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(01/17/08 5:31am)
JERUSALEM – Israeli aircraft targeting Palestinian rocket squads on Wednesday killed a 12-year-old boy, his father and uncle in a bungled attack, while Islamic militants, enraged by the death of their leader’s son in an Israeli raid, bombarded Israel with rocket and mortar fire.\nWhile Gaza was heating up, a hawkish party pulled out of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government, weakening his political base but potentially freeing him to make greater concessions to the Palestinians.\nTwo days of violence in Gaza appeared to be uniting Palestinians against Israel at a time when peace talks have resumed for the first time in seven years. On Tuesday, 19 Palestinians were killed, most of them militants, including a son of Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar.\nThe Palestinian civilians killed Wednesday were victims of an Israeli air attack on a pickup truck east of Gaza City. The Popular Resistance Committees, a Hamas-allied faction, said the apparent target was its chief rocket maker, who was in the area in a similar vehicle at the time.\nMaj. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, acknowledged that the family’s vehicle was “unintentionally hit” and said Israel tries not to harm civilians.\nHamas spokesman Taher Nunu called the strike “a new crime,” saying Israel was “killing more and more of our innocent people and our freedom fighters.”\nAt nightfall Israel hit another vehicle in southern Gaza, killing two militants, Palestinians said. The Israeli military said it hit a car filled with weapons.\nGaza militants hit back with a barrage of rockets and mortar shells. Hamas said it fired 79. By nightfall, 44 exploded in Israel, according to police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld. No one was seriously hurt.\nVisiting the battered Israeli town of Sderot, U.N. envoy Robert Serry called the rocket attacks “random terror,” while also criticizing Israel’s Gaza raids. He called for a cease-fire.\nIn West Bank violence, Israeli troops killed the Islamic Jihad group’s top commander in a raid on a village south \nof Jenin.\nHamas threatened revenge for the Palestinian deaths, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel’s partner in peace talks, also denounced what he called the Israeli “massacre” in Gaza.\nGovernment offices were closed across the West Bank on Wednesday, the first day of a three-day mourning period declared by Abbas. Hamas set aside a similar period in Gaza, where it rules. Palestinian flags were lowered to half-staff, verses from the Quran, the Muslim holy book, poured forth from Gaza mosque loudspeakers, and government offices, banks and shops \nwere shuttered.\nThe conflict overshadowed the spark of optimism that followed resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and news that this week the two sides began discussing the core issues of the conflict.\nThat progress led Wednesday to the first crack in Olmert’s ruling coalition. Avigdor Lieberman, head of the hawkish Yisrael Beiteinu Party, resigned from the government, taking his 11 members of parliament into the opposition.\nLieberman opposes turning over territory to the Palestinians. Without his internal opposition to all compromise, Olmert could be free to move forward more quickly in the peace talks.\nOlmert and Abbas have pledged to try for a peace treaty before President Bush leaves office in a year. Olmert is committed to giving up much of the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem for peace, and his other coalition partners largely agree with \nthat policy.\nAlso Wednesday, Israeli forces emptied two makeshift settlement outposts in the West Bank, an incremental move against a major obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Five people at the Harchivi outpost fled as police arrived, but some of the 20 protesters at the Shvut Ami outpost had to be carried away.\nBoth outposts have been cleared in the past, said the anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, but were \nlater resettled.\nBush told Israel during his visit to get rid of the roughly two dozen outposts it has promised to dismantle.
(01/17/08 5:29am)
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Sri Lanka’s cease-fire deal ended Wednesday in a spasm of violence, as suspected Tamil Tiger rebels bombed a civilian bus, gunned down the fleeing passengers and attacked farmers as they retreated into the bush, killing 31 people.\nThe attack stoked fears that the official end of the six-year-old truce – largely ignored in recent years – would lead to even worse violence.\nPresident Mahinda Rajapaksa said although Wednesday’s violence was timed to coincide with the government’s official withdrawal from the cease-fire, it simply mirrored other attacks by the separatist group in recent months.\n“This is a brazen demonstration to the whole world of its unchanged commitment to terrorism and the absolute rejection of democracy and all norms of civilized behavior in the pursuit of its unacceptable goal of separation,” he said in a statement.\nThe U.S. Embassy condemned the bus attack, saying “it bears all the hallmarks” of the rebels.\nSpokesmen for the rebels could not immediately be reached for comment. But the group, listed as a terror organization by the U.S. and European Union, routinely denies responsibility for such attacks.\nThe Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state for Sri Lanka’s ethnic Tamil minority in the north and east after decades of being marginalized by Sinhalese-dominated governments. The fighting has killed more than 70,000 people.\nSenior government officials have vowed to destroy the rebel group by the end of the year, and fighting has raged for months across the front lines along the frontiers of its de facto state in the north.\nThe attackers struck at about 7:30 a.m. when they detonated a 45-pound roadside bomb alongside a passenger bus as it traveled through the remote town of Buttala, about 150 miles southeast of Colombo.\nGunmen then shot the panicked passengers as they tried to flee, witnesses said.\n“Everyone that got out through the doors, they shot and killed,” said a 25-year-old passenger who gave his name as Sampath. “I jumped from the window and just escaped.”\nThe windows of the red bus were shattered by the bomb and bullet holes riddled the sides.\nThe attack killed 26 people – most from gunshots – and wounded 62 others, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said. The assailants retreated into the bush, shooting and killing five farmers they met along the way and wounding two others, he said.\nSoon after the attack, a second roadside bomb struck an armored military vehicle in the same region, wounding three soldiers, Nanayakkara said.\nThe bombings came on the final day of the cease-fire, which had largely broken down over the past two years amid renewed fighting that killed 5,000 people.\nThough scrapping the truce has little direct impact on the raging war, the Cabinet’s unanimous decision two weeks ago to annul the deal was criticized by peace mediators and foreign governments, who worried it would make it even more difficult to end the decades-old conflict.\nSince that decision, nearly 400 people have been killed in attacks, according to \nthe military.\nAmnesty International called for both sides to return to the truce, saying the end of the agreement will increase indiscriminate attacks against the civilian population.\nThe most immediate effect of the end of the cease-fire was the dissolution of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, one of the few independent groups with access to both sides.\nAt a final news conference, the head of the mission, Lars Johan Solvberg, said the number of cease-fire violations had grown so large by last year the mission was no longer able to track them, and he worried the situation could worsen once his team leaves.
