TORONTO (Reuters) – Any fiscal problems that would significantly slow the U.S. economy would be of great concern to Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday.
The United States needed a credible medium-term fiscal plan, Harper said at a business forum in Ottawa, adding that he was following the U.S. fiscal debate with “great interest.”
(Reporting by Solarina Ho)
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Oprah Winfrey recently gave Microsoft‘s Surface her seal of approval when the gadget made her annual “Favorite Things” list. Oprah has been using Twitter and hashtag #FavoriteThings to endorse the Surface.
On Monday, however, criticism began bubbling up on blogs and social sites because it appears Oprah is typing her tweets on Apple‘s iPad (see screenshot above).
[More from Mashable: How Should Apple Name the Next Mac OS Series? [POLL]]
But, we have to ask, does that really matter?
Technology users own more than one gadget — often made from different companies — and as my colleagues point out, people use an iPad differently than a Surface. And for Oprah, that’s no different. She did put the iPad on her “Ultimate Favorite Things” list in 2010, saying, “I really think it’s the best invention of the century so far.”
[More from Mashable: Apple Stock Jumps More Than 7% After Falling to 6-Month Low]
Additionally, a good Twitter client doesn’t exist yet for Windows 8, says Mashable Tech Editor Pete Pachal.
Oprah, whose product endorsements usually boost sales for companies, compared the Surface to a Mercedes-Benz in O magazine’s “Favorite Things” list:
“The Surface, Microsoft’s first tablet, feels like a Mercedes-Benz to me, people! The full-size keyboard built right into the cover makes work easy, the very smart kickstand makes watching a movie or Skyping a friend a delight, the less than a pound-and-a-half weight makes a great alternative to a laptop, and the many other features make it fun for work and play. Now, that’s a wowser!”
The Surface will also appear in the televised Oprah’s Favorite Things 2012 two-hour special on Nov. 18.
How do you feel about Oprah raving about the Surface via an iPad? Does that raise red flags about the product’s capabilities? Or are people blowing this incident out of proportion? Weigh in below in the comments.
This is the Surface tablet with Touch Cover in place.
Click here to view this gallery. Screenshot of Oprah’s Tweet from Mashable’s Seth Fiegerman
Homepage photo via Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty Images
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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OAKLAND (Reuters) – A former nursing student charged with killing seven people at a Christian college in Oakland this year has been found by a psychiatrist to suffer from schizophrenia and unfit to stand trial, his lawyer told a judge on Monday.
One Goh, 44, is charged in Alameda County Superior Court with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder in the April 2 shooting spree at Oikos University, where he once attended nursing school. He has pleaded not guilty.
The shooting spree was the deadliest at an American college since 2007, when a Virginia Tech University student killed 32 people and wounded 25.
Deputy Public Defender David Klaus said at a hearing in Alameda County Superior Court that a court-ordered psychiatric report concluded that Goh was “presently incompetent to stand trial due to his longstanding paranoid schizophrenia.”
A hearing on Goh’s competency was postponed until January 7 because a second psychiatrist, who the court also ordered to issue a report, was unable to interview the Korean-born defendant until a translator could be found.
Goh, who weighed 220 pounds when he was arrested a few hours after shooting, looked emaciated as he sat in a jury box in a red jail suit, his hands and feet shackled. Klaus estimated Goh, who refused food for four weeks after his arrest, had lost up to 75 pounds.
“I’ve felt strongly since the beginning of the case that he’s severely mentally ill,” Klaus said after Goh’s brief court appearance. “I believe that mental illness is, if not the direct cause, certainly the catalyst for this terrible tragedy that he committed.”
Klaus said the confidential psychiatrist’s report found that, based on interviews with family members, Goh has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia for nine to 15 years. He never sought treatment and has refused treatment in jail.
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, who has not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty, declined comment.
Authorities said they believe Goh became angry after he dropped out of the nursing school last year and administrators refused to refund his tuition. A Presbyterian minister from Korea founded Oikos University as a vocational school in 2004.
