Turbulence on Cuba-Italy flight leaves 30 bruised

ROME (AP) — An airliner flying from Havana to Milan abruptly plunged some 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) when it hit unusually strong turbulence over the Atlantic on Monday, terrifying passengers and leaving some 30 people aboard with bruises and scrapes, airline officials said.

The flight continued to Milan’s Malpensa airport after the plane’s captain determined that it suffered no structural damage and two passengers who are physicians found no serious injuries, Giulio Buzzi, head of the pilots division at Neos Air, told Sky TG24 TV.

The ANSA news agency quoted bruised passenger Edoardo De Lucchi as saying meals were being served when suddenly there was “10 seconds of terror.” He recounted how plates went flying and some passengers not wearing seatbelts bounced about.

Buzzi had said that the drop measured some 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) in a cloudless sky. But Milan daily’s Corriere della Sera’s web site, quoting Neos official Davide Martini, later reported that the plane first bounced up some 500 meters (1,650 feet), then dropped some 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) to some 500 meters (1,650 feet) below the original altitude.

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Woman hits ‘like’ on Facebook, gets arrested in India

The police in Mumbai arrested Monday a 21-year-old college student Shaheen Dhada for a Facebook status update and her friend Renu Srinivasan for clicking “Like” on the update. The case is the latest in a string of recent crackdowns on Internet speech in India.

The update had criticized a general strike called by a political party, the right-wing Shiv Sena, to mourn the death Saturday of its elderly founder and patriarch, Bal Thackeray. The controversial leader has been hailed by Hindu nationalists but also criticized by liberals for leaving behind a legacy of political violence in India’s financial capital. The party has been accused of anti-Muslim violence in Mumbai in 1992, and Mr. Thackeray frequently made statements against Muslims.

In her Facebook post, Ms. Dhada wrote, “Respect is earned, not given and definitely not forced. Today Mumbai shuts down due to fear and not due to respect.” She also said that politicians like Thackeray are “born and die daily” and the city need not shut down for it, and that people should remember the martyrs of the Indian independence movement.

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Dhada and Ms. Srinivasan were arrested under section 505(2) of the Indian Penal Code that seeks to punish statements that amount to “creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes.” Additionally the two students have also been charged with Section 66A of the Information Technology Act that criminalizes online speech that is “grossly offensive or of menacing character.” Another law they have been charged with is Indian Penal Code 295A, which makes insulting or outraging religious feelings an offense. The punishment for each count is three years imprisonment each.

The arrests come in the wake of many such in India this year, a result of controversial new information technology laws. The other cases have included arrest of a resident of Chandigarh who complained on the Facebook page of Chandigarh police that they were not doing enough to find her stolen car; a cartoonist who posted work online protesting corruption scandals by the central government; and a professor in Kolkata who merely forwarded an email with a cartoon that was critical of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

While the women in the Thackeray case have been granted bail, the arrest has led to outrage on social media, with even right-wingers condemning the arrest as an assault on free speech.

Pranesh Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore says that the entire Information Technology Act needs a review by the government, civil society, and other stake-holders. “The current law does not have sufficient safeguards for privacy and freedom of speech and the law is being used as a tool of harassment,” Mr. Prakash says.

In a letter to the Maharashtra state government, Press Council of India chief Markandey Katju urged chief minister Prithviraj Chavan to take action against police officials who misused the laws to arrest the girls. Mr. Katju, a retired Supreme Court judge, wrote in his letter, “We are living in a democracy, not a fascist dictatorship. In fact this arrest itself appears to be a criminal act since… it is a crime to wrongfully arrest or wrongfully confine someone who has committed no crime.”

On top of the legal action against the women, street thugs exacted further punishment. A mob of Shiv Sena activists vandalized the clinic of Ms. Dhada’s uncle, Dr. Abdullah Ghaffar Dhada. Speaking on the phone from Mumbai, Dr. Dhadha says he incurred losses of two million Indian Rupees (nearly $ 36,500).

