Israel hits Hamas government buildings, reservists mobilized

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the prime minister's office, after Israel's cabinet authorized the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists, preparing for a possible ground invasion.

Israeli planes shattered the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh - where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister - and struck the Interior Ministry.

Loud explosions regularly rocked the densely populated Palestinian territory, sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky. The occasional hiss of outgoing rocket fire showed Islamist militants were pursuing their defiance of the assault.

Despite the violence, Tunisia's foreign minister arrived in the coastal enclave on Saturday in a show of solidarity, denouncing the Israeli attacks as illegitimate and unacceptable.

Officials in Gaza said 41 Palestinians, among them 20 civilians including eight children and a pregnant woman, had been killed in Gaza since Israel began operations four days ago. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

Israel's military said its air force had hit at least 180 targets since midnight, including a police headquarters, government buildings, rocket launching squads and a Hamas training facility in the impoverished territory.

A three-storey house belonging to Hamas official Abu Hassan Salah was also hit and completely destroyed early on Saturday. Rescuers said at least 30 people were pulled from the rubble.

"What Israel is doing is not legitimate and is not acceptable at all," Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem said as he visited Haniyeh's wrecked headquarters. "It does not have total immunity and is not above international law."

Israel launched a massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared aim of deterring Hamas from launching cross-border rocket salvoes that have plagued southern Israel for years.

The Palestinians have fired hundreds of rockets out of Gaza, including one at Jerusalem and three at Tel Aviv - Israel's commercial centre. Jerusalem had not been targeted in such a way since 1970, and Tel Aviv since 1991.

Although there were no reports of casualties or damage in either city, the long-range attacks came as a shock and advanced the prospect of an Israeli ground invasion into Gaza

"This will last as long as is needed; we have not limited ourselves in means or in time," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel's Channel One television on Saturday.

Hamas says it is committed to continued confrontation with Israel and is eager not to seem any less resolute than smaller, more radical groups that have emerged in Gaza in recent years.

The Islamist Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007. Israel pulled settlers out of Gaza in 2005 but has maintained a blockade of the territory.

EGYPTIAN PEACE EFFORTS

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a four-hour strategy session late on Friday with a clutch of senior ministers on widening the military campaign, while other cabinet members were polled by telephone on increasing mobilization.

Political sources said they decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000. It did not necessarily mean all would be called up.

Three soldiers were lightly hurt by fire from the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the army said.

Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil paid a high-profile visit to Gaza on Friday, denouncing what he described as Israeli aggression and saying Cairo was prepared to mediate a ceasefire.

Egypt's Islamist government, which took power after free elections following an uprising that ousted veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak, is allied with Hamas but also party to a 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

"Egypt will spare no effort ... to stop the aggression and to achieve a truce," Kandil said.

A Palestinian official with knowledge of Cairo's mediation efforts said on Saturday that Egypt was pursuing a truce.

"Egyptian mediators are continuing their mediation efforts and these will intensify in the coming hours," he told Reuters.

In a further sign Netanyahu might be clearing the way for a ground operation, Israel's armed forces decreed a highway leading to the territory and two roads bordering the enclave of 1.7 million Palestinians off-limits to civilian traffic.

Tanks and self-propelled guns were seen near the sandy border zone on Saturday, and around 16,000 reservists have already been called to active duty.

The Israeli military said some 367 rockets fired from Gaza had hit Israel since Wednesday and at least 222 more were intercepted by its Iron Dome anti-missile system.

Four Iron Domes were deployed initially and a fifth was rushed into action on Saturday, weeks ahead of schedule. The army said it was placed in the Tel Aviv area, showing Israel's concern for the safety of its heavily populated coastline.

Netanyahu is favored to win a January election, but further rocket strikes against Tel Aviv, a free-wheeling city Israelis equate with New York, and Jerusalem, which Israel regards as its capital, could be political poison for the conservative leader.

OBAMA REGRET

U.S. President Barack Obama commended Egypt's efforts to help calm the Gaza violence in a call to Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi on Friday, the White House said, and underscored his hope of restoring stability.

In a call with Netanyahu, Obama discussed options for "de-escalating" the situation, the White House added.

Obama "reiterated U.S. support for Israel's right to defend itself, and expressed regret over the loss of Israeli and Palestinian civilian lives," a statement on the call said.

Israel Radio's military affairs correspondent said the army's Homefront Command had told municipal officials to make civil defense preparations for the possibility that fighting could drag on for seven weeks. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.

The Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolutions and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread across borders.

"Israel should understand that many things have changed and that lots of water has run in the Arab river," Tunisia's Abdesslem told reporters in Gaza.

It is the stiffest challenge yet for Mursi, a veteran politician from the Muslim Brotherhood who was elected this year after protests ended Mubarak's 30-year rule in 2011.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood are spiritual mentors of Hamas, yet Mursi has also pledged to respect Cairo's peace accord with Israel, which is seen in the West as the foundation of regional security. Egypt and Israel both receive billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to underwrite their treaty.

