Palestinian Civilian Toll Climbs in Gaza

The Palestinian civilian death toll mounted Monday as Israeli aircraft struck densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip in a campaign to quell militant rocket fire menacing nearly half of Israel's population.

An overnight airstrike on two houses belonging to an extended clan in Gaza City killed two children and two adults, and injured 42 people, said Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra.

Shortly after, Israeli aircraft bombarded the remains of the former national security compound in Gaza City. Flying shrapnel killed one child and wounded others living nearby, al-Kidra said. Five farmers were killed in two separate strikes, al-Kidra said, including three who had been identified earlier by Hamas security officials as Islamic Jihad fighters.

Civilian casualties began to shoot up on Sunday, after Israel said it was stepping up attacks on the homes of suspected Hamas activists. After that warning, an Israeli missile flatted a two-story house in a residential area of Gaza City, killing at least 11 civilians, most of them women and children.

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It remained unclear who the target of that missile attack was. However, the new tactic ushered in a new and risky phase of the operation, given the likelihood of civilian casualties in the crowded territory of 1.6 million Palestinians. The rising civilian toll was also likely to intensify pressure on Israel to end the fighting. Hundreds of civilian casualties in an Israeli offensive in Gaza four years ago led to fierce international condemnation of Israel.

In all, 87 Palestinians, including 50 civilians, have been killed in the six-day onslaught and 720 have been wounded.

Three Israeli civilians have died from Palestinian rocket fire and dozens have been wounded. An Israeli rocket-defense system has intercepted hundreds of rockets bound for populated areas.

Monday's air assault in Gaza City reduced two houses to rubble on either side of a street where residents stepped over piles of cinderblocks and twisted metal. Relatives said Ahed Kitati, 38, had rushed out after a warning missile was fired to try to hustle people to safety. But he was fatally struck by a falling cinderblock, leaving behind a pregnant wife, five young daughters and a son, they said.

One of his daughters, Aya Kitati, clutched a black jacket, saying she was freezing, even though the weather was mild. "We were sleeping, and then we heard the sound of the bombs," she said in a whisper, then broke down sobbing.

Ahed's brother, Jawad Kitati, said he plucked the lifeless body of a 2-year-old relative from the street and carried him to an ambulance. Blood stains smeared his jacket sleeve.

Another clan member, Haitham Abu Zour, 24, woke up to the sound of the warning strike and hid in a stairwell. He emerged to find his wife dead and his two infant children buried under the debris, but safe.

Clan elder Mohammed Azzam, 61, denied that anyone in his family had any connections to Hamas.

"The Jews are liars," he said. "No matter how much they pressure our people, we will not withdraw our support for Hamas."

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Petraeus scandal puts four-star general lifestyle under scrutiny

Then-defense secretary Robert M. Gates stopped bagging his leaves when he moved into a small Washington military enclave in 2007. His next-door neighbor was Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, who had a chef, a personal valet and — not lost on Gates — troops to tend his property.

Gates may have been the civilian leader of the world’s largest military, but his position did not come with household staff. So, he often joked, he disposed of his leaves by blowing them onto the chairman’s lawn.

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The staying power of "Gangnam Style"

SEOUL: President Obama, the mayor of London, China's top dissident artist and Madonna -- every time someone signals the death of "Gangnam Style", up pops another high-profile figure to keep the phenomenon alive.

In the four months since the music video by South Korean rapper Psy went viral on YouTube, it has been name-checked and imitated by an impressive roster of global notables from world leaders to sports stars and business tycoons.

And the public has joined in with tens of thousands turning out for giant flashmob performances of Psy's horse-riding dance in cities like Paris and Rome.

While many believe Gangnam Style will ultimately prove to be a one-hit wonder, the song has shown surprising staying power and an unlikely ability to penetrate international corridors of power.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called it a force for world peace. On the morning of the US presidential election, Barack Obama told a local radio station that he was confident he could match Psy's dance moves.

"But I'm not sure that the inauguration ball is the appropriate time to break that out. Maybe (I will) do it privately for Michelle," he said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson performed a joint Gangnam Style dance spectacular for their wives in September during a private gathering in the premier's country retreat Chequers.

Johnson went on to reference the event in his keynote speech to the ruling conservative party's annual conference.

If politicians have appropriated the song in an effort to boost their populist credentials, others have used it to drive home an anti-establishment message -- most notably renowned Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei.

Banned from traveling abroad, Ai posted a Gangnam Style dance parody on YouTube, during which he brandished a set of handcuffs in a clear reference to Beijing's efforts to silence his outspoken views.

The video was removed by China's Internet censors, prompting the Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor to gather 250 art world luminaries at his London studio this week to film their own Gangnam video in support of Ai.

"Yes, it is desperately silly, but what is the paradigm of the artist? The artist does stupid things with serious intent," Kapoor said.

Silly or not, Psy's influence has spread to some of the world's most famous academic institutions.

Earlier this month, the 34-year-old rapper was invited to follow the likes of Ronald Reagan and the Dalai Lama in addressing the 189-year-old Oxford Union club at Oxford University.

And a Gangnam Style video parody made by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, featured cameos by Eric Lander, one of the principle leaders of the Human Genome Project, and Noam Chomsky.

"Oppan Chomsky Style," the 83-year-old father of modern linguistics deadpanned into the camera while sipping a cup of coffee.

For some commentators, it has all become a bit too much.

"Can anyone kill Gangnam Style?" Britain's Guardian newspaper asked recently.

After Google chairman Eric Schmidt gave a rather awkward horse-riding performance during a visit to Seoul, Time magazine declared the Gangnam Style craze "officially over" -- but that was way back in September.

If anything, Psy has since gone from strength to strength -- gaining the ultimate showbiz accolade this week by performing a mash-up of Gangnam Style with pop icon Madonna during her concert at New York's Madison Square Garden.

- AFP/xq

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Bal Thackerey's funeral procession gets massive live TV coverage

NEW DELHI: At best, Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, who died in Mumbai Saturday, was a regional leader. But his charisma and the controversies he was involved in for nearly six decades brought his funeral procession the kind of massive live TV news coverage not witnessed for any other regional leader.

All the big guns of TV journalism were there to anchor the coverage of a funeral, which was nothing but a vicarious treat of a public spectacle for a Sunday audience.

All television channels competed with each other to give the best shot of the funeral procession of the leader who was the militant flag-bearer of Hindu nationalism and who did not hesitate to resort to mob tactics to have his will enforced. Thackeray was 86.

Since early morning, TV channels zoomed live footage of the procession that brought Mumbai to a standstill into the drawing rooms and bedrooms of tens and millions of TV viewers.

Interestingly, Times Now had seven camera crew covering the funeral process, while NDTV had at least three crew out in the field.

But his death deserved such a frenzy, said media watcher and Centre for Media Studies chairman N. Bhaskara Rao.

First and foremost, according to Rao, was the "emotional connect" that many in Mumbai have with the senior Thackeray, whose political journey began and ended with the megalopolis and for the Maharashtrian population of the country's financial capital.

"Thackeray had a distinct personality. He did not fall into the usual categories of politicians that we see in Delhi. He was far apart from all of them and was unambiguous in his political views. He had been in politics for long and has got entangled in many controversies. All these are a good story to tell at a time when he is no more," Rao told IANS.

For this reason alone, he "deserves" the kind of coverage he got, Rao said, noting that television channels have a lot of footage from all these years of his political life that they would like to flaunt at this hour.

"It is quite tempting for any TV channel to bring out those footage and show it to their viewers. This is one compulsion that the new media has," he noted.

Another reason Rao could cite was the day of the funeral being Sunday and not much pan-India news breaks happening on account of the weekly holiday.

"Mumbai is a big market for all the television channels. Anything big in such a market is big for the channels too," he added.

And last, but not the least, the political story that the demise of Thackeray has kicked up -- the future of his Shiv Sena itself under son Uddhav and if there is a possibility of merger with the breakaway Maharashtra Navnirman Sena of cousin Raj.

"All these factors and elements add up to a good, massive coverage. The funeral procession and the political message suits the television medium," Rao added.

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Lonesome George Not the Last of His Kind, After All?

The tide may be turning for the rare subspecies of giant tortoise thought to have gone extinct when its last known member, the beloved Lonesome George, died in June.

A new study by Yale University researchers reveals that DNA from George's ancestors lives on—and that more of his kind may still be alive in a remote area of Ecuador's Galápagos Islands.

This isn't the first time Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni has been revived: The massive reptiles were last seen in 1906 and considered extinct until the 1972 discovery of Lonesome George