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GetGlue Acquired by Viggle for $25million, Stock

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Viggle Inc. has purchased GetGlue for $ 25 million in cash and 48.3 million shares in stock, with the goal of making the merged companies the dominate force in social TV. Together, the two companies will have more than 4 million users.

Viggle stock was up 10.81 percent in early trading Monday, to $ 1.23 a share. That makes the value of GetGlue’s stock payout nearly $ 60 million.

Viggle Inc., a reward-based site that launched in January, will operate both brands. GetGlue founder and CEO Alex Iskold will join Viggle in a senior executive position on its management team and as a member of its Board of Directors. Viggle will also hire all 34 GetGlue employees.

“With this deal, we are combining very experienced and creative product, engineering and management teams that will continue to build great user experiences and provide industry leading platforms for consumers, networks and advertisers,” said Viggle CEO Robert F.X. Sillerman. “We will also be vastly increasing the Viggle user base and quadrupling our network partnerships.”

“We are very excited to join forces with Viggle! GetGlue has built a Social TV product that people love, and Viggle has become their favorite loyalty program for TV,” Iskold said. “Together we are positioned to deliver the next generation second screen experiences that delight and benefit users, networks and major brands.”

New York City-based GetGlue, founded in 2007, enables users to tell friends what they’re watching, track their favorite shows, and find videos, images, and links. It has more than 3.2 million registered users.

Viggle has 1.2 million registered users who receive points for loyalty and engagement. They can redeem points from businesses including Best Buy, Amazon, Fandango, Hulu Plus and iTunes.

The deal is only the latest for Sillerman, whose SFX Entertainment also recently purchased the electronic dance music companies Disco Donnie Presents and Life in Color. He said SFX expects up to 50 additional deals to come to fruition in the near future.

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Antibiotics in pregnancy tied to asthma in kids

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children whose mothers took antibiotics while they were pregnant were slightly more likely than other kids to develop asthma in a new Danish study.

The results don’t prove that antibiotics caused the higher asthma risk, but they support a current theory that the body’s own “friendly” bacteria have a role in whether a child develops asthma, and antibiotics can disrupt those beneficial bugs.

“We speculate that mothers’ use of antibiotics changes the balance of natural bacteria, which is transmitted to the newborn, and that such unbalanced bacteria in early life impact on the immune maturation in the newborn,” said Dr. Hans Bisgaard, one of the authors of the study and a professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Those effects on the immune system could lead to asthma later on, although it’s still not clear how, said Anita Kozyrskyj, a professor at the University of Alberta who also studies the antibiotics-asthma link but wasn’t involved in the new study.

Previous research has linked antibiotics taken during infancy to a higher risk of asthma, although some researchers have disputed those findings (see Reuters Health stories of May 17, 2011 and February 3, 2011).

To look for effects starting at an even earlier point in a baby’s development, Bisgaard and his colleagues gathered information from a Danish national birth database of more than 30,000 children born between 1997 and 2003 and followed for five years.

They found that about 7,300 of the children, or nearly one quarter, were exposed to antibiotics while their mothers were pregnant. Among them, just over three percent (238 kids) were hospitalized for asthma by age five.

In comparison, about 2.5 percent, or 581 of some 23,000 kids whose mothers didn’t take antibiotics were hospitalized for asthma.

After taking into account other asthma risk factors, Bisgaard’s team calculated that the children who had been exposed to antibiotics were 17 percent more likely to be hospitalized for asthma.

Similarly, these children were also 18 percent more likely to have been given a prescription for an asthma medication than kids whose mothers did not take antibiotics when they were pregnant, according to findings published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

In an email to Reuters Health, Bisgaard said he expected to see a higher risk of asthma “because the mother is a prime source of early bacterial colonization of the child, and antibiotics may (have) disturbed her normal bacterial flora.”

