into southern Israel. A BBC correspondent in Gaza said the Israeli air strikes are considered the most violent since the 2009 Israeli bombardment in Gaza.

Dubai TV’s breaking news from Yemen confirms that two Yemeni soldiers were killed last night in clashes that erupted between the army and the Republican Guards near the presidential palace in Mukallah. Meanwhile, protestors continued to stage sit-ins at Sana'a University’s square, the epicenter of protests demanding the ouster of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Yemeni army has been heavily deployed around the entrances of the protest square since yesterday. The protest movement has spread to 12 provinces in Yemen and has gained the support of several military commanders and Yemen’s two largest tribes, Hashed and Bakil.

In a report from Bahrain, al-Alam confirms that 20 people have been martyred since the beginning of the country’s protest movement. Opposition sources reported the death of one man from injuries caused by the Saudi Peninsula Shield in the Bahraini capital. Medical sources also confirmed that a woman was shot in the neck by Saudi forces as she was driving her car in the western part of Manama. The opposition called on international organizations to take action to end the violence and demand an immediate withdrawal of Saudi fighters from Bahrain. But with each martyr's funeral, Bahrainis assert they will continue their peaceful movement until their demands are met.

In an interview with Saudi TV, Profesor Hajawida discussed discusses why France and Britain have been at the forefront of military operations in Libya while the U.S. has taken a backseat. He states that while the U.S. wants to take the “humanitarian stance and support the Libyan people’s rights,” the Obama administration has to deal with pressing American issues such as the economy and unemployment. He also added that after the events that occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. public opinion might be more opposed to the U.S. assuming a primary role in the military operations in Libya.

(France 24, 1350 PST February 2, 2011) According to France 24's Guillaume Meyer, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' recent address implies there is strong suspicion within the U.S. government that some of the agitation from pro-Mubarak elements may be something that the government itself is orchestrating.

Click here for important background information on the unrest in Egypt.

On the latest Global Pulse episode, host Erin Coker examines media coverage of the evolving relations between China and the US. Watch the episode below and share your thoughts!

While this week’s Global Pulse, called “Chimerica,” looks at what the two nations share, there are plenty of points of friction between them. The U.S. regularly criticizes China’s human rights record, and now China has published a report equally critical of the U.S., for “destabilizing the world economy and meddling in other countries' affairs.”

The United States is in a tricky situation. On the one hand, the U.S. wants to encourage human rights and increased democracy in China; on the other hand it fears alienating China, its most prominent trading partner, which holds upwards of $800 billion of American debt. So how has the U.S. walked this delicate tightrope so far? Not very well.

Perhaps the best recent example of the awkward U.S.-China relationship is the controversial meeting between President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama. Most in the west see the Dalai Lama as a man of peace who dares to stand up to the might of the Chinese government. Not surprisingly, China considers him to be a threat to a unified China, due to his advocacy for the independence of Tibet. They also see him as a pawn of western nations bent on embarrassing the Chinese government. Even some western media sources have criticized the motives of the Dalai Lama. In an editorial from the UK’s Guardian, Brendan O’Neill describes the Dalai Lama as a poseur who “once auctioned his Land Rover on eBay for $80,000 and has even done an advert for Apple.” He also charges that the Dalai Lama “has [been] used as a battering ram by western governments in their culture war with China.”

But celebrities like Richard Gere and Sharon Stone are prominent followers of the Dalai Lama who advocate his return to Tibet, and American Buddhists have made some of his books pop-religion best sellers in America, so there was tremendous pressure on Obama to meet with the Dalai Lama. Although the meeting was carefully planned to try to not offend either side, it ended up offending both. Initially Obama refused to meet, citing the need to meet with China’s Hu Jintao first: human rights activists and western media called it a snub. When the meeting finally did happen it took place in a closed room without cameras. The Chinese were angry that the meeting took place at all.

Whether this and other rights issues are geat walls that will ultimately divide the two nations, or just side roads on the long march to cooperation remains unknown.

In this week's episode of Global Pulse, host Erin Coker asks if the U.S. and Russia could be entering a new arms race. Watch the episode and share your thoughts below!

As a young child in the mid-1980s, thoughts of total nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Russians would occasionally prevent me from sleeping. On one family holiday to Maine, I actually wondered if we were far enough away from major cities to be safe from an atomic blast.

Looking back on the decade it is easy to see why a little kid would be so uneasy. The threat of nuclear war was ingrained in popular culture, lurking in everything from movies to songs. In 1982, Time Magazine devoted nearly 3,500 words to an article entitled, "thinking the unthinkable."

Today such fears seem nearly as dated as the all-out nuclear panic that resulted in this 1950s public service announcement that acknowledged the imminent threat of the bomb, while advocating questionable albeit, hilarious, blast survival techniques. Picnic blankets and newspapers, anyone?

