Republic Wireless Now Offering $19/Month Unlimited Smartphone Service to All

Prepaid wireless carrier Republic Wireless has been offering its $ 19 per month, unlimited everything, prepaid smartphone plan since about this time last year. At the time, though, there were a few catches; you had to buy a very low-end smartphone from them, you had to use its Hybrid Calling technology for most of your calls, and you could only get in if you were lucky enough to be accepted to an exclusive “beta wave.”

Since then, Republic Wireless has upgraded to the slightly more modern Motorola Defy XT as its flagship smartphone model, and has changed to allow unlimited calling, texting, and data over Sprint’s nationwide network, for the same $ 19/month price. Now the North Carolina-based startup is dropping its last restriction; the doors are open for anyone to preorder up to four Defy XT phones, “and they’ll begin shipping in mid-December.”

​The phone

The Motorola Defy XT is designed to be dustproof and waterproof, with rubber bumpers covering each port and an unlocking switch keeping the back cover sealed. Its specs are decidedly last year’s; powered by a 1 GHz, single-core processor, it often shows Kindle Fire-style lag when swiping between home screens on its 3.7 inch display. It runs 2010′s Android 2.3 Gingerbread, with no OS upgrades announced, and it doesn’t have much room to store games and apps, although it comes with a 2 GB microSD card.

​The service

Republic Wireless’ low monthly fee is partly made possible by its Hybrid Calling technology, which is basically an app that loads on startup and lets you make calls and send texts over Wi-Fi. Call quality is generally good, although it depends on how good your Wi-Fi connection is and how many people are streaming video over it while you’re trying to make your call. You can switch off Hybrid Calling by disabling Wi-Fi, if you want to make calls over Sprint’s network instead; this happens automatically if your Wi-Fi signal drops, which has the effect of hanging up your call.

​The support

“Here at Republic,” its Support page explains, “we believe in helping each other out as much as possible.” What this translates to is that there’s no number to call for questions or tech support. Instead, customers are directed to a community wiki and forums, for answers to their issues. If all else fails, you can contact Republic using an online form, and receive a response within 24 hours.

​The price

It costs close to $ 300 to begin using Republic Wireless’ service; $ 249 for the phone, a $ 10 startup fee, and $ 19 for your first monthly fee, before any applicable taxes. That $ 19 is charged once your phone ships, and if Republic’s difficulty keeping up with orders for its first beta waves is any indication, just because the phones “begin shipping in mid-December” doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s when you’ll get yours.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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“Rise of the Guardians” Review: Magic, but you’d better believe in Santa Claus

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – There’s a really cool idea afoot in “Rise of the Guardians,” namely that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman aren’t merely responsible for their little corner of children’s lives but are actually a super-team of “Avengers” proportions. Taking their cues from the unseen Man in the Moon, they protect children everywhere from evildoers.

There’s also a really tired concept dragging down the film, namely that new Guardians recruit Jack Frost isn’t sure that he wants to join up, and he doesn’t know who he really is – and he’s, basically, the umpteenth Joseph-Campbell-reluctant-hero who pops up in seemingly every kids’ movie and superhero epic. (Arguably, “Guardians” is both.)

And as much as I often found myself enchanted by this 3D animated film, based on the series of books by William Joyce, I couldn’t help noticing that this movie falls into a conundrum I like to call (with a tip of the hat to playwright Christopher Durang) “You didn’t clap loud enough – Tinkerbell’s dead.”

As an atheist (albeit one who loves Christmas movies), I get a little twitchy about films where children are made to feel guilty about not believing in things and people that don’t actually exist. So even though it’s nice to get a non-cynical story aimed at kids, in which open-heartedness and wonder are celebrated as virtues, this is another movie that paints itself into a theological corner by suggesting that those of us who question the existence of the Easter Bunny are at fault for all the world’s ills.

In this tale, the Guardians assemble for two reasons: to welcome Jack Frost (voiced by Chris Pine) into their ranks and to combat Pitch Black (Jude Law), a long-suppressed boogeyman who’s out to capture the Sandman (who never speaks, but is one of the movie’s funniest characters) and to replace his golden slumbers with hideous nightmares.