Bisgaard’s team also looked at a smaller group of 411 kids who were at higher risk for asthma because their mothers had the condition and found these children were twice as likely as their peers to develop asthma too if their mothers took antibiotics during the third trimester of pregnancy.

Kozyrskyj, who is research chair of the Women and Children’s Health Research Institute, said it’s also possible that something other than the antibiotics are to blame for the findings in both groups of children – such as the illness that caused the mothers to take antibiotics.

“This study, it doesn’t tell us whether it’s the antibiotic use or whether it’s the infection. That’s one thing we can’t decipher,” she told Reuters Health.

The results don’t suggest that women should avoid taking antibiotics to try to reduce their kids’ risk of asthma, Kozyrskyj emphasized.

Some infections can be quite dangerous to a fetus, and “there are very good indications for these antibiotics,” she added.

Bisgaard agreed that women should be treated, “but we see 1/3 of pregnant women in our region receiving treatments (often for urinary tract infections), which may reflect an uncritical use,” he wrote in an email.

Bisgaard said his group is also studying the types of bacteria in pregnant mothers and newborn children to get a better understanding of their role in asthma.

Kozyrskyj said Bisgaard’s study suggests that the development of asthma might start before birth, something researchers hadn’t studied very closely.

“We’re beginning to appreciate that some of the origins of asthma and changes to the immune system, maybe they start earlier than right after birth. It might be happening in utero,” she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/W9SnlJ The Journal of Pediatrics, online November 8, 2012.

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Children of Gaza caught in the crossfire

GAZA (Reuters) - Barefoot boys chase each other in circles around the street, pointing pretend guns made out of rubber pipes up at the Gaza sky, which is thick with Israeli F-16s and surveillance drones.

"We're not afraid of the Jews' bombs!" said Sharif al-Ewad, whose plump cheeks make him look younger than his 15 years. "Al-Qassam (Hamas's armed wing) has raised its head high, and is really beating them up this time!" he smiled.

But beneath the swagger and bravado there is also a yearning for peace and quiet after five days of Israeli airstrikes that killed at least 65 Palestinians, including 20 children.

With one of the youngest populations in the world, over half of Gaza's 1.7 million residents are aged under 18 and they have little to comfort them beside the heady local culture of armed struggle against Israel.

The Jewish state pulled its troops and settlers out of the coastal territory in 2005 but ever since has come under regular rocket fire from Islamist group Hamas and its allies in the Gaza Strip, which refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist.

Israel launched its latest widescale operation last Wednesday with the stated aim of putting a halt to the attacks.

Psychiatrist Hasan Zeyada says the constant exposure to shocking violence has left many children suffering trauma and all that it entails -- bed-wetting, nightmares, flashbacks, and fear of going out in public.

"Part of this is related to our culture and religion, which values sacrifice and duty. The other part is a kind of denial. it's normal to be scared, but in the messages they've watched and heard, they're taught just to show strength," said Zeyada, manager of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program.

"When there's no safe place to go, they respond naturally with denial. In a situation like Gaza's, the best families and the community can do for children is to keep them close and go about life as normally as possible," he said.

That isn't very easy.

SMALL VICTIMS

With schools shut while the fighting rages, some children express delight at their newfound freedom. "Of course we're happy!" squealed one boy, drawing out giggles from his mates.

Looking more serious, Sharif shook his head. "No, it's no good. We want to learn. It's boring, and our parents try to make us stay inside. But we're not scared," he insisted.

On the other side of the fence, Israeli schools are also shuttered within a 40-km radius of Gaza because of an incessant rain of incoming rockets, with children confined to their homes.

Tragically, some young Gazans will never get to see school.

Tamer, 1, and Joumana Abu Sefan, 3, were blasted from their beds by an Israeli strike early on Sunday. Their father Salama, blood gushing down his face from his owns wounds, rushed them to hospital, where they were pronounced dead.

