Gaza Clash Escalates With Deadliest Israeli Strike

Bernat Armangue/Associated Press

Smoke rose over Gaza City on Sunday, as Israel widened its range of targets to include buildings used by the news media.

CAIRO — Emboldened by the rising power of Islamists around the region, the Palestinian militant group Hamas demanded new Israeli concessions to its security and autonomy before it halts its rocket attacks on Israel, even as the conflict took an increasing toll on Sunday.

After five days of punishing Israeli airstrikes on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and no letup in the rocket fire in return, representatives of Israel and Hamas met separately with Egyptian officials in Cairo on Sunday for indirect talks about a truce.

The talks came as an Israeli bomb struck a house in Gaza on Sunday afternoon, killing 11 people, in the deadliest single strike since the conflict between Israel and Hamas escalated on Wednesday. The strike, along with several others that killed civilians across the Gaza Strip, signaled that Israel was broadening its range of targets on the fifth day of the campaign.

By the end of the day, Gaza health officials reported that 70 Palestinians had been killed in airstrikes since Wednesday, including 20 children, and that 600 had been wounded. Three Israelis have been killed and at least 79 wounded by unrelenting rocket fire out of Gaza into southern Israel and as far north as Tel Aviv.

Hamas, badly outgunned on the battlefield, appeared to be trying to exploit its increased political clout with its ideological allies in Egypt’s new Islamist-led government. The group’s leaders, rejecting Israel’s call for an immediate end to the rocket attacks, have instead laid down sweeping demands that would put Hamas in a stronger position than when the conflict began: an end to Israel’s five-year-old embargo of the Gaza Strip, a pledge by Israel not to attack again and multinational guarantees that Israel would abide by its commitments.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel stuck to his demand that all rocket fire cease before the air campaign lets up, and Israeli tanks and troops remained lined up outside Gaza on Sunday. Tens of thousands of reserve troops had been called up. “The army is prepared to significantly expand the operation,” Mr. Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.

Reda Fahmy, a member of Egypt’s upper house of Parliament and of the nation’s dominant Islamist party, who is following the talks, said Hamas’s position was just as unequivocal. “Hamas has one clear and specific demand: for the siege to be completely lifted from Gaza,” he said. “It’s not reasonable that every now and then Israel decides to level Gaza to the ground, and then we decide to sit down and talk about it after it is done. On the Israeli part, they want to stop the missiles from one side. How is that?”

He added: “If they stop the aircraft from shooting, Hamas will then stop its missiles. But violence couldn’t be stopped from one side.”

Hamas’s aggressive stance in the cease-fire talks is the first test of the group’s belief that the Arab Spring and the rise in Islamist influence around the region have strengthened its political hand, both against Israel and against Hamas’s Palestinian rivals, who now control the West Bank with Western backing.

It also puts intense new pressure on President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was known for his fiery speeches defending Hamas and denouncing Israel. Mr. Morsi must now balance the conflicting demands of an Egyptian public that is deeply sympathetic to Hamas and the Palestinian cause against Western pleadings to help broker a peace and Egypt’s need for regional stability to help revive its moribund economy.

Indeed, the Egyptian-led cease-fire talks illustrate the diverging paths of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, a Palestinian offshoot of the original Egyptian Islamist group. Hamas has evolved into a more militant insurgency and is labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel, while the Brotherhood has effectively become Egypt’s ruling party. Mr. Fahmy said in an interview in March that the Brotherhood’s new responsibilities required a step back from its ideological cousins in Hamas, and even a new push to persuade the group to compromise.

Reporting was contributed by Ethan Bronner, Irit Pazner Garshowitz and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, and Peter Baker from Bangkok.

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Cisco to buy cloud-networking start-up Meraki for $1.2 billion

(Reuters) – Networking equipment company Cisco Systems Inc said it will buy privately held cloud networking company Meraki for $ 1.2 billion in cash as part of its cloud and networking strategy.

Cisco said the acquisition of Meraki, which was founded in 2006 by members of MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science, is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco’s 2013 fiscal year and is subject to regulatory approval.

Cisco’s second quarter runs until the end of January.

Meraki – funded by Sequoia Capital and Google Inc – offers Wi-Fi technology, switching, security and mobile device management from the cloud with a focus on mid-sized businesses.