Santa (Alec Baldwin) – here made out to be the jolliest Russian stevedore on Earth – welcomes Jack to the fold and assures him that he can be a hero once he figures out what he’s made of. Less convinced is the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), who has ongoing resentment against Jack for all those times that wintry weather has disrupted egg hunts.

And there’s the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), who subcontracts most of her gig out to her army of pixies; one of the film’s interesting twists is to explain why children’s teeth are so valuable and what she does with them.

When the Guardians are zipping around the planet, invisibly enchanting children and ribbing each other, “Rise of the Guardians” has a real lift to it; first-time director Peter Ramsey knows how to pace the big set pieces, and he understands that anytime you can make characters fly around (or extreme-sled) in a 3D movie, audiences’ spirits will soar too.

All too often, however, the good stuff is interrupted by the extremely pat plot beats of Jack and his voyage of self-fulfillment, and those aren’t the only mistakes screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire (“Rabbit Hole”) makes along the way.

There’s a major plot development that takes place off-camera, which gives a large chunk of the movie a “Wait, what just happened?” confusion that’s too much of a distraction.

The young’uns at the screening I attended were entranced for much of “Rise of the Guardians” (terrible title!), so parents can rest assured that its target audience will leave satisfied. But the best family films truly appeal to the whole family, and adults may find themselves asking, and fending off, too many questions to take the plunge into this fantasy universe.

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In HP-Autonomy debacle, many advisers but little good advice

(Reuters) – When Hewlett Packard acquired Autonomy last year for $ 11.1 billion, some 15 different financial, legal and accounting firms were involved in the transaction — and none raised a flag about what HP said Tuesday was a major accounting fraud.

HP stunned Wall Street with the allegations about its British software unit and took an $ 8.8 billion writedown, the latest in a string of reversals for the storied company.

HP Chief Executive Meg Whitman, who was a director at the company at the time of the deal, said the board had relied on accounting firm Deloitte for vetting Autonomy‘s financials and that KPMG was subsequently hired to audit Deloitte.

HP had many other advisers as well: boutique investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners to serve as its lead adviser, along with Barclays. Banking advisers on both sides of the deal were paid $ 68.8 million, according to data from Thomson Reuters/Freeman Consulting.

Barclays pocketed the biggest banker fee of the transaction at $ 18.1 million and Perella was paid $ 12 million. The company’s legal advisers included Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Drinker Biddle & Reath; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which advised the board.

On Autonomy‘s side of the table were Frank Quattrone‘s Qatalyst Partners, which specializes in tech deals and which picked up $ 11.6 million.

UBS, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America were also advising Autonomy and were paid $ 5.4 million each. Slaughter & May and Morgan Lewis served as the company’s legal advisers.

While regulators in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are likely to spend many months if not years investigating what happened, legal experts said on Tuesday that it wasn’t clear if any of the advisers would ultimately be held liable.

“The most logical deep pocket would be the acquired firm’s auditors, who should have allegedly caught these defalcations,” said James Cox, a professor at Duke University law school who specializes in corporate and securities law. Since both auditors missed the problems and it appeared to have taken HP a while to catch it after it took over Autonomy, the auditors may have a strong defense.

“You can have a perfectly sound audit and still have fraud exist,” he said. A Deloitte UK spokesman said the company could not comment and would cooperate with any investigations.

The law firms and the bankers will likely argue that they were not hired to review the bookkeeping and had relied on the opinion of the auditors, securities law experts said.

Multiple sources with knowledge of the HP-Autonomy transaction added that the big-name banks on Autonomy‘s side were brought in days before the final agreement was struck. These sources said the banks were brought on as favors for their long relationships with the companies, in a little-scrutinized Wall Street practice of crediting — and paying — investment banks that actually have little do with the deal.

LAWSUITS, REPUTATIONS AT STAKE

Plaintiffs lawyers said they were taking calls from investors about HP on Tuesday. Darren Robbins, a San Diego-based plaintiff lawyer who represents shareholders, said the tech icon appears to have spent billions on a shoddy company without undertaking the proper due diligence, and thus misrepresented its finances to investors.

“I think they have serious troubles,” he said.