Male relatives stared on in tears, women cried out and swooned while the little bodies were swaddled in white cloth and gauze was placed in their nostrils to keep still-flowing blood from staining their faces.

At their joint funeral march just hours later, Salama cradled their heads as uncles held them aloft at his side.

Green Hamas flags were suddenly draped over their shrouds, and the militant group's religious songs, playing in the background, announced that the tiny pair had achieved martyrdom and that heaven would be their reward.

"What does Israel want with their blood?" Salama heaved, inconsolable and seeming to sleepwalk through the spectacle.

For its part, Israel denies targeting civilians and says it is constantly warning residents, who it says are used by as human shields, away from areas where militants operate.

Abdullah Zumlot, 15, the first hints of moustache speckling his upper lip, scoffed at this as he loitered around the hospital where the Abu Sefan children were earlier carried away.

"It's not fair what we have to live through, we're not happy. All my family and I do is sit at home and watch the news 24 hours," he complained.

(Editing by Crispian Balmer)

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Rebels in Congo reach door of Goma

GOMA, Congo (AP) — A Rwandan-backed rebel group advanced to within 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) of Goma, a crucial provincial capital in eastern Congo, marking the first time that rebels have come this close since 2008.

Congolese army spokesman Col. Olivier Hamuli said the fighting has been going on since 6 a.m. Sunday and the front line has moved to just a few kilometers (miles) outside the city. After more than nine hours of violent clashes the two sides took a break, with M23 rebels establishing a checkpoint just 100 meters (yards) away from one held by the military in the village of Munigi, exactly 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) outside the Goma city line.

Contacted by telephone on the front line, M23 rebel spokesman Col. Vianney Kazarama said the group will spend the night in Goma.

“We are about to take the town. We will spend the night in Goma tonight,” said Kazarama. “We are confident that we can take Goma and then our next step will be to take Bukavu,” he said mentioning the capital of the next province to the south.

The M23 rebel group is made up of soldiers from a now-defunct rebel army, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, a group made-up primarily of fighters from the Tutsi ethnic group, the ethnicity that was targeted in Rwanda‘s 1994 genocide. In 2008, the CNDP led by Rwandan commando Gen. Laurent Nkunda marched his soldiers to the doorstep of Goma, abruptly stopping just before taking the city.

In the negotiations that followed and which culminated in a March 23, 2009 peace deal, the CNDP agreed to disband and their fighters joined the national army of Congo. They did not pick up their arms again until this spring, when hundreds of ex-CNDP fighters defected from the army in April, claiming that the Congolese government had failed to uphold their end of the 2009 agreement.

Reports, including one by the United Nations Group of Experts, have shown that M23 is actively being backed by Rwanda and the new rebellion is likely linked to the fight to control Congo’s rich mineral wealth.

The latest fighting broke out Thursday and led to the deaths of 151 rebels and two soldiers. On Saturday U.N. attack helicopters targeted M23 positions in eastern Congo.

Also on Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had called Rwandan President Paul Kagame “to request that he use his influence on the M23 to help calm the situation and restrain M23 from continuing their attack,” according to peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous who spoke at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Saturday.

North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Saturday that the Congolese army had earlier retreated from Kibumba, which is 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Goma, after thousands of Rwandans, who he says were backing the rebels, attacked early Saturday.

“Rwandan forces bombarded our positions in Kibumba since early this morning and an estimated 3,500 crossed the border to attack us,” he said Saturday.

In downtown Goma, panicked residents had come out to try to get more information on what was happening. A 45-year-old mother of five said that she has nowhere to go.

“I don’t really know what is happening, I’ve seen soldiers and tanks in the streets and that scares me,” said Imaculee Kahindo. Asked if she planned to leave the city, she said: “What can we do? I will probably hide in my house with my children.”

Hamuli, the spokesman for the Congolese army, denied reports that soldiers were fleeing.