“This is a very logical move for Cisco,” said ZK research analyst Zeus Kerravala.

He said the deal will allow Cisco to offer alternative solutions to traditional Wi-Fi deployment models like smaller competitors, such as Aruba Networks and Ruckus Wireless, which debuted on Friday.

“Cisco didn’t really have anything to counter that before,” Kerravala noted.

Meraki’s Chief Executive Sanjit Biswas said in a letter to employees posted on the company website that Cisco had approached the company several weeks ago.

The company’s founders had at first rejected the offer in favor of continuing Meraki’s strategy aimed at an initial public listing.

“After several weeks of consideration, we decided late last week that joining Cisco was the right path for Meraki,” Biswas said.

He also said that Meraki had achieved a $ 100 million bookings run rate, grown to 330 employees and had a positive cash flow.

(Reporting by Nicola Leske, editing by Gary Crosse)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Justin Bieber Brings His Mom to the American Music Awards

By Maggie Coughlan

11/18/2012 at 09:35 PM EST

Pattie Mallette and Justin Bieber

Jonathan Alcorn/Reuters/Landov

Mother knows best!

Despite his recent split from Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber still had a date for the 40th American Music Awards on Sunday: his mother, Pattie Mallette.

Malette – who recently penned Nowhere But Up: The Story of Justin Bieber's Mom – looked thrilled to pose for photographs with her son.

When Bieber won the first award of the night, for favorite pop/rock male artist, his proud mother, 38, beamed.

"I want to say this is for all the haters who thought I was just here for one or two years. I feel like I'm going to be here for a very long time," the singer said as he accepted the award.

The award was a highlight during a rocky week for Bieber, who on Friday reunited with Gomez, 20, for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles. But just five minutes after entering the restaurant, the couple emerged with Gomez looking visibly "mad," says a source.

Later that night, Bieber Tweeted "Things aren't always easy. there is a lot of pressure. im figuring it all out. im trying. but i care, i notice, i still hear u. #Beliebers."

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

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Sikh religion joining California universities' curriculum

SANTA CRUZ — The first slide professor Nirvikar Singh flashed on his PowerPoint showed the faces of six Sikh worshipers gunned down the previous month in Oak Creek, Wis., by a man with white supremacist ties.

As after other attacks since 9/11, the UC Santa Cruz professor explained to students in this fall introductory course, the Wisconsin shooting revealed an abiding ignorance over who Sikhs are — and aren't.

"Despite being in this country for more than 100 years, I think Sikhs are not well understood," said Singh, a 58-year-old economist, dressed in jeans and a midnight blue turban.

Singh holds the university's nascent chair in Sikh and Punjabi studies — the fourth of its kind in California and part of a broader movement to spread the word about the world's fifth-largest religion while promoting scholarship.

For students like David Villalobos, the course offered a chance "to get to know a culture I know nothing about." Guneet Kaur, who along with about a third of Singh's three dozen students is of Sikh heritage, craved the perspective of non-Sikhs and a "sounding board" on the Oak Creek temple massacre.

Like those at UC Santa Barbara, UC Riverside and Cal State East Bay, the program was launched with an endowment from a Sikh family honoring a relative. It comes at a time of promising developments in the community's struggle for exposure.

Efforts to include basics on Sikh history, religion and political struggle in California's K-12 curriculum are moving forward after years of delay. Embracing a legislative declaration of November as "California Sikh Awareness and Appreciation Month," Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has recommended instructional materials and attended outreach events.

Meanwhile, California is enacting the nation's strongest workplace religious freedom law, barring employers from rejecting religious accommodation unless they can prove doing so would impose "significant difficulty or expense." Sponsored by the nonprofit Sikh Coalition, it is expected to loosen prohibitions on such Sikh articles of faith as unshorn hair and carrying a kirpan — a small sword that represents self-reliance and readiness to defend the oppressed.

The changes come as Stockton's gurdwara — the oldest and for decades only Sikh temple in the United States — celebrates its centennial and as statewide conferences on Sikh history, religion, art and music proliferate.

"The tide is turning," said Bruce La Brack, a professor emeritus in cultural anthropology at Stockton's University of the Pacific, who began studying California Sikhs in Yuba City nearly 40 years ago.

::

Rooted in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, Sikhism was founded by the 15th century Guru Nanak on tenets of monotheism, egalitarianism and community service.

The tenth and final guru, Gobind Singh, deemed the Sikh sacred scripture to be his eternal successor, and the voluminous text known as the Guru Granth Sahib became the focus of religious life.

In the late 19th century, Sikhs first migrated to British Columbia and then California, where men worked the railroads before turning to peach and almond farming. Discrimination and misconception were ever present.

Today there are an estimated 600,000 Sikhs in the United States, about 250,000 in California, said La Brack. The largest community is in the Bay Area, where Sikhs have thrived in Silicon Valley and built six gurdwaras — among them a $20-million facility in San Jose that accommodates 10,000 worshipers.

Although most Sikhs focused on faith and family, an entrepreneur known as the father of fiber optics launched the philanthropic Sikh Foundation in Palo Alto in 1967 to broadly promote Sikh culture. By 1999, Narinder Singh Kapany had dedicated a gallery of Sikh works at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and endowed the first university chair, at UC Santa Barbara.

"I felt that the Sikh culture needed to be understood in the U.S., and also by the Sikh youth," he said in a recent interview.

Kapany, 85, matched donors with three more California universities. The endowment for the Santa Cruz chair, launched last year, came from a San Antonio family in honor of their son, Sarabjit Singh Aurora, an engineer who had died of cancer.

"He was always very keen to educate kids in the schools about Sikhism," said his sister, Arvinder Kaur Aurora, 42.

The need for mainstream education, she and others note, became more pronounced after 9/11. Mistaken for Muslims because of their turbans, Sikhs were targeted. Among them was an Arizona gas station attendant killed by a self-proclaimed "patriot" who had vowed to shoot some "towel heads."

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Russia Looks Askance at Corruption Drive

MOSCOW — Ripples of scandal are spreading in Russia’s Far East, where, auditors say, $472 million in construction financing was misallocated ahead of a government summit meeting. About $200 million in missing funds have led to firings in Russia’s space industry. And corruption in the Defense Ministry has figured prominently in Russia’s news cycles since Nov. 6, leaving the fate of its former minister uncertain.

In the past, President Vladimir V. Putin has always been reluctant to expel or prosecute high-level officials, despite widespread complaints about corruption. So the mushrooming scandals are unusual, raising questions about what has changed.

There is little doubt that the Kremlin has been battered by opposition campaigns highlighting official corruption. Political strategists, searching for ideas powerful enough to consolidate the country around Mr. Putin, may seize on fighting corruption as a Kremlin effort, and recent steps hint at a populist push to expose and punish guilty officials.

“A tough, uncompromising battle with corruption has begun,” announced Arkady Mamontov, a pro-government television host, in a much-hyped documentary titled “Corruption” that, though it was broadcast close to midnight on Tuesday, attracted nearly 20 percent of the television audience. “In the course of the next months, we will see many interesting things. The main thing is that we should not stand aside and watch what is happening, but take an active part in it.”

Political observers have watched the anticorruption drive curiously, debating where it might be headed, and especially whether, for the first time since Mr. Putin came to power, high-ranking officials would face prosecution. On Monday, the newspaper Vedomosti declared that Moscow was witnessing the beginning of a “cleansing of the elite” — a flushing out of a political system that lacks other mechanisms of renewal, like competitive elections. Others were skeptical that the effort would reach beyond midlevel officials.

“It cannot become an overall ideology, because Putin’s system is dependent on corruption — on corruption as a form of management and a guarantee of loyalty from officials,” said Aleksei Navalny, a blogger and anticorruption activist. “They will not kick out from under themselves the stool that they are standing on.”

Last week, it seemed the Kremlin had not decided how far to take its anticorruption drive. On Wednesday, Russian news agencies reported that the highest-level official to be implicated — the former defense minister Anatoly E. Serdyukov — had been offered a comfortable new job as an adviser to the director of Rostekhnologii, a company that produces and exports high-tech equipment.

The news prompted waves of angry commentary from those who had hoped Mr. Serdyukov would be prosecuted, including Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov, who heads the Defense Committee in the lower house of Parliament.

“There is a signal in the navy that means ‘man overboard,’ ” he said. “We all thought the former minister had fallen overboard, and his fate would be sorrowful. But it turned out he was still inside the submarine.”

Others said it was more evidence that Mr. Putin does not give up his own. By way of commentary, the newspaper Kommersant posted a still from “The Godfather” in which the Mafia don embraced one of his lieutenants, along with a quotation: “Friendship is everything.”

Officials the next day denied that Mr. Serdyukov had been offered the job. Asked about the case at a news conference, Mr. Putin confirmed that, but said it would not be a problem if Mr. Serdyukov was given a new position, since he has not been formally accused of wrongdoing.

“There is a generally accepted practice that a person is innocent as long as a court has not proven his guilt,” he said. “If he wants to gain work anywhere, I don’t think that we should prevent that. He has the right to work.”

The Kremlin faces a dilemma in resolving Mr. Serdyukov’s case. Russians largely supported Mr. Serdyukov’s dismissal, and some speculated that the anticorruption effort was bolstering Mr. Putin’s approval ratings. The firing was particularly popular among prosperous urban males — a population that has turned away from Mr. Putin in recent years, and which he is no doubt eager to win back. But a prosecution would shine light on a deep and pervasive flaw of Mr. Putin’s system, with unpredictable consequences.

Mr. Navalny said he was “cautiously optimistic” that information about corruption had begun to emerge into public view, even if high-level officials were not punished.

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14 Black Friday Tech Deals Start Early at Walmart

1. Apple iPad 2 — 16GB

$ 399

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Top 10 Twitter Pics of the Week]

This year Walmart is starting Black Friday on Thursday, so you can get an early start on your holiday tech savings. You’ll need to gobble up your Thanksgiving dinner early and get over to Walmart; the company is kicking off in-store deals at 8 p.m. local time on Thanksgiving, when you can snag a Nintendo Wii Console for $ 89.

The big electronics event begins at 10 p.m. with deals on a Samsung 43-inch plasma TV and a NOOK Color. Don’t worry that they’ll run out of those door-buster deals either. Walmart is offering a one-hour guarantee on select consumer electronics during Thursday’s 10 p.m. event.

[More from Mashable: Stylish HiRise Stand Elevates Laptops to the Ideal Height]

Walmart says customers inside the store and in line between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. local time can purchase an Apple iPad 2 16GB with Wi-Fi for $ 399 and score a $ 75 Walmart gift card, an Emerson 32-inch 720p LCD TV for $ 148 and an LG Blu-ray Player for $ 38. If the store runs out of stock, you’ll receive a Guarantee Card for the item, which you must purchase by midnight and register online.

If shopping online from the comfort of your home is more appealing than elbowing your way through a jam-packed store, Black Friday specials will be posted on Walmart’s website early on Thanksgiving Day. Head to Walmart’s Facebook page or use its mobile app to check out all the deals.

Scroll through the gallery above to see the top 14 tech deals we spotted, and let us know if you’ll be out shopping the specials this Black Friday.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, el neato

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Taylor Swift and One Direction's Harry Styles: Are They Dating?

By Patrick Gomez

11/17/2012 at 10:40 PM EST

Taylor Swift and Harry Styles

Janet Mayer/Splash News Online; Don Arnold/Wireimage

Taylor Swift appears to be taking her love life in a new direction.

The "Never Ever Getting Back Together" singer is seemingly taking her lyrics to heart as she moves on from recent ex, Conor Kennedy, and enjoys the company of One Direction hottie Harry Styles.

"I had to literally do a double-take," an onlooker tells PEOPLE of finding Styles, 18, with Swift, 22, on the set of The X Factor Thursday morning.

Styles was on hand to watch Swift rehearse the debut of "State of Grace," which she performed later that night on the Fox reality show.

"He was smiling at her while she rehearsed. When she was done he jumped up on stage, picked her up, put her over his shoulder and carried her off stage," the onlooker says. "The whole crew was really surprised."

The young singers were also spotted by X Factor host Mario Lopez, who says he was slapped on the back by Styles during Swift's rehearsal.

"I said, 'What are you doing here,' " Lopez said on his 104.3 MY FM radio show Friday. "And he sort of [pointed] toward Taylor."

Lopez went on to say he later saw the two "hand-in-hand."

A telling sign of the budding relationship may have been a look Styles shared with his bandmate Niall Horan a week earlier after Horan told PEOPLE his favorite song of 2012 was Swift's "Never Ever Getting Back Together."

When asked if he would ever date Swift, Horan gave a small laugh, looked at Styles and answered with a succinct, "no."

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EU drug regulator OKs Novartis' meningitis B shot

LONDON (AP) — Europe's top drug regulator has recommended approval for the first vaccine against meningitis B, made by Novartis AG.

There are five types of bacterial meningitis. While vaccines exist to protect against the other four, none has previously been licensed for type B meningitis. In Europe, type B is the most common, causing 3,000 to 5,000 cases every year.

Meningitis mainly affects infants and children. It kills about 8 percent of patients and leaves others with lifelong consequences such as brain damage.

In a statement on Friday, Andrin Oswald of Novartis said he is "proud of the major advance" the company has made in developing its vaccine Bexsero. It is aimed at children over two months of age, and Novartis is hoping countries will include the shot among the routine ones for childhood diseases such as measles.

Novartis said the immunization has had side effects such as fever and redness at the injection site.

Recommendations from the European Medicines Agency are usually adopted by the European Commission. Novartis also is seeking to test the vaccine in the U.S.

Read More..

Signature gatherers duel over Riordan pension initiative

Bonnie Haviland is the kind of voter Los Angeles city workers are hoping will help them stop former Mayor Richard Riordan's push to switch new employees into 401(k)-type retirement plans from the current taxpayer-backed pensions.

The Tarzana grandmother thinks younger generations shouldn't have to worry about a retirement tied to the ups and downs of the stock market. That's why Haviland, 72, refused Saturday to sign a petition seeking to put Riordan's pension measure before voters next May.

"I'm already retired so I don't have to worry," she said outside of a Vons supermarket, where a paid signature gatherer calling himself "Ace" had asked her to sign Riordan's petition. "But I feel sorry for those who do."

Riordan is in the midst of gathering about 265,000 signatures to qualify a pension initiative for the May mayoral election. Changes are needed because pension costs are projected to continue rising even with recent changes made to retirement benefits by the City Council, Riordan has said.

The city faces a $216-million budget shortfall next year, due in part to ever-increasing pension costs, city budget managers say. Union leaders say starting a 401(k)-like plan would cost the city even more, at least initially.

Saturday was the kickoff of organized labor's attempt to derail the former mayor and multimillionaire businessman's initiative drive. After a morning rally, about 100 city union members fanned out to 7-Elevens, supermarkets and strip malls across Los Angeles to persuade voters not to sign Riordan's petition.

"When there's trash to be picked up, who comes to your house to do it? Even on the day after Christmas?" asked Aurora Wynnz, a community activist whom everyone calls "McGee." "They don't get Social Security. And Riordan wants them all to get 401(k)s. How has that worked out for you?"

Wynnz appeared to be having great success. One person after another signed a sheet asking the city clerk to cancel out their signature for Riordan's measure just in case they had signed the petition without really knowing what it was about.

Tracy "Love" Williams was one of them. Stopped by Ace outside Vons, he signed one petition to get a medical marijuana ordinance on the ballot, and then signed a second one that Ace presented to him, he said. When Wynnz explained what the Riordan initiative would do, Williams was upset that he had signed it.

"How do I know you're not lying too?" Williams asked. After some more persuasion, he took the clipboard. "OK, I'll sign this too."

Jason Elias, a union spokesman, said overall activity was light Saturday, probably because of the wet weather.

Elias said that one of his members was pushed by a signature gatherer outside an Eagle Rock Trader Joe's and that he was spit on by the same man at another store. Union members were told not to be confrontational with the petition gatherers but to make a counter argument to voters being approached, he said.

The union didn't call the police, he said, because the man left. "We got what we wanted — he wasn't able to get any more signatures at that store."

John Schwada, a Riordan spokesman, said city workers can best protect their retirement benefits by joining the former mayor's movement. The current taxpayer-backed pension system is outdated and could bankrupt the city unless serious changes are made, he said.

"All the people of Los Angeles deserve an opportunity to vote on an issue of such great importance to the city's future," Riordan said in a statement.

catherine.saillant@latimes.com

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