(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Todd Eastham)
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Efforts to end a week-old convulsion of Israeli-Palestinian violence drew in the world's top diplomats on Tuesday, with President Barack Obama dispatching his secretary of state to the region on an emergency mission and the U.N. chief appealing from Cairo for an immediate cease-fire.
Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas rulers have staked out tough, hard-to-bridge positions, and the gaps keep alive the threat of an Israeli ground invasion. On Tuesday, grieving Gazans were burying militants and civilians killed in ongoing Israeli airstrikes, and barrages of rockets from Gaza sent terrified Israelis scurrying to take cover.
From Egypt, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said he came to the region because of the "alarming situation."
"This must stop, immediate steps are needed to avoid further escalation, including a ground operation," Ban said. "Both sides must hold fire immediately ... Further escalation of the situation could put the entire region at risk."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton departed for the Mideast on Tuesday from Cambodia, where she had accompanied Obama on a visit. Clinton is to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank and Egyptian leaders in Cairo, according to U.S. and Palestinian officials.
The U.S. considers Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide and other attacks, to be a terror group and does not meet with its officials. Washington blames Hamas rocket fire for the latest eruption of violence and says Israel has the right to defend itself. At the same time, it has cautioned that a ground invasion could send casualties spiraling.
By Tuesday, 115 Palestinians, including 54 civilians, have been killed since Israel mounted an air onslaught that has so far included nearly 1,500 strikes. Some 840 people have been wounded, including 225 children, Gaza health officials said.
Three Israeli civilians have also been killed and dozens wounded since the fighting began last week, the numbers possibly kept down by a rocket-defense system Israel developed with U.S. funding. More than 1,000 rockets have been fired at Israel this week, the military said.
Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel wouldn't balk at a broader military operation.
"I prefer a diplomatic solution," Netanyahu said in a statement after meeting with Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, who is also in the region trying to advance peace efforts. "But if the fire continues, we will be forced to take broader measures and will not hesitate to do so."
Successive Israeli governments have struggled to come up with an effective policy toward Hamas.
Neither Israel's economic blockade of the territory of 1.6 million people nor bruising military strikes have cowed Gaza's Islamists, weakened their grip on the coastal strip or fire rockets at the Jewish state.
An Israeli ground invasion would risk Israeli troop losses, and could send the number of Palestinian civilian casualties ballooning — a toll Israel could be reluctant to risk just four years after its last invasion drew allegations of war crimes.
Still, with Israeli elections just two months away, polls show Israeli public sentiment has lined up staunchly behind the Netanyahu government's offensive.
Turkey's foreign minister and a delegation of Arab League foreign ministers headed to Gaza on Tuesday on a separate truce mission. Before setting off, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu signaled Turkey was in contact with Israel bout a truce — an important development given the two countries' chilly ties.
"We would be involved in all kinds of efforts if it amounted to saving the life of a single brother from Gaza," Davutoglu said. "We are determined to keep all direct or indirect channels (of dialogue) open."
Turkey's once-close ties with Israel frayed badly over the high civilian toll during Israel's 2009 war in Gaza.
With tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers dispatched to the Gaza border, awaiting a possible order to invade, the truce missions were all the more urgent.
Egypt, the traditional mediator between Israel and the Arab world, has been at the center of recent diplomatic efforts.
Israel demands an end to rocket fire from Gaza and a halt to weapons smuggling into Gaza through tunnels under the border with Egypt. It also wants international guarantees that Hamas will not rearm or use Egypt's Sinai region, which abuts both Gaza and southern Israel, to attack Israelis.
Hamas wants Israel to halt all attacks on Gaza and lift tight restrictions on trade and movement to and from the territory imposed after Hamas seized Gaza by force in 2007. Israel has rejected such demands in the past.
Resurgent rocket fire set off the Israeli offensive, launched with the assassination of the Hamas military chief and followed by hundreds of airstrikes on militant rocket launchers and weapons stores.
The onslaught turned deadlier over the weekend, as airstrikes began targeting the homes of suspected Hamas activists, leading to a spike in civilian casualties. Israel sent warnings in some cases, witnesses said, but in other instances missiles hit suddenly, burying residents under the rubble of their homes.