But plaintiff lawyers may have difficulty bringing so-called derivative lawsuits against professional services firms, said Brian Quinn, an M&A professor at Boston College Law School. In those cases, plaintiff lawyers can sue third parties, such as auditors, on behalf of HP — but they must convince a judge that HP’s board is unfit to pursue those claims itself. In this situation, though, HP’s board disclosed the alleged fraud itself, Quinn said.

Even if the bankers and lawyers escape any legal problems, they could suffer a reputational hit. The scrutiny could be particularly unwelcome for Perella Weinberg: the firm advised Japanese camera maker Olympus’ acquisition of British Gyrus — a transaction that prompted investigations in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan into fees and payments made by Olympus.

Olympus had hired Perella to execute the transaction, which included a fee paid to “advisers” of $ 687 million – way beyond the usual scale for a transaction valued at only $ 2 billion. Perella was not implicated in the matter.

Meanwhile, the most controversial banker involved in the HP-Autonomy deal, Frank Quattrone of Qatalyst, represented Autonomy and played a key role in getting HP to pay a high price.

A star investment banker in the 1990s, Quattrone had worked at Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, and helped arrange some of the biggest tech initial public offerings of the era, including Amazon.com Inc and Cisco Systems Inc.

But his time at the top of Silicon Valley was curtailed by charges that he blocked an investigation into IPO kickbacks. After two trials failed to resolve his case, he ultimately reached a deal with prosecutors.

His return to the Silicon Valley M&A scene has impressed many in the tech world.

“His reputation is at an all-time high right now,” said Dan Scheinman, the former head of mergers and acquisitions at Cisco who has worked with Quattrone on several deals.

Analysts almost uniformly deemed the $ 11.1 billion he got HP to pay for Autonomy as overly rich — a compliment to him at the time, but possibly a hollow success if HP’s allegations prove true.

(Reporting By Nadia Damouni and Nicola Leske in New York and Andrew Callus in London. Additional reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco.; Editing by Peter Lauria, Jonathan Weber, Muralikumar Anantharaman, Janet McBride)

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Violence flares as Clinton seeks Gaza truce

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday pursued a Gaza truce, with Israel and Hamas still at odds over key terms, as Israeli air strikes shook the enclave and a bomb exploded on a Tel Aviv bus.

After talks in Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Clinton held a second meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before heading to Egypt, the main broker in efforts to end eight days of fighting and avert a possible Israeli ground offensive.

In Tel Aviv, at least 10 people were wounded when a bus was blown up on a main street near the Defence Ministry and military headquarters. Israel's government called it a terrorist attack.

The explosion, which police said was caused by a bomb placed on the vehicle, touched off celebratory gunfire from militants in Gaza and threatened to complicate truce efforts.

Israel's best-selling Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said an emerging outline of a ceasefire agreement called for Egypt to announce a 72-hour ceasefire followed by further talks on long-term understandings.

Under the proposed document, which the newspaper said neither party would be required to sign, Israel would hold its fire, end attacks against top militants and promise to examine ways to ease its blockade of the enclave.

Hamas, the report said, would pledge not to strike any Israeli target and ensure other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip also stop their attacks.

An Israeli political source said differences holding up a deal centered on a Hamas demand to lift the Gaza blockade completely and the kind of activity that would be allowed along the frontier, where Israeli troops often fire into the enclave to keep Palestinians away from an area near a border fence.

Hamas official Ezzat al-Rishq said the main stumbling block was "the temporary timeframe for a ceasefire that the Israelis want us to agree to".

"GOOD INTENTIONS"

The London-based Al Hayat newspaper, citing sources in Hamas and Islamic Jihad, said Israel wanted a 90-day period to determine "good intentions" before discussing Palestinian demands, a position the report said the groups have rejected.

Rishq said a short-term truce, whose proposed duration he did not disclose, "would only buy (Israel) time" until a general election in January and "we would have accomplished nothing in the way of a long-term truce".

Hamas sources said the group was also demanding control over Gaza's Rafah borders with Egypt, so that Palestinians could cross easily, and Israeli guarantees to stop assassinating Hamas leaders.