In 2008 as Nkunda’s CNDP rebels amassed at the gates of Goma, reporters inside the city were able to see Congolese soldiers running in the opposite direction, after having abandoned their posts. The Congolese army is notoriously dysfunctional with soldiers paid only small amounts, making it difficult to secure their loyalties during heavy fighting.

“We are fighting 3 kilometers from Goma, just past the airport. And our troops are strong enough to resist the rebels,” said Hamuli. “We won’t let the M23 march into our town,” he said. Asked if his troops were fleeing, he added: “These are false rumors. We are not going anywhere.”

U.N. peacekeeping chief Ladsous said that the rebels were very well-equipped, including with night vision equipment allowing them to fight at night.

Reports by United Nations experts have accused Rwanda, as well as Uganda, of supporting the rebels. Both countries strongly deny any involvement and Uganda said if the charges continue it will pull its peacekeeping troops out of Somalia, where they are playing an important role in pushing out the Islamist extremist rebels.

The U.N. Security Council called for an immediate stop to the violence following a two-hour, closed-door emergency meeting. The council said it would add sanctions against M23 rebels and demanded that rebels immediately stop their advance toward the provincial capital of Goma.

“We must stop the M23″ because Goma’s fall “would, inevitably, turn into a humanitarian crisis,” said France‘s U.N. Ambassador, Gerard Araud. He added that U.N. officials would decide in the coming days which M23 leaders to target for additional sanctions.

___

Associated Press writer Maria Sanminiatelli at the United Nations and Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

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One Direction top British single and album charts

LONDON (Reuters) – Boy band One Direction topped Britain’s singles and album charts on Sunday, outselling new releases from rock veterans Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones, the Official Charts Company said.

The English-Irish quintet shot to number one in the album charts with “Take Me Home”, with one of its tracks, “Little Things”, also taking first place in the singles rankings.

Singer Rod Stewart had to settle for number two for his new collection of seasonal classics “Merry Christmas Baby”, while the Rolling Stones were third with their 50th anniversary compilation “GRRR!”.

Also new in the album lists were British tenor Alfie Boe at number six with “Storyteller”, while American punk band Green Day entered in tenth place with “¡Dos!”.

American singer Bruno Mars took second place in the singles charts with “Locked Out Of Heaven”, just ahead of “DNA” at number three from British girl group Little Mix.

(Reporting by Tim Castle; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Questions of Blame Linger 34 Years After Jonestown

From the age of 13, Leslie Wagner Wilson had been indoctrinated in the California-based Peoples Temple, led by the charismatic Jim Jones, whose mission was to foster racial harmony and help the poor.

But on Nov. 18, 1978, she and a handful of church members fought their way through thick jungle in the South American country of Guyana, escaping a utopian society gone wrong where followers were starved, beaten and held prisoner in the Jonestown compound.

She walked 30 miles to safety with her 3-year-old son, Jakari, strapped to her back and a smaller group of defectors. But just hours later, the mother, sister and brother and husband she left behind were dead.

“I was so scared,” said Wagner, now 55. “We exchanged phone numbers in case we died. I was prepared to die. I never thought I would see my 21st birthday.”

Today, on the 34th anniversary, Wilson said it’s important to remember the California-based Peoples Temple Jonestown massacre, especially the survivors who have wrestled with their consciences for decades.

PHOTOS: Jonestown Massacre Anniversary

Nine members of her family were among the 918 Americans who died that day, 909 of them ordered by Jones to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid in the largest ritual suicide in history.

Her husband, Joe Wilson, was one of Jones’ top lieutenants who helped assassinate congressman Leo Ryan and his press crew when they tried to free church members who were being held against their will.

After arriving back in the United States, Wilson said she “went through hell” — three failed marriages, drug use and suicidal thoughts she describes in her 2009 book, “Slavery of Faith.”

“I was like Humpty Dumpty, but you couldn’t put me back together again,” she said.

Survivors, many of them African-American like Wilson, say they felt guilt and shame and faced the most agonizing question surrounding the nation’s single largest loss of life until 9/11: Was it suicide or murder?

Full Coverage: Jonestown Massacre

In the now-famous “death tape,” supporters clapped and babies cried as Jones instructed families to kill the elderly first, then the youngest in protest against capitalism and racism. Mothers poisoned 246 children before taking their own lives.

“We really can’t understand the Peoples Temple without looking at the historical time period when it arose,” said Rebecca Moore, a professor of religious studies at San Diego State University.

“With the liberation movements of the ’60s and ’70s, the collapse of the black-power movement, the Peoples Temple was the main institution in the San Francisco Bay area that promoted a message of integration and racial equality.”

Moore lost her two sisters and her nephew, the son of Jim Jones. “They were hardcore believers,” she said of her siblings.

Jim Jones, who was white, came from a “wrong side of the tracks,” poor background in Indiana where in the 1950s he became known as a charismatic preacher with an affinity for African-Americans.

“A number of survivors, including those who defected, believe to this day he had paranormal abilities,” said Moore, who met him years later. “He could heal them and read their minds.”

In the 1960s, Jones moved to San Francisco, where at the height of the Peoples Temple there were about 5,000 members.

WATCH: A Look Back at Jonestown Massacre

“They wanted my parents to join,” she said. “Like most outsiders, we didn’t have any idea what was happening outside closed doors.”

Jones ingratiated himself with celebrities and politicians, mobilizing voters to help elect Mayor George Moscone in 1975 and becoming chairman of the city’s housing authority.

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Obama: Historic Myanmar visit underscores democratic progress

BANGKOK (AP) — On the eve of his landmark trip to Myanmar, President Barack Obama tried to assure critics that his visit was not a premature reward for a long-isolated nation still easing its way toward democracy.

"This is not an endorsement of the government," Obama said Sunday in Thailand as he opened a three-country dash through Asia. "This is an acknowledgement that there is a process under way inside that country that even a year and a half, two years ago, nobody foresaw."

Obama was set to become the first U.S. president to visit Myanmar with Air Force One scheduled to touch down in Yangon on Monday morning. Though Obama planned to spend just six hours in the country, the much-anticipated stop came as the result of a remarkable turnaround in the countries' relationship.

The president's Asia tour also marks his formal return to the world stage after months mired in a bruising re-election campaign. For his first postelection trip, he tellingly settled on Asia, a region he has deemed the region as crucial to U.S. prosperity and security.

Aides say Asia will factor heavily in Obama's second term as the U.S. seeks to expand its influence in an attempt to counter China.

China's rise is also at play in Myanmar, which long has aligned itself with Beijing. But some in Myanmar fear that China is taking advantage of its wealth of natural resources, so the country is looking for other partners to help build its nascent economy.

Obama has rewarded Myanmar's rapid adoption of democratic reforms by lifting some economic penalties. The president has appointed a permanent ambassador to the country, also known as Burma, and pledged greater investment if Myanmar continues to progress following a half-century of military rule.

But some human rights groups say Myanmar's government, which continues to hold hundreds of political prisoners and is struggling to contain ethnic violence, hasn't done enough to earn a personal visit from Obama.

Speaking from neighboring Thailand, Obama said Sunday he was under no illusions that Myanmar had done all it needed to do. But he said the U.S. could play a critical role in helping ensure the country doesn't slip backward.

"I'm not somebody who thinks that the United States should stand on the sidelines and not want to get its hands dirty when there's an opportunity for us to encourage the better impulses inside a country," Obama said during a joint press conference Sunday with Thailand's prime minister.

Even as Obama turned his sights on Asia, widening violence in the Middle East competed for his attention.

Obama told reporters Sunday that Israel had the right to defend itself against missile attacks from Gaza. But he urged Israel not to launch a ground assault in Gaza, saying it would put Israeli soldiers, as well as Palestinian citizens, at greater risk and hamper an already vexing peace process.

"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.

The ongoing violence is likely to trail Obama as he makes his way from Thailand to Myanmar to Cambodia, his final stop before returning to Washington early Wednesday.

Obama will meet separately in Myanmar with Prime Minister Thein Sein, who has orchestrated much of his country's recent reforms. The president will also meet with longtime Myanmar democracy activist Aung Sun Suu Kyi in the home where she spent years under house arrest.

The president, as he seeks to assuage critics, has trumpeted Suu Kyi's support of his outreach efforts, saying Sunday that she was "very encouraging" of his trip.

The White House says Obama will express his concern for the ongoing ethnic tensions in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, where more than 110,000 people — the vast majority of them Muslims known as Rohingya — have been displaced.

The U.N. has called the Rohingya — who are widely reviled by the Buddhist majority in Myanmar — among the world's most persecuted people.

The White House says Obama will press the matter Monday with Thein Sein, along with demands to free remaining political prisoners as the nation transitions to democracy.

The president will cap his trip to Myanmar with a speech at Rangoon University, the center of the country's struggle for independence against Britain and the launching point for many pro-democracy protests. The former military junta shut the dormitories in the 1990s fearing further unrest and forced most students to attend classes on satellite campuses on the outskirts of town.

Obama began his Asian tour on a steamy day in Bangkok with a visit to the Wat Pho Royal Monastery. In stocking feet, the president and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton walked around a golden statue of a sitting Buddha. The complex is a sprawling display of buildings with colorful spires, gardens and waterfalls.

Obama then paid a courtesy call to the ailing, 84-year-old U.S.-born King Bhumibol Adulyadej in his hospital quarters. The king, the longest serving living monarch, was born in Cambridge, Mass., and studied in Europe.

_

Associated Press writer Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

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Israel hits Hamas buildings, shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the “Iron Dome” defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh – where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister – and struck a police headquarters.

Along the Tel Aviv beachfront, volleyball games came to an abrupt halt and people crouched as sirens sounded. Two interceptor rockets streaked into the sky. A flash and an explosion followed as Iron Dome, deployed only hours earlier near the city, destroyed the incoming projectile in mid-air.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia’s foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh’s office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister’s office and pledged: “We will declare victory from here.”

Hamas‘s armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday’s rocket attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

“Well that wasn’t such a big deal,” said one woman, who had watched the interception while clinging for protection to the trunk of a baby palm tree on a traffic island.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Among those killed in airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding on motorcycles.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, along with appeals to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

RESERVIST CALL-UP

At a late night session on Friday, Israeli cabinet ministers decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said, in a signal Israel was edging closer to an invasion.

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 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favorite to win a January national election.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

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.

“Israel should understand that many things have changed and that lots of water has run in the Arab river,” Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem said as he surveyed the wreckage from a bomb-blast site in central Gaza.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s manoeuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

“DE-ESCALATION”

Netanyahu spoke late on Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama for the second time since the offensive began, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

“(Netanyahu) expressed his deep appreciation for the U.S. position that Israel has a right to defend itself and thanked him for American aid in purchasing Iron Dome batteries,” the statement added.

The two leaders have had a testy relationship and have been at odds over how to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

A White House official said on Saturday Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to discuss how the two countries could help bring an end to the Gaza conflict.

Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters that Washington “wants the same thing as the Israelis want”, an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. He said the United States is emphasizing diplomacy and “de-escalation”.

In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had spoken to Netanyahu and Egypt’s Mursi, stressing to the Israeli leader that Israel had a right to self-defense and that a ceasefire must be agreed as soon as possible to avoid more bloodshed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt next week to push for an end to the fighting in Gaza, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

The Israeli military said 492 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since the operation began. Iron Dome intercepted another 245.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

Some families in Gaza have abandoned their homes – some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets – and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv, Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Jeff Mason aboard Air Force One, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Crispian Balmer)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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