Hamas is deeply rooted in densely populated Gaza, and the movement's activists live in the midst of ordinary Gazans. Israel says militants are using civilians as human shields, both for their own safety and to launch rocket strikes from residential neighborhoods.
In one case, a senior member of the military wing of Islamic Jihad rented a small apartment in a 15-story high-rise of offices and news outlets. The militant, Ramez Harb, was killed Monday in a rocket strike that damaged the building.
One journalist said he and others were furious that Harb had apparently used their building as a hideout, putting others at risk. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared repercussions from Gaza militants.
Early Tuesday, Israeli aircraft targeted another Hamas symbol of power, the headquarters of a bank senior Hamas officials set up to sidestep international sanctions on the militant group's rule. After Hamas overran Gaza, foreign lenders stopped doing business with its militant-led government, afraid of running afoul of international terror financing laws.
The inside of the bank was destroyed and a building supply business in the basement was damaged.
"I'm not involved in politics," said the business owner, Suleiman Tawil. "I'm a businessman. But the more the Israelis pressure us, the more we will support Hamas."
Israel and Gaza's militants have a long history of fighting, but the dynamics have changed radically since they last warred four years ago. Though their hardware is no match for the Israeli military, militants have upgraded their capabilities with weapons smuggled in from Iran and Libya, Israeli officials claim.
Only a few years ago, tens of thousands of Israelis were within rocket range. Today those numbers have swollen to 3.5 million, as the militants' improved weapons reached Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the first time this past week.
Hamas, a branch of the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood, is also negotiating from a stronger position than four years ago. At that time, Hamas was internationally isolated; now, the Muslim Brotherhood is in power in Egypt and Tunisia, and Hamas is also getting political support from Qatar and Turkey.
At home, too, the military offensive has shored up Hamas at a time when it was riven by internal divisions over its direction and the new Egyptian government's refusal to lift the blockade it imposed along with Israel after Hamas seized the territory.
This newfound backing contrasts radically with the loss of stature the Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has endured as Palestinians lose faith in his ability to bring them a state through negotiations with Israel.
____
Teibel reported from Jerusalem. With contributions from Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey.
OTTAWA/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Canadian government on Friday reiterated its intention to balance its budget by 2015, three days after projecting there would be deficits until 2016-17.
In separate appearances in Quebec City and New York, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty were at pains to say they still intended to end the red ink by 2015.
“It remains the government’s plan, intention, to balance the budget prior to the next federal election. The recent economic and fiscal update by the minister indicates we are actually very close to that objective,” Harper told reporters in Quebec City. The next election is in October 2015.
Flaherty’s fall fiscal update on Tuesday had pushed back the target date for eliminating the deficit by a year, to 2016-17, citing a weak global economy.
But the minister said in a speech in New York that the government was on track to balance the budget in the next two to three years, barring major external events, and he later clarified that he intended a balanced budget by 2015.
“The prime minister’s always correct,” he chuckled.
He sought to explain the discrepancy by saying the fiscal update had built in a C$ 3 billion ($ 3 billion) contingency cushion, meaning there was an underlying surplus of C$ 1.2 billion for 2015-16. He said the projection of a C$ 1.8 billion deficit amounted to about half a percent of the C$ 275 billion federal budget.
“There’s lots of water to go under the bridge between now and then,” he said.
The opposition New Democratic Party noted the discrepancy in a release headlined: “Stephen Harper makes stuff up about balancing the budget.”
It pointed out that balancing the budget by the next election was not the same as balancing it by 2016-17.
As it is, even the 2015-16 timetable is a year later than offered in the Conservative campaign for reelection in May 2011. They had promised a balanced budget by 2014-15, followed by major personal income tax relief before the 2015 election.
Flaherty’s timetable drew criticism this week from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which said the minister had become expert at kicking the can down the road.
The projections could be thrown out of whack if the United States goes off the fiscal cliff, a set of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that are to be triggered on January 2 if legislators and the White House cannot agree on a more nuanced budget deal.
