Herzog and Livni stake their claims to top post; Channel 2 survey finds 71% intend to vote in March 2015 elections

Almost two-thirds of Israelis do not want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead the next government, a poll published Saturday by Channel 2 found.

The poll was released as the leaders of Israel's center and center-left parties talk of building various alliances to prevent Netanyahu retaining his post after the next elections. The Knesset on Monday is set to pass the second and third readings of a bill to dissolve itself and hold elections on March 17, 2015.

Channel 2 has reported several times this weekend that the elections could still be averted if Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman supports a move to build an alternative coalition in the current parliament, headed by Netanyahu, including the two ultra-Orthodox parties. It said Saturday night that Liberman might be offered the post of defense minister as an incentive. But Liberman's office has denied any prospect of such an arrangement.

Asked whether they want the three-term prime minister to take office again after the March elections, 65 percent of the 500 Israelis polled said they do not want Netanyahu to continue running the country while 30% said they do want him to be prime minister; 5% declined responding to the question.

National Review Editor Rich Lowry on Sunday was schooled by a group of ABC News panelists after he claimed that "attempted forced kissing" should not be considered assault.

During a discussion about recent revelations that Rolling Stone's report about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia was flawed, Lowry asserted that the magazine accepted the young woman's story because "they had an agenda to portray UVA as the bastion of white male privilege, where basically rapists rule the social life."

"And the damage will never be undone," he argued. "And if there's any justice in the world, I think Rolling Stone would have to give up covering music and become the alumni magazine of the University of Virginia."

A few days ago, Deadspin's Kyle Wagner began to compile a list of all police-involved shootings in the U.S. He's not the only one to undertake such a project: D. Brian Burghart, editor of the Reno News & Review, has been attempting a crowdsourced national database of deadly police violence. We asked Brian to write about what he's learned from his project.

It began simply enough. Commuting home from my work at Reno's alt-weekly newspaper, the News & Review, on May 18, 2012, I drove past the aftermath of a police shooting - in this case, that of a man named Jace Herndon. It was a chaotic scene, and I couldn't help but wonder how often it happened.

I went home and grabbed my laptop and a glass of wine and tried to find out. I found nothing - a failure I simply chalked up to incompetent local media.

A few months later I read about the Dec. 6, 2012, killing of a naked and unarmed 18-year-old college student, Gil Collar, by University of South Alabama police. The killing had attracted national coverage - The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN - but there was still no context being provided - no figures examining how many people are killed by police.

52-year-old Belgian Geert Tack - a private banker for ING who managed portfolios for wealthy individuals - was described as 'impeccable', 'sporty', 'cared-for', and 'successful' and so as Vermist reports, after disappearing a month ago, the appearance of his body off the coast of Ostend is surrounded by riddles...

Tack disappeared on November 5th...

Impeccable. Sporty. Cared for. Successful. Just some qualifications that are attributed to the 52-year-old from the Belgian Geert Tack Haaltert.

Geert Tack worked as a private banker for ING and managed portfolios of wealthy clients. The Belgian was much respected in the financial world and was known as an up and top professional. His sudden disappearance had the effect of a bombshell. "If Tack himself was having trouble he has managed to keep it well hidden", colleagues say.

Nobody then could have guessed that the man would not return on Wednesday, November 5th to his wife in their villa Vondelen.

And would be found dead this weekend off the coast of Ostend...

A UCLA Law Professor has found that in cases of police brutality, damages rewarded in suits against the city of New York are almost entirely paid for by taxpayers, with just a fraction of the cost incurred by officers involved or the NYPD as a whole.

Joanna Schwartz, who has extensive experience studying and analyzing cases of misconduct amongst police nationwide, presented her findings in a paper she wrote recently for the New York University Law Review. In the paper, Schwartz determines that taxpayers "almost always satisfy both compensatory and punitive damages awards entered against their sworn servants."

In the case of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who was killed after NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo put him in a chokehold in an attempt to arrest him, the grand jury decision not to indict Pantaleo for Garner's death has prompted the victim's family to sue the city of New York for $75 million. Schwartz believes that Pantaleo may have to pay a very small portion of the damages, but it will ultimately be NYC taxpayers who foot the bill.

As a kid, I got used to being stopped by the police. I grew up in an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis. It was the kind of place where officers routinely roughed up my friends and family for no good reason.

I hated the way cops treated me.

But I knew police weren't all bad. One of my father's closest friends was a cop. He became a mentor to me and encouraged me to join the force. He told me that I could use the police's power and resources to help my community.

So in 1994, I joined the St. Louis Police Department. I quickly realized how naive I'd been. I was floored by the dysfunctional culture I encountered.

I won't say all, but many of my peers were deeply racist.

A massive fire in downtown Los Angeles early today engulfed an apartment tower that was under construction, damaged two other buildings and left freeways and roads closed.

Firefighters used the 110 Freeway to set up equipment to fight the huge blaze.

Caltrans reopened the 101 Freeway and the southbound 110 at around 4:30 a.m., but the northbound 110 Freeway remained closed as of 7:30 a.m. Caltrans hoped to reopen the 110 north by 8 a.m.

More than 250 firefighters battled the fire at an apartment tower under construction in the DaVinci complex in the 900 block of Fremont Avenue, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman David Ortiz said. The building -- the size of an entire city block -- had 1.3 million square feet of floor space, and officials said two-thirds of it was consumed by flames.

Ohio resident Kimberly Thompson was recuperating from a month-long, medically induced coma when she was told that she'd no longer be receiving welfare payments. A letter from the county reportedly explained that because she hadn't informed them that she was in a coma, she was being kicked off of welfare.

According to NBC News, Thompson, 43, who spent years scraping by while raising a teenage daughter, applied for Medicaid earlier this year after being unable to work due to a hysterectomy she had in May. After the surgery, Thompson contracted an infection that led to gradual organ failure. She was placed in a coma while doctors worked to save her, and when she awoke she learned that she'd been cut off from $700 per month in government assistance.

"They told me I'd lost the benefits because I didn't go to class," Thompson told NBC News, referring to a job-training program she'd enrolled in when she began receiving Medicaid, welfare and food stamps. "How are you supposed to go to class when you're in a coma?"

Because she was unable to work in the first few months after her coma, Thompson resorted to sleeping on couches and spending time living with relatives. Her teenage daughter lived with her father during that time.

Thompson said she is confused as to why her Medicaid caseworker didn't inform her welfare caseworker of her condition; a problem that a county spokesperson admitted has affected others before. After a hearing officer ordered that Thompson's benefits be reinstated, she received the money that she missed out on after being cut off and is now receiving food stamps. NBC News says that the county is "still deciding whether to reinstate welfare payments in the future, since her daughter does not currently live with her."

"If I'd had that money after the coma, if I'd had it all along, I could have had a place for me and my daughter, but now because she doesn't live with me it's impossible to get us back together until I can get work again," Thompson said.

Seaside, CA - A 20 year veteran of the CSU Monterey Bay police force, was given a notice of termination this week for choosing NOT to immediately resort to violent escalation during a confrontation with a suicidal student.

The unidentified officer was the first one on the scene when responding to an incident involving a suicidal college student in his CSUMB dorm room in February of this year. The officer showed an heartening level of restraint when dealing with a student, who was in his room with a knife and hammer, and was also threatening to light himself on fire.

"He was clearly a danger to himself and he was in crisis," Marina Police Chief Edmundo Rodriguez said. "We were trying to keep him from accessing the weapons or leave, to get him medical attention."

Instead of immediately resorting to violence, this officer was talking the student down and de-escalating the situation. The officer was successful in calming the student down and was going to get him a glass of water when the Marina police department showed up, and immediately began tasering the student.

The campus officer refused to taser the student, as he did not perceive a threat. Subsequently Rodriguez's department later issued a "failure to act" complaint against the campus officer, accusing him of not engaging in a "highly agitated situation."

"It defies logic and is extremely disappointing that, at a time when law enforcement is under fire for using more force than necessary, an officer is being terminated for attempting to use civilized methods to resolve a situation," the student's father said.

"Our officer did not believe he was any threat at all," said Jeff Solomon, the union's president.

Greek police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse crowds during clashes in the capital. Athens was gripped with protests marking six years since police shot dead an unarmed teenager during an anti-austerity rally.

At least 8,000 demonstrators marched in Athens on Saturday commemorating the sixth anniversary since the police slaying of Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Grigoropoulos' murder on December 6, 2008 sparked violent clashes across Greece, with cars being burned, shops looted, and police attacked in a number of Greek cities.

The violence on Saturday began at 19:30 in the evening by a group of some 200 black-clad masked men, local media reported. They started setting on fire cars and bank ATMs and threw Molotov cocktails and other projectiles at police in the bohemian neighborhood of Exarchia, where Grigoropoulos was killed.