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 2008-2009, killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

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.

Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. By contrast, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules in the nearby West Bank, does recognize Israel, but peace talks between the two sides have been frozen since 2010.

Abbas' supporters say they will push ahead with a plan to have Palestine declared an "observer state" rather than a mere "entity", at the United Nations later this month.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Writing by Crispian Balmer and Jeffrey Heller; Editing by)

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Investments stay strong despite Singapore's slowdown

PHNOM PENH: Singapore's Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang has said the pipeline of investments coming into Singapore continues to remain strong.

He made the point to the Singapore media on the sidelines of the ASEAN Economic Ministers meeting in Cambodia, a day after the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) released the country's latest economic numbers.

MTI has forecast that Singapore's GDP growth for 2012 would be around 1.5 percent.

There are two key reasons for Singapore's economic growth slowing down, said Mr Lim.

First is the external condition, when growth is slowing down in Singapore's big trading partners like the US, Europe and Japan.

On the domestic side, Singapore is undertaking a major restructuring process like the tightening of foreign labour.

Despite these situations, Mr Lim said Singapore's investment targets are on track.

He added that the country also sets very high hurdles for investments in terms of value-add, and the number and types of jobs which the investments will create.

Mr Lim said there have been instances when some investment proposals had to be turned down.

"So if the investments don't meet these hurdle rates we can't give them land, and if they don't have the land, they can't invest in Singapore," he said. "We have to be very stringent and even with this very high hurdle rate we have this strong pipeline of investments."

Mr Lim went on to say: "You can look at it from the positive side or you can look at it from the negative side.

"From the positive side, the strong investment flow means good jobs created. On the negative side, it means greater pain in restructuring.

"As Singaporeans go for these better jobs, those jobs which are lower paying and less value-add will find that they cannot continue in Singapore.

"EDB is very confident that the pipeline of investments coming in continues to be strong. So the rest of the investing world looks upon Singapore very positively. We have a very strong story to tell, our own ecosystem is very competitive, we have the right regulatory framework."

Despite these positive outcomes for Singapore, what are the possibilities of the country entering a technical recession this year?

"It may come, there is no way we can predict. When we give the range of around 1.5 percent growth for this year, at the low end, it involves a technical recession," said Mr Lim.

But the minister stressed that there are bigger challenges in managing the Singapore economy and these include making sure unemployment is low and that Singapore continues to be competitive.

- CNA/ir

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Bal Thackeray's parochial brand of politics

The pall of gloom, tinged with fear, which has enveloped Mumbai because of Bal Thackeray's illness may be a measure of the Shiv Sena chief's political clout but can hardly be regarded as a tribute since it underlines his parochial brand of politics.

Thackeray is the first of the regional leaders who came to the fore in the 1960s as the Congress began to decline. But unlike leaders like C.N. Annadurai in the DMK or Parkash Singh Badal in the Akali Dal, who tried to outgrow their image of being concerned solely with Tamil Nadu or Punjab, Thackeray is unapologetic about his sectarian outlook being restricted only to Maharashtra.

Not only that. His influence is confined mainly to Marathis - and that, too, the illiberal sections - rather than to the other communities living in the state. There is little doubt that this constricted vision is the outcome of the line pursued by his father, Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, who was involved in the Samyukta or united Maharashtra movement for the division of the state of Bombay into Maharashtra and Gujarat.

The linguistic parochialism, which led to the formation of Maharashtra in 1960, subsequently mutated into various forms of sectarianism, whose focus changed from anti-Gujarati to anti-"Madrasi" or south Indian when Thackeray constituted the Shiv Sena in 1966 to propagate an aggressive version of Marathi sub-nationalism. With the rise of the Hindutva movement in the 1990s, the Shiv Sena switched its attention from Madrasis to Muslims and claimed credit for the demolition of the Babri Masjid on Dec 6, 1992. More recently, north Indians, mainly Biharis, have been the target of such chauvinistic campaigns.

What this obsessive parochialism, which has been accepted as a creed by Balasaheb's son Uddhav and nephew Raj, means is that Thackeray has never acquired the kind of political respectability which other provincial leaders like the DMK's M. Karunanidhi or the AIADMK's J. Jayalalitha have secured, enabling them to forge alliances with pan-Indian parties. As far as the Shiv Sena is concerned, however, only the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with its pro-Hindu agenda, has been willing to align with it. No other party, and especially the secular ones, will touch it with a barge pole. What is more, the recent offensive against Biharis, mainly by Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) but with the Shiv Sena's tacit approval, has compelled even the BJP to be wary of Thackeray because the BJP's base is in northern India.

Thackeray, however, seems to revel in his isolation. It makes him stand out just as his admiration for Hitler does as someone who is not bothered about being politically correct. It also marks him out as a person who never minces his words. On the contrary, the sharpness of his comments, which the sober-minded may find jarring, apparently touches a chord among large sections of Marathis, and also anti-Muslim and anti-Congress elements outside, if only because their directness is in contrast to the mealy-mouthed insincerity of the average politician.