Flaherty said U.S. failure to avert the fiscal cliff would cause a significant and immediate decline in Canada’s gross domestic product, and he would counter it.
Referring to a possible economic shock from Europe or the United States, he said: “If that were to happen and if the Canadian economy were to be pushed back into recession with the resulting danger for higher unemployment and the danger always of a prolonged recession, then we would act.”
He added: “We would not stand by and let that happen. The kinds of measure we can take: there are various tax measures we can take, there are measures with respect to stimulus we can take, these are things that we have done before and we can do again.”
On Tuesday, Flaherty spoke of having prepared various contingency plans.
(Additional reporting by Louse Egan; Editing by David Gregorio)
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LONDON (Reuters) – Online gaming companies have accused Belgium and Greece of keeping them out of their markets illegally and urged European competition authorities to take action.
A long-running dispute over licenses in Belgium made headlines last week when Belgian authorities questioned one of the co-chief executives of bwin.party, the world’s largest listed online gaming group.
The bwin.party case has underlined the problems faced by companies in the growing online gaming sector when they operate in countries where regulations are unclear or restrictive.
Bwin.party says it is losing 700,000 euros ($ 889,400) in gaming revenue each month after access to its websites was blocked in Belgium.
Executives from 12 gaming companies including bwin.party said the European Commission had failed to follow through on concerns over Belgian laws first raised in 2009.
“We hope that the Commission will now enforce compliance with the European treaty and do so swiftly,” they said in a letter to the Financial Times.
“Countries such as Belgium and Greece that are in clear breach of EU law and that are seeking to enforce those laws domestically are likely to be at the top of the list,” it added.
“The time for polite rhetoric is now over. It is time for deeds not words.”
Belgian rules state that a company must offer the same services both online and offline to obtain a license. Opponents say that favors companies based in Belgium and means pure online providers cannot operate.
In Greece, bookmakers including Britain’s William Hill launched a legal challenge to monopoly operator OPAP after being denied licenses.
(Writing by Keith Weir; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Canadian pop star Justin Bieber swept the American Music Awards on Sunday, topping strong competition from Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, and sending newcomers British boybands One Direction and The Wanted home empty-handed.
Bieber, 18, won all three categories in which he was nominated, including the night’s biggest award, artist of the year, over Rihanna, Katy Perry, Maroon 5 and Drake.
“This is for all the haters who thought that maybe I was just here for one or two years, but I feel like I am going to be here for a very long time,” Bieber said on stage, dedicating his first win of the night to his mother, Pattie Mallette, who accompanied him after his widely reported split from girlfriend Selena Gomez.
“It’s hard growing up with everything going on, with everyone watching me. I wanted to say that as long as you guys keep believing in me, I want to always make you proud,” Bieber said at the end of the night.
Bieber, who also won favorite pop/rock male artist and favorite pop/rock album for “Believe,” took to a bare stage to sing an acoustic stripped-down version of his latest single “As Long As You Love Me” before livening up the show with Nicki Minaj for “Beauty and a Beat.”
The American Music Award nominees and winners are voted online by fans, and the awards are handed out during a live three-hour broadcast featuring performances by artists.
R&B singer Rihanna, 24, and rapper Minaj, 29, led the nominees going into Sunday’s awards with four apiece.
Minaj won favorite rap/hip hop artist and rap/hip hop album of the year for “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded.” The singer, known for her extravagant on-stage performances, sang her latest hit “Freedom” in a winter wonderland-themed set.
Rihanna came away with one win. She couldn’t make the show because she is in Berlin, midway through a seven-day tour across seven cities around the world promoting her upcoming “Unapologetic” album.
Canadian pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen, 26, picked up the coveted new artist-of-the-year award over One Direction, Australian artist Gotye, indie-pop band fun. and rapper J. Cole. She performed her hit “Call Me Maybe.”
“I am floored,” the singer said, thanking Bieber along with her fans in her acceptance speech.
ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC AWARD
Newcomer British-Irish boy bands One Direction, which had three nominations, and The Wanted, which had one nomination, went home empty-handed, losing out in the favorite pop/rock group category to well-established Los Angeles group Maroon 5.
French DJ David Guetta won the first-ever American Music Award for electronic dance music over DJs Calvin Harris and Skrillex.
“It’s wonderful also to see electronic music recognized at this level in the U.S.,” Guetta said in a taped acceptance speech.
Only 13 of the 20 awards were handed out during the live broadcast. Katy Perry was named favorite female pop/rock artist, Shakira was named favorite Latin artist, while Beyonce was voted favorite soul artist. None of the three attended the show.
Country-pop darling Taylor Swift, 22, scored the favorite female country artist award before performing her latest single “I Knew You Were Trouble” from her chart-topping album “Red,” on a masquerade ballroom-style stage with dancers in tuxedos, gowns and Venetian masks.
R&B star Usher kicked off the night with a medley of his hits on a laser-filled stage, while pop-rocker Pink teamed her performance of her latest single “Try” with a dramatic interpretive dance covered in paint with a male dancer on a stage filled with burning debris.
1990s ska-punk band No Doubt performed “Looking Hot” from their first album in a decade, “Push & Shove,” while rockers Linkin Park performed their latest “Burn It Down” after winning favorite alternative rock band over The Black Keys and Gotye.
Korean rapper Psy didn’t score any nominations, but he was named the AMA new media honoree for his viral hit music video “Gangnam Style,” accompanied by his trademark horse-riding dance.
The star closed out the show with his hit song, joined by surprise guest MC Hammer, one of the pioneering rappers from the 1980s, who was known for his catch phrase ‘Hammer Time.’
Singer Brandy paid tribute to the late Whitney Houston, who died suddenly at age 48 on the night before the Grammy Awards in February this year from accidental drowning.
AMA founder Dick Clark, who also passed away earlier this year, was given a touching tribute by veteran soul singer Stevie Wonder, who sang a medley of hits including “Hotter Than July” and “My Cherie Amour,” against a backdrop of pictures of Clark. Wonder was introduced by “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest, who also paid homage to Clark’s influence.
“Dick loved the power of music and the ability to create pure joy,” Seacrest said.
The awards show, which marked its 40th anniversary this year, treated the audience to some of its greatest moments, including R&B star Beyonce performing “Single Ladies” at the 2008 show, Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff at the 1989 awards show, and various clips of AMA regular, the late singer Michael Jackson.
(Additional reporting by Jill Serjeant, editing by Christine Kearney and Philip Barbara)
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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – About five percent of middle and high school students have used anabolic steroids to put on muscle, according to a new study from Minnesota.
In addition to steroid use, more than one-third of boys and one-fifth of girls in the study said they had used protein powder or shakes to gain muscle mass, and between five and 10 percent used non-steroid muscle-enhancing substances, such as creatine.
Researchers said a more muscular body ideal in the media may be one factor driving teens to do anything possible to get toned, as well as pressure to perform in sports.
“Really the pressure to start using (steroids) is in high school,” said Dr. Linn Goldberg, from Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
“You get the influence of older teens in high school, so when you’re a 14-year-old that comes in, you have 17-year-olds who are the seniors, and they can have great influence as you progress into the next stage of your athletic career.”
The new data came from close to 2,800 kids and teens at 20 different middle and high schools in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. During the 2009-2010 school year, those students completed a survey on food and weight-related behaviors, including activities tied to muscle gain.
The majority of kids surveyed were poor or middle-class.
Almost all of them had engaged in at least one muscle-building activity in the past year, most often working out more to get stronger. But up to one-third of kids and teens used what the researchers deemed to be unhealthy means to gain muscle mass, including taking steroids and other muscle-building substances or overdoing it on protein shakes, dieting and weight-lifting.
Student-athletes were more likely than their peers to use most methods of muscle-building. Steroid use, however, was equally common among athletes and non-athletes.
According to findings published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, Asian students were three to four times more likely to have used steroids in the past year than white students. Most Asians in the study were Hmong, lead researcher Marla Eisenberg from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and her colleagues noted.
Their study shows higher adolescent use of steroids and other muscle-boosting substances than most other recent research and “is cause for concern,” according to the researchers. But it’s not clear whether the findings would apply to an area outside of the Twin Cities, or among wealthier students, they noted.
ROID RAGE?
Anabolic steroids are synthetic versions of testosterone, the male sex hormone. Steroids are prescribed legally to treat conditions involving hormone deficiency or muscle loss, but when they’re used for non-medical purposes, it’s typically at much higher doses, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
In those cases, steroids can cause mood swings – sometimes known as roid rage – and for adolescents, stunted growth and accelerated puberty.
Anabolic steroids have become pervasive in professional sports, including baseball, football and boxing. (Another example of performance-enhancing drug use is “blood doping” with erythropoietin or EPO, which is behind the Lance Armstrong cycling controversy that caused him to be stripped of his Tour de France titles last month.)
Experts have worried that the drive to get ahead of competitors at any cost could trickle down to college and high school athletes, as well.
Goldberg, co-developer of the ATLAS and ATHENA programs to prevent steroid and other substance use on high school teams, said it’s important to give teens healthier alternatives to build muscle.
“I would stay away from all supplements, because you don’t know what’s in them,” Goldberg, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.
“What’s important is to teach kids how to eat correctly,” he said. Goldberg said getting enough protein through food, eating breakfast and avoiding muscle toxins like alcohol and marijuana can all help young athletes get stronger without shakes or supplements.
Eisenberg’s team did not find clustering of steroid use and other muscle-enhancing behaviors within particular schools.
“Rather than being driven by a particular school sports team coach or other features of a school’s social landscape, this diffusion suggests that muscle-enhancing behaviors are widespread and influenced by factors beyond school, likely encompassing social and cultural variables such as media messages and social norms of behavior more broadly,” the researchers wrote.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/jsoh2P Pediatrics, online November 19, 2012.
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli aircraft struck crowded areas in the Gaza Strip on Monday, driving up the civilian death toll and in one case devastating several homes belonging to one clan — the fallout from a new tactic in Israel's six-day-old offensive meant to quell Hamas rocket fire on Israel.
Escalating its bombing campaign, Israel on Sunday began attacking homes of activists in Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza. These attacks have led to a sharp spike in civilian casualties, killing 24 civilians in less than 24 hours, a Gaza health official said. Overall, the offensive that began Wednesday killed 91 Palestinians, including 50 civilians.
The rising civilian toll was likely to intensify pressure on Israel to end the fighting. Hundreds of civilian casualties in an Israeli offensive in Gaza four years ago led to fierce international condemnation of Israel.
Hamas fighters, meanwhile, have fired hundreds of rockets into Israel in the current round of fighting, including 12 on Monday, among them one that hit an empty school.
The new airstrikes came as Egypt was trying to broker a cease-fire, with the help of Turkey and Qatar. The Turkish foreign minister and a delegation of Arab foreign ministers were expected in Gaza on Tuesday. However, Israel and Hamas appeared far apart in their demands, and a quick end to the fighting seemed unlikely.
In Monday's violence, a missile struck a three-story home in the Gaza City's Zeitoun area, flattening the building and badly damaging several nearby homes. Shell-shocked residents searching for belongings climbed over debris of twisted metal and cement blocks in the street.
The strike killed two children and two adults, and injured 42 people, said Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra.
Residents said Israel first sent a warning strike at around 2 a.m. Monday, prompting many residents in the area to flee their homes. A few minutes later, heavy bombardment followed.
Ahed Kitati, 38, had rushed out after the warning missile to try to hustle people to safety. But he was fatally struck by a falling cinderblock, leaving behind a pregnant wife, five young daughters and a son, the residents said.
Sitting in mourning with her mother and siblings just hours after her father's death, 11-year-old Aya Kitati clutched a black jacket, saying she was freezing, even though the weather was mild. "We were sleeping, and then we heard the sound of the bombs," she said, then broke down sobbing.
Ahed's brother, Jawad Kitati, said he plucked the lifeless body of a 2-year-old relative from the street and carried him to an ambulance. Blood stains smeared his jacket sleeve.
Another clan member, Haitham Abu Zour, 24, woke up to the sound of the warning strike and hid in a stairwell. He emerged to find his wife dead and his two infant children buried under the debris, but safe.
Clan elder Mohammed Azzam, 61, denied that anyone in his family had any connections to Hamas.
"The Jews are liars," he said. "No matter how much they pressure our people, we will not withdraw our support for Hamas."
Late Sunday, an Israeli missile killed a father and his eight-year-old son on the roof of their Gaza City home. The father, a Hamas policeman, was on the roof to repair a leaking water tank, his relatives said.
In another area of Gaza City, the patriarch of the Daloo family, Jamal, sat in mourning for 11 members of his family killed in a missile strike on his home Sunday. Among the dead were his wife, his son, daughter-in-law, his sister and four grandchildren. His face swollen from crying, he embraced relatives and neighbors paying their condolences.
The mourners sat in plastic chairs just meters away from bulldozers clearing the ruins of Daloo's home. His 16-year-old daughter Yara was still missing and believed under the rubble, family members said.
Daloo, who is left with two sons, tried to take comfort in the belief that the loss of his family was God's will and that the dead are now in paradise. He vehemently disputed Israel's initial claim that a senior operative of Islamic Jihad, a smaller sister group of Hamas, was hiding in his house. He said his son Mohammed, one of those killed, was a policeman in the Gaza police, but not an activist.
"The international public opinion witnessed the facts," he said of the tragedy that befell him. "This does not require my words."
Also Monday, Israel bombarded the remains of the former national security compound in Gaza City. Flying shrapnel killed one child and wounded others living nearby, al-Kidra said. Five farmers were killed in two separate strikes, al-Kidra said, including three who he said had been mistakenly identified earlier by Hamas security officials as Islamic Jihad fighters.
Other strikes killed two fighters on a motorcycle in southern Gaza and two passengers in a taxi that had put a press signs in the windshield, al-Kidra said.
In addition to 91 Palestinians killed over the past six days, some 720 were wounded, al-Kidra said.
On the Israeli side, three civilians have died from Palestinian rocket fire and dozens have been wounded. An Israeli rocket-defense system has intercepted hundreds of rockets bound for populated areas.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 12 rockets had struck Israel by late Monday morning, including one that hit a school. Schools in southern Israel have been closed since the offensive started.
Israel launched the current offensive after months of intensifying rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, which continued despite the strikes.
In the night from Sunday to Monday, aircraft targeted about 80 militant sites, including underground rocket-launching sites, smuggling tunnels and training bases, as well as Palestinian command posts and weapons storage facilities located in buildings owned by militant commanders, the Israeli military said in a release. Aircraft and gunboats joined forces to attack Hamas police headquarters, and Palestinian rocket squads were struck as they prepared to fire, the release said.
In all, 1,350 targets in the Gaza Strip have been struck since the Israeli operation began. However, military activity over the past two nights has dropped off as targets change and international efforts to wrest a cease-fire plod ahead.
Israel and Hamas have put forth widely divergent conditions for a truce. But failure to end the fighting threatens to touch off an Israeli ground invasion, for which thousands of soldiers, backed by tanks and armored vehicles, have already been mobilized and dispatched to Gaza's border.
President Barack Obama said he was in touch with players across the region in hopes of halting the fighting. While defending Israel's right to defend itself against the rocket fire, he also warned of the risks the Jewish state would take if it were to expand its air assault into a ground war.
"If we see a further escalation of the situation in Gaza, the likelihood of us getting back on any kind of peace track that leads to a two-state solution is going to be pushed off way into the future," Obama said.
___
Associated Press writer Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed reporting.
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel bombed Palestinian militant targets in the Gaza Strip from air and sea for a fifth straight day on Sunday, preparing for a possible ground invasion though Egypt saw “some indications” of a truce ahead.
Militant rocket fire into Israel subsided during the night but resumed in the morning with three rockets fired at the nearby coastal city of Ashkelon, the Israeli army said.
“As of now we have struck more than 1,000 targets, so Hamas should do the math over whether it is or isn’t worth it to cease fire,” Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, over Twitter.
“If there is quiet in the South and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel’s citizens nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack.”
Forty-eight Palestinians, about half of them civilians, including 13 children, have been killed in Israel’s raids, Palestinian officials said. More than 500 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel, killing three people and injuring dozens.
Israel unleashed intensive air strikes on Wednesday, killing the commander of the Hamas Islamist group that governs Gaza and spurns peace with the Jewish state. Israel’s declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and press Hamas into stopping cross-border rocket fire that has plagued Israeli border towns for years.
Air raids continued past midnight into Sunday, with warships shelling from the sea. A Gaza City media building was hit, witnesses said, wounding 6 journalists and damaging facilities belonging to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain’s Sky News.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the strike had targeted a rooftop “transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity”.
Two other predawn attacks on houses in the Jabalya refugee camp killed two children and wounded 13 other people, medical officials said.
These attacks followed a defiant statement by Hamas military spokesman Abu Ubaida, who told a news conference: “This round of confrontation will not be the last against the Zionist enemy and it is only the beginning.”
The masked gunman dressed in military fatigues insisted that despite Israel’s blows Hamas “is still strong enough to destroy the enemy”.
An Israeli attack on Saturday destroyed the house of a Hamas commander near the Egyptian border.
Casualties there were averted however, because Israel had fired non-exploding missiles at the building beforehand from a drone, which the militant’s family understood as a warning to flee, and thus their lives were spared, witnesses said.
Israeli aircraft also bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and a police headquarters.
Among those killed in air strikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding motorcycles, and several civilians including a 30-year-old woman.
ISRAELI SCHOOLS SHUT
Israel said it would keep schools in its south shut on Sunday as a precaution to avoid casualties from rocket strikes reaching as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the past few days.
Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile interceptor system destroyed in mid-air a rocket fired by Gaza militants at Tel Aviv on Saturday, where volleyball games on the beach front came to an abrupt halt as air-raid sirens sounded.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it had fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.
In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.
Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, but there was also a growing number of calls from world leaders to seek an end to the violence.
British Prime Minister David Cameron “expressed concern over the risk of the conflict escalating further and the danger of further civilian casualties on both sides,” in a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a spokesperson for Cameron said.
London was “putting pressure on both sides to de-escalate,” the spokesman said, adding that Cameron had urged Netanyahu “to do everything possible to bring the conflict to an end.”
Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, said the United States would like to see the conflict resolved through “de-escalation” and diplomacy, but also believes Israel has a right to self-defense.
Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said in Cairo as his security deputies sought to broker a truce with Hamas leaders, that “there are some indications that there is a possibility of a ceasefire soon, but we do not yet have firm guarantees.”
Egypt has mediated previous ceasefire deals between Israel and Hamas, the latest of which unraveled with recent violence.
A Palestinian official told Reuters the truce discussions would continue in Cairo on Sunday, saying “there is hope,” but it was too early to say whether the efforts would succeed.
In Jerusalem, an Israeli official declined to comment on the negotiations. Military commanders said Israel was prepared to fight on to achieve a goal of halting rocket fire from Gaza, which has plagued Israeli towns since late 2000, when failed peace talks led to the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising.
Diplomats at the United Nations said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt in the coming week to push for an end to the fighting.
POSSIBLE GROUND OFFENSIVE
Israel, with tanks and artillery positioned along the frontier, said it was still weighing a ground offensive.
Israeli cabinet ministers decided on Friday to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000 and around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.
Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”
“We have a plan. … It will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.
A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Netanyahu, favored to win a January election.
The last Gaza war, a three-week Israeli blitz and invasion over the New Year of 2008-09, killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict.
But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.
One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s maneuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.
(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Douglas Hamilton)
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