(01/14/08 5:28am)
A second body was recovered Sunday in the search for four children allegedly thrown from a coastal bridge by their father, Mobile, Ala., County sheriff’s Sgt. Jerry Taylor said. The body was found by a search team near where a duck hunter found the body of an infant about five miles west of the bridge in a marshy area on Saturday, the sheriff said.
(01/14/08 5:25am)
WASHINGTON – The unemployment rate leaps to a two-year high, record numbers of people are forced from their homes and Wall Street nose-dives again. Such is the fallout from a housing meltdown that threatens to slingshot the country into a recession.\nThe big economic question these days is whether the weakening economy will survive the strains or collapse under them.\nThe odds have grown that the economy will slip into a recession. At the beginning of last year, many economists put that chance at less than 1-in-3; now an increasing number says it has climbed to around 50-50. Goldman Sachs, the biggest investment bank on Wall Street, even thinks a recession is inevitable this year.\nHopeful it can be avoided, President Bush and the Democrat-controlled Congress are exploring economic rescue measures, including possible tax rebates. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pledged to lower interest rates as needed.\nThe idea is to induce people to boost spending, especially on big-ticket items such as homes and cars, and revitalize economic activity.\n“The recession gorilla is there,” said Brian Bethune, economist at Global Insight. “The question is can the Federal Reserve do enough to avert a recession? We think the odds are close to 50 percent that there will be a recession. It is high – no question about it.”\nMuch hope rides on the Fed. By dropping rates, it can act quickly – faster than Congress or the White House could agree on and deliver an economic boost.\n“The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession,” Bernanke said last week. “We are forecasting slow growth.”\nBernanke signaled that a rate cut would come this month. Many economists believe a key rate, now at 4.25 percent, could fall by as much as one-half of a percentage point. Such a cut would lower the rates that are charged to millions of consumers and businesses for many different types of loans.\nAnalysts predict the Fed will keep doing that in the months ahead as part of a campaign that started in September, when the central bank cut rates for the first time in four years.\nTrying to put the fragile economy back on firm footing is the biggest challenge for Bernanke since taking over the Fed nearly two years ago. His job requires a deft reading of the economy’s vital signs and keen insights into what makes people and businesses tick. It is their behavior that shapes the economy. And it is in turbulent times that the Fed chief needs to bolster public and investor confidence.\nStill, Wall Street is on edge. The Dow Jones industrials plunged nearly 250 points on Friday. Also, consumer confidence tumbled in early January.\nBill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services, puts the odds of a recession as high as 40 percent. “There are a lot of headwinds and the economy probably has enough momentum to get through, but when things get rough, there are a lot of ways things could go wrong,” Cheney said.\nThe fear is that people will clamp down on the spending and businesses will put a lid on hiring and capital investment, sending the economy into a tailspin.\nBy one rough rule of thumb, a recession occurs when there are two consecutive quarters – \nsix straight months – \nwhen the economy shrinks.\nThe National Bureau of Economic Research, the recognized arbiters for dating recessions, uses a more complicated formula. It takes into account such things as employment and income growth. By that measure, the last recession was in 2001, starting in March and ending in November.\nTax rebates aimed at stimulating the economy were part of Bush’s $1.35 trillion in tax cuts in 2001. They were credited with helping to make the recession short and mild.
(02/14/06 4:35am)
Chinese babies and children are hoisted during the Beizhuang performance in Songxian county, China's Henan province, Saturday. Beizhuang is a folk art form popular among the people of Zhenxidian Village.
(02/14/06 4:31am)
What: Danzante (1947) by Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886-1957)
(02/03/03 4:33am)
HARARE, Zimbabwe -- The death toll in the head-on collision between a packed passenger train and a freight train in northwestern Zimbabwe rose to 46, police said Sunday.\nA railway worker who might have given a wrong signal was arrested and tested for alcohol, media reports said.\nRudo Muchemenyi of the western Matabeleand province police department told state television four more bodies were retrieved from the wreckage Sunday.\nPolice had reported 42 people killed in the crash Saturday and 64 injured, many seriously. All the dead were found in the charred wreckage that was gutted by fire.\nOnly 11 of the dead have been positively identified, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp. said in its nightly news.\nThe transport ministry blamed the crash on human error. State television reported the signals on that stretch of rail line -- the busiest in the country -- had been reported faulty since November. It said the state railroad company, troubled by shortages of equipment, also reported outages of electrically powered signals across the country, forcing some signalers to revert to handing written information cards to train crews on their scheduled stops.\nAbout 1,100 people traveling on the passenger train were headed for the resort town of Victoria Falls.\nBoth locomotive crews died instantly when the trains collided on a curve in the track near the coal mining center of Hwange, about 190 miles from the western city of Bulawayo.\nAt the time of the accident, the freight train was at full throttle, while the passenger train was picking up speed after a recent stop, the state Sunday Mail reported.\nThe newspaper said a trackside signal official was arrested and his blood alcohol level was tested. The results of the test were not immediately known.