However, with negotiations on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) stalling in recent months, the global media have taken notice. As Ariel Cohen points out in a New York Times editorial, the failure to agree on a new treaty by the December 5 deadline, has left the two countries in "uncharted waters."

Or has it?

Calling Cohen's argument "alarmist and misleading," William D. Hartung argues that despite the delay in sorting out the new START agreement, Russia and the U.S. are still “abiding by the basic principles of the agreement”  as they craft a new one. 

The director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, Hartung notes that even if both sides chose to ignore START's provisions, "it is absurd to suggest that either side could gain a strategic advantage in the few weeks (or in the absolute worst case, months) it will take to hammer out a new treaty."

Hartung is also quick to dismiss what he terms the "unsupportable notion that there is a resurgent Russian bear out there, and that it cannot be trusted and should not be cooperated with in any substantial way." Such thinking, according to Cohen, is obsolete—the detritus of the Cold War—and is no longer relative today.

So are the media overreacting, then? Is it only a matter of time before the U.S. and Russia iron out the details of the new START, or is Hartung being cavalier about the whole thing? In today's world, how crucial is U.S.-Russia arms control to global security?

The weekend was anything but quiet around Copenhagen's Bella Center and in the world at large, with protestors and activists taking to the streets from Sydney to San Francisco demanding a real deal on climate change. The mass action, which prompted hundreds of arrests, included marches, vigils and church bell ringing by groups like Oxfam and 350.org.

At the negotiations, aggressive action took place as well. Tuvalu's negotiator reached out in an emotional plea to the UN, the U.S. Senate and President Obama, asserting that the survival of his country and other small island nations depends on decisions made this week. Meanwhile, Bolivia's UN Ambassador issued a bold response to the U.S. refusal to pay any "climate debt" by saying, "We are not assigning guilt, merely responsibility. As they say in the U.S., if you break it, you buy it."  And today, African countries of the G77 have walked out of negotiations, temporarily suspending talks, in a move to protect gains made through the Kyoto Protocol.

All of this and more, as always, is continuously covered on our LIVE page, Copenhagen 24/7, so stay tuned for more up-to-the-minute news straight from the source. I'll leave you with our latest spot from Link TV's Climate Change Hits Home series, which discusses the impending impacts of a warming world on recreation in the U.S. Some of America's favorite (and most prosperous!) pastimes are in danger of disappearing:

It's only day three of negotiations at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and the climate change roller coaster is quickly gaining momentum, with new urgency to release a draft climate agreement before the weekend. On Monday, the U.S. took strides towards regulating emissions when the Environmental Protection Agency announced the dangers of greenhouse gases on human health -- an important step towards setting tougher national emissions standards. But shortly thereafter, the U.S. and others took a hit with the leak of the "Danish Text", a controversial proposal by several parties, such as Denmark, the U.S., and the U.K., that attempts to give regulatory control to rich nations instead of the UN in setting international emissions standards, and drastically reduces CO2 targets for rich countries. This has no doubt infuriated many developing countries who are seeking to hold these very countries accountable for the emissions they produce.

Africa, for example, is demanding reparations for the devastating impact of heavy-emitting countries on their continent's natural resources and environment. Learn more about this from the latest episode of Link's Global Pulse, Africa: Cash for Climate Change?, and then have your say on whether or not you agree. Also, we hear so much about the melting glaciers of the Arctic, but we rarely hear about the lives of the people there, and how they are being impacted by rising temperatures and changes to the environment. This week, Link TV is airing explore: Arctic - Change at the Top of the World for a look at one of the most fragile and remote parts of the world.

Watch more about the effects of global warming on developing countries on Link's Climate Change Video page. One video from the remote Republic of Kiribati, while dated by its title, holds particular relevance due to the emotional presence of tiny island nations making their plea during negotiations this week.

To follow along with the events of the summit in Copenhagen, don't forget to tune in LIVE with Copenhagen 24/7, Link's continuous streaming video of the conference. Get by-the-minute updates through interviews, press conferences, and full coverage of the protests and actions taken on site. Join the live chat, too!

In this week's Global Pulse episode, Obama's Nobel War and Peace Prize, host Erin Coker asks whether the Norwegian Nobel Committee made the right choice in awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama. Watch the episode and share your thoughts below!

Following the unexpected announcement in Oslo last week, much of the domestic press attributed Obama's Nobel win to his international appeal, particularly in Europe.  The Christian Science Monitor notes the award indicated "a particularly European appreciation" of the U.S. president, while an AOL News headline reads "Obama's Nobel Reflects Europe's Approval."

"The puzzled and heated domestic reaction…is only the latest instance of a gulf in perception between the two sides of the Atlantic," writes James Graff. "The Nobel Committee's decision is a European vote of confidence on the way this particular American president is setting the global agenda."

There is little doubt that Obama is popular among Europeans. A recent Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Survey reported that 93 percent of Germans and 86 percent of Britons said they had confidence in Obama to do the right thing in world affairs. Similarly, 91 percent in France rated Obama favorably -- a dramatic shift from 2008 when only 13 percent of French expressed confidence in George W. Bush.

However, even the U.S. president’s transatlantic supporters were baffled and perplexed by the win, calling the award premature and, like their U.S. counterparts, questioning what Obama had actually done to warrant such an honor.  
 
"It used to be the rule that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to politicians if they could point to tangible political successes," writes Claus Christian Malzahn in a Der Spiegel editorial. "Awarding him the Nobel Prize now is like giving a medal to a marathon runner who has just managed the first few kilometers."

The U.K.'s Times Online took the criticism even further, calling the decision to award the prize to Obama "absurd," and accusing the committee of making a "mockery" of the award.

So if not an endorsement from Europe, what was behind the Nobel shakeup?

Some international media outlets point to former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland, appointed earlier this year to head the Nobel committee, as the driving force behind Obama's win. The Christian Science Monitor's global news blog notes that Jagland "has an activist vision for the Nobel as a prize that can spur peace, rather than simply reward its achievement."

France's Le Monde was even more blunt: "The former Nobel Committee president would have never nominated Obama."

Regardless of the politics behind the award, the reaction to Obama's Nobel is a reminder that action, not vision, will be most crucial in the president's long-term success at home and abroad.

In this week's special behind-the-scenes episode, Inside Global Pulse, host Erin Coker gives viewers an inside glimpse of what goes into the making of a Global Pulse Episode, particularly the role of international news outlets. Watch this episode below!

Since the conclusion of the Cold War, and particularly in the last decade, U.S. coverage of international news has significantly declined. While U.S. news outlets briefly ramped up overseas coverage immediately following 9/11, in recent years international stories have once again dropped off in favor of nationally focused pieces. In 2008, foreign news coverage was at a record low.

Strained budgets and sinking ad revenues have further altered the global media landscape, forcing the closure of U.S. foreign bureaus from Paris to Bangkok, with foreign correspondents in the traditional sense becoming increasingly obsolete.

Ironically, news outlets broadcasting in English have exploded in the last decade. Such newly emerging global news channels include Russia Today, China’s CCTV, Al Jazeera English, France 24, and Press TV from Iran, to name a few.  

Why the news invasion? Some experts point to a desire to offer a unique country-specific perspective on a world media stage dominated by CNN and the BBC. A jab, perhaps, at "Anglo-Saxon imperialism." Others see the phenomenon as propaganda by non-democratic governments like China, attempting to skew the facts. Al Jazeera English is still reviled by many Americans as promoting anti-western bias at best, and as a mouthpiece for dangerous extremists at worst.

Regardless of one's position on these international outlets, the majority of Americans are unable (or unlikely) to tune in. In a Foreign Policy editorial, Cyril Blet, author of Une Voix Mondiale Pour un État, (A World Voice for a State), a book profiling the state of world news, notes that unlike in Europe and elsewhere, international channels in the U.S. are available only via special cable or satellite packages, if at all. The lack of easy access to international news channels, he says, puts Americans at a disadvantage.

"When American viewers can't access international news, their ability to take part in global conversations suffers greatly," argues Blet. "The average U.S. television-watcher doesn't ever see the diverse interpretations of any single event that filter in to most TVs across the world."

With the Internet making international programming more accessible than ever, this may change in the coming years. But perhaps less important than specific broadcast platforms in international news distribution, is the belief in the value of these global conversations.

For this week's Global Pulse episode, Mr. Clinton Goes to Pyongyang, host Erin Coker asks the question: Did Kim Jong Il win this one? Share your thoughts and read our blog post, "Bill Clinton's Unique Position as U.S. Humanitarian and Diplomat", below!

Bill Clinton's Unique Position as U.S. Humanitarian and Diplomat

Did Kim Jong Il win this one? After being held in North Korea for several months, two American journalists finally returned home, thanks to Bill Clinton's deft negotiations with Kim Jong Il. Ultimately, the release of the two young women served the interests of both of these poweful men on the international political stage. 
One question that remains is whether it should have been the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, negotiating the return of U.S. citizens. An article on CNN's website commented that, "Former presidents are used as envoys and undertake humanitarian missions all the time," and, "Hillary herself has said she considered her husband a trusted adviser and could even consider using him where appropriate." In the world of international diplomacy and humanitarianism, acheiving the goal is more important than who achieves it.

Bill Clinton might be the perfect candidate to create an opening on the crucial nuclear issue. As a former president and husband of the current Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, he is in a unique position to be a humanitarian ambassador. He also has charm and recognition that allow him to gain access to the most difficult of places.

The video below, from Al Jazeera English, outlines the U.S. media debate sparked by the visit. Not surprisingly, the Obama administration is calling it a humanitarian mission, while former Bush administration officials say Pyonyang is using the reporters as "pawns" to "enhance [the] regime's legitimacy." You decide: