President Obama's news conference on Friday was full of banter and holiday wishes, in keeping with the year-end White House ritual. But Mr. Obama's demeanor and words were often downbeat, leaving no doubt that the gathering was not, as he said at the beginning, "the most wonderful news conference of the year."

That was fitting - 2013 was far from the most wonderful of Mr. Obama's five crisis-filled years. And though he held out hope as he parried with reporters for more than an hour that "2014 can be a breakthrough year for America," he offered little hint of new ideas or strategies to advance his once-ambitious agenda past hostile Republicans.

"The end of the year is always a good time to reflect and see what can you do better next year. That's how I intend to approach it," Mr. Obama said. "I am sure that I will have even better ideas after a couple days of sleep and sun."

It was as if the president could already smell the exhaust fumes of Marine One, which within hours would whisk him and his family from the South Lawn of the White House on the beginning of their annual holiday trip, a full two weeks in Hawaii. "I know you are all eager to skip town and spend some time with your families. Not surprisingly, I am, too," he said.

President Vladimir Putin's decision to pardon disgraced oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky was indeed a bombshell.

Having been a witness of - and wrote extensively about - the "Yukos affair," I fully expected Khodorkovsky to serve out his full sentence, then to slowly fade away.

How to explain Putin's political calculus? Western media and the world of punditry immediately explained Putin's decision as a mixture of "a man at the pinnacle of power" who could afford to do so, as well as an attempt to "clean-up" Russia's human rights record before the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Both explanations are mildly interesting, but neither is compelling. Putin does not have to prove anything to anyone.

Khodorkovsky was not a prisoner of conscience - he was a criminal who would have been sentenced to life in other jurisdictions for the crimes he committed. Khodorkovsky can hardly have been called a businessman either - he, like other oligarchs during the 1990s, stole, extorted, and even possibly ordered murders when making empires from looted state property. He was also a political fraudster - buying political influence from virtually anyone who would take his dirty money. It was only in prison did Khodorkovsky "find religion" in an attempt to rebrand himself as a man of the people and supporter of democracy.

Last Friday, Los Angeles Police Department officers shot dead a mentally ill man who had already gotten out of his car after a police chase with his hands up. The incident, which was broadcast on national television for all to judge, was the latest in a string of more than a dozen police shootings that have surfaced in the news just in the last few months. Before that, it was the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Tyler Comstock after his father called the cops to report that his son drove away in his car. And other incidents involved death during traffic stop, calls to police for help with a mentally ill family member, and a man whose watering hose was mistaken for a gun.

This guy didn't need to be dead and this officer doesn't need to have this kind of shooting on his conscience for the rest of his life. ... It's bad for all.

While national data is not collected on police shootings, available studies suggest excessive use of police force is rarely punished. In the Iowa incident, the county attorney deemed the shooting legally justified, raising renewed questions about when police can and should turn to use of a gun, when another tactic or tool might do the job. While the LAPD incident is still under investigation, a critical look back at several of the other recent incidents through ThinkProgress interviews with former officers, firearms trainers, and academics, reveal that policy and training may be as much to blame as human error.

When You Call The Cops For Help

The Iowa chain of events started when Tyler Comstock got into an argument with his father because he wouldn't buy him a pack of cigarettes. When Comstock drove away in his father's truck, his father called the cops to intervene. His father lamented afterward, "It was over a damn pack of cigarettes. ... And I lose my son for that."

Criminal justice professor and former Baltimore police officer Peter Moskos said the family was wrong to call the police. While many think officers play a role in community affairs, Moskos says police view their jobs otherwise. "This idea that cops are always at your beck and call is the basis of the 911 system and it doesn't work," Moskos said. "When you call the police, you have to remember what cops do is arrest people. If you don't want to be arrested, you probably shouldn't call the police."

Or if you don't want someone to die. Several other recent incidents involved calls to police to calm down a mentally ill relative, and to report a suspicious person who turned out to be seeking help for a car accident. Kyle Kazan, a former police officer in Los Angeles County, said shootings in these sorts of circumstances are "not uncommon," because when the cops show up, "they don't know why this person is acting up."

There is no evidence that pictorial warnings on cigarette packs has an effect on smokers' behavior. These are the results of a recent study by researchers at the Karolinska Institute. Now the Principal, of the Swedish Public Health Institute, refuses to pay bill for the study.

In October, the EU Parliament elected that pictorial warnings on cigarette packs will be mandatory throughout the EU. The images and warnings must cover 65 per cent of the front and back of the packages and this type of horror images are already available in Australia, for example. Within a number of years the images on the right, will also adorn cigarette packets sold in Sweden. The goal is to reduce smoking, and fewer young people to start smoking.

But the impact of the images actually is debated - and now research into horror pictures has led to a big brawl between researchers at the Karolinska Institute and the State Public Health Institute, FHI.

While everyone is distracted with the holiday festivities, Congress has been hard at work, screwing us over in the name of national security.

Yesterday the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act was fast-tracked through the Senate, with no time for discussion or amendments. And you know, its Christmas time, so they just passed it so that they could recess for the holidays. The new version of the NDAA has already been quietly passed by the House of Representatives.

It authorizes massive spending, including$527 billion in base defense spending for the current fiscal year, funding for the war in Afghanistan, and funding for nuclear weapons programs.

The indefinite detention allowed by the original NDAA is still here, and it's actually worse now, because there are provisions that will make it easier for the government to target those who disagree. Section 1071 outlines the creation of the "Conflict Records Research Center", where the unconstitutionally obtained information that the NSA has collected is compiled and shared with the Department of Defense. The information, called in the wording "captured records," can be anything from your phone records, emails, browsing history or posts on social media sites.

The New American reports in detail on the expansion of powers:

The wrecking ball swung again toward the crumbling Obamacare edifice yesterday. Ironically, it continues to be the Obama administration that is operating the heavy machinery.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced, in the form of a letter to Democratic senators, that Obamacare's individual mandate tax will be waived in 2014 for persons who had their policies canceled in 2013 due to Obamacare.

At this point, after months of on-the-fly pronouncements, delays, and exemptions (often announced, not coincidentally, in the days just before a major national holiday), perhaps nothing should surprise us anymore about Obamacare's disastrous rollout. But yesterday's announcement is still startling because of what it says about the state of the president's signature domestic legislation. The law is falling apart before our eyes.

Google has been told it is running out of time to improve its offer to settle a European Union investigation into anti-competitive behavior or face formal charges that could lead to a hefty fine.

EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia rejected the internet search giant's latest concessions on Friday and warned that it has only a short time left to make a satisfactory offer.

Google has been investigated by the European Commission antitrust regulator for three years over complaints that it blocked competitors in search results.

The company's original proposal in April to resolve the matter was rejected by its competitors, including Microsoft and British price-comparison website Foundem, who said that the changes would only reinforce its dominance.

Google proposed new concessions in an attempt to avert a possible fine of up to $5 billion, and the Commission asked 125 of Google's rivals and third parties to provide feedback on these in October.

Almunia said the revised proposals did not go far enough.

Israeli soldiers have attacked journalists of a Palestinian TV channel in the West Bank village of Billin, Press TV reports.

The soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets directly at the van of the Maan television network's crew.

Billin is a village near the city of Ramallah that has been encircled by illegal Israeli settlements.

Palestinian activist Osama Baker told Press TV on Saturday that Israeli forces continue to attack and target journalists in the West Bank.

Ignoring a UN demand, Israel's occupation army minister Moshe Yaalon has refused to allow construction and other raw materials to enter the besieged Gaza Strip, Maariv reported on Wednesday. The newspaper said that Yaalon rejected the UN demand on the pretext that construction materials are being used to build tunnels to kill Israelis.

"Ban Ki-moon asked me and I told him that the side which uses cement to build tunnels in order to attack Israel and kill Israelis is not reliable," Yaalon said. "The Hamas government in Gaza is able to take a decision to plant strawberries instead of building rockets. When there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, people have to send their demands to Ismail Haniyeh."

Israeli occupation army has been imposing a sea and ground siege on the Gaza Strip since 2006. It banned imports and exports to and from the Gaza Strip until the beginning of 2009, when it went to an aggressive war against the people of Gaza, killing more than 1,400 Palestinians and wounding 5,000 others. International pressure led to Israel easing the siege slightly, but it only allowed construction materials for projects carried out by international organisations such as UNRWA. In 2012, Israel military attacked Gaza again and destroyed much of the infrastructure, including houses, mosques, clinics and schools.

Officials call on U.S. to stop spying on Israel amid renewed calls for release of Jonathan Pollard, jailed in 1980s for spying

Senior Israeli officials have called on the US to stop spying on Israel, after revelations that the National Security Agency had intercepted emails from the offices of the country's former leaders.

It is the first time Israeli officials have expressed anger since details of US spying on Israel began to trickle out in documents leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The scandal has spurred renewed calls for the release of Jonathan Pollard, a former US intelligence analyst who has been imprisoned in the US for nearly three decades for spying for Israel.

"This thing is not legitimate," the Israeli intelligence minister, Yuval Steinitz, told Israel Radio. He called for both countries to enter an agreement regarding espionage.

"It's quite embarrassing between countries who are allies," the tourism minister, Uzi Landau, said. "It's this moment more than any other moment that Jonathan Pollard [should] be released."