True, this pugnacity makes him feared rather than loved, but Thackeray appears to have made up his mind to play a role different from that of other politicians, all of whom try to widen their base.

It is noteworthy that in a country where even the so-called national parties have become regional because of the restriction of their influence to particular areas, the Shiv Sena's narrow focus on a section of Hindu Marathis makes it one of a kind - and not an outfit which is likely to be widely emulated. While it is customary for Bollywood to show politicians as cynical and untrustworthy, films which hint at portraying the Thackeray family show them as mafia dons.

What is noteworthy about the family is that it hasn't shown the slightest interest in breaking out of its parochial mould. From the patriarch Keshav Sitaram, who was known as Prabodhanker for bringing out the magazine Prabodhan (Enlighten), to his great grandson Aditya, who is Uddhav's son, the family is happy to hold on to its sectarian niche. The role that Aditya played, for instance, in ensuring the scrapping of Rohinton Mistry's book "Such A Long Journey", with its unflattering observations about Marathi chauvinists, from the Bombay University syllabus, showed that he is very much a chip of the old block.

The insularity of the clan has not however come in the way of a split, with Raj Thackeray forming his own outfit. The effect has been politically harmful for the family because of the division of the Marathi votes between them to the benefit of the Congress. Hence the belief that the latter prefers to prop up Raj - like keeping the police away from his unruly cadres, for instance - so that the MNS can cut into the Shiv Sena's votes. But both the outfits have retained their intimidating presence on the streets.

Balasaheb has acquired greater fame, or notoriety, than his father, Keshav Sitaram, who was hardly known outside western India. Till now, however, neither Uddhav nor Raj has shown a capacity to outshine him.

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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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Israel Targets Hamas Headquarters

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Israel's Air Force reduced the headquarters of the militant group Hamas to rubble. It was one of several Hamas buildings and homes targeted, part of Israel's continuing effort to destroy the group's command and control structure as speculation mounts over an Israeli ground invasion.

The Israel Defense Forces released aerial drone video of the attack on the government building, the seat of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Hanniyeh. Israeli warplanes have also struck the main police station, the interior ministry and the homes of top Hamas leaders.

As of Saturday morning, almost 900 "terror sites" had been targeted by Israel, including weapons caches and rocket launching sites. Around 600 rockets have been fired into Israel by Hamas and other militant groups, around a third of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, according to the Israeli military.

The loud thud of Israeli missiles hitting Gaza and the buzz of drones overhead were consistent on Saturday, as Israeli tanks and troops massed on the border in preparation of a ground invasion. Israeli media also reported that 20,000 reservists have been called up.

PHOTOS: Airstrikes and Rocket Attacks Continue

"We are preparing for any possibility, a ground invasion is a possibility although it hasn't been decided at this point," said IDF spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Liebovich. "We are ready to continue this operation "Pillar of Defense "until the peace and quiet and normality will return."

Israel Showdown: Tel Aviv Braces for More Rocket Attacks Watch Video

On Friday, Jerusalem was targeted for the first time in this escalation by militants in Gaza. A rocket landed around ten miles south near the West Bank Israeli settlements of Gush Etzion. And for the second day, sirens sounded in Tel Aviv as a rocket landed off the coast.

Three Israelis were killed Thursday by a rocket attack in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi. As of Saturday morning 39 Palestinians had been killed, among them more than half were civilians, according to Gaza health officials.

"Up until now we can say the situation is stable," Dr. Ayman al-Sahbani, the head of the emergency unit at Gaza's main al-Shifa hospital, said on Friday. "If it continues, we can't [cope]. Of course we can't. We hope to stop the [Israeli] aggression."

Israel's Iron Dome Proves Effective

Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil visited the strip for three hours Friday morning, raising hope a ceasefire would be brokered. Qandil and the Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, are both from the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot. They have the delicate task of trying to coordinate between Hamas, Israel and the United States.

"What I am witnessing in Gaza is a disaster and I can't keep quiet," Qandil said, "The Israeli aggression must stop."
Israel says this operation, dubbed "Pillar of Defense," is the result of the rockets that regularly fly into southern Israel from Gaza. This operation started when Israel assassinated the top commander of Hamas' military wing, Ahmed Jabari.

"As long as Israel keeps killing us, we will keep defending ourselves by any means possible," the spokesman of Islamic Jihad, Daoud Shahab said in an interview. "If Israel stops its aggression, we are ready to stop firing the rockets."

In Washington, the Obama administration reiterated its view that Israel has the right to defend itself.

"It's a matter of the international community and particularly regional states with influence to do what they can to make clear to Hamas that this is not benefiting the cause of the Palestinian people, and it's certainly not benefiting the cause of regional stability," said State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland.

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