Israel, one of the Hamas sources said, wanted a commitment from the group to stop smuggling through tunnels that run into Gaza under the Egyptian border. The tunnel network is a conduit for weapons and commercial goods.

News of the Tel Aviv bus bombing, the first serious blast in Israel's commercial capital since 2006, emerged just after Clinton and Netanyahu ended their meeting. A spokesman for Netanyahu declined to give details on their discussions, which followed talks on Tuesday.

Clinton, who flew to the region from an Asian summit, said in her public remarks after Tuesday's meeting with Netanyahu that it was "essential to de-escalate the situation".

"The rocket attacks from terrorist organizations inside Gaza on Israeli cities and towns must end and a broader calm restored," she said.

Clinton earlier assured Netanyahu of "rock-solid" U.S. support for Israel's security, and praised Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi's "personal leadership and Egypt's efforts thus far" to end the Gaza conflict and promote regional stability.

"As a regional leader and neighbor, Egypt has the opportunity and responsibility to continue playing a crucial and constructive role in this process. I will carry this message to Cairo tomorrow (Wednesday)," she said.

"LONG-TERM" SOLUTION

Netanyahu told Clinton he wanted a "long-term" solution. Failing that, Netanyahu made clear, that he stood ready to step up the military campaign to silence Hamas' rockets.

"A band-aid solution will only cause another round of violence," said Ofir Gendelman, a Netanyahu spokesman.

While diplomatic efforts continued, Israel struck more than 100 targets in Gaza overnight, killing a Hamas gunman and destroying a cluster of Hamas government buildings.

Palestinians militants fired 31 rockets at Israel, causing no casualties, and Israel's Iron Dome interceptor system shot down 14 of them, police said.

Israel has carried out more than 1,500 strikes since the offensive began. Medical officials in Gaza said 139 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including 34 children, have been killed. Nearly 1,400 rockets have been fired into Israel, killing four civilians and a soldier, the Israeli military said.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Clinton held talks with Palestinian President Abbas, whose bid to upgrade the Palestinians' status at the United Nations, in the absence of peace negotiations with Israel, is opposed by Washington.

"Secretary Clinton informed the president that the U.S. administration is exerting every possible effort to reach an immediate ceasefire and the president expressed his full support for this endeavor," said Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.

"Once the Israelis accept to stop their bombardments, their assassinations, there will be a comprehensive ceasefire sustained from all parties," Erekat said.

A Palestinian official with knowledge of Cairo's mediation told Reuters that Egyptian intelligence officials would hold further discussions on Wednesday with leaders of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group.

"There may be a response from Israel that Egyptian mediators want to present to Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders," the official said. "Let's be hopeful it would be something Palestinian factions can accept."

Like most Western powers, Washington shuns Hamas as an obstacle to peace and has blamed it for the Gaza conflagration. A U.N. Security Council statement condemning the conflict was blocked on Tuesday by the United States, which complained that it "failed to address the root cause," the Palestinian rockets.

Hamas for its part is exploring the opportunities that last year's Arab Spring has given it to enjoy favor from new Islamist governments, and from Sunni Gulf powers keen to woo it away from Shi'ite Iran.

It may count on some sympathy from Mursi, although Egypt's first freely elected leader, whose Muslim Brotherhood inspired Hamas' founders, has been careful to stick by the 1979 peace deal with Israel struck by Cairo's former military rulers.

Along the Gaza border, Israeli tanks, artillery and infantry remained poised for a possible ground offensive in the densely populated enclave of 1.7 million Palestinians.

But an invasion, likely to entail heavy casualties, would be a major political risk for Netanyahu, who is currently favored to win the upcoming Israeli election. More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in Israel's three-week war in the Gaza Strip in 2008-9, prompting international criticism of Israel.

(Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem and Cairo bureau; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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U.S. fiscal impact of great concern to Canada: Canada’s Harper

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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So What if Oprah Used an iPad to Tweet About Microsoft Surface?

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.

Microsoft Surface Powered Up

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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Psychiatrist found accused Oakland college shooter mentally ill

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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Clinton heads to Mideast amid Gaza crisis

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.

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Canada pledges again to balance budget by 2015

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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Online gaming firms urge EU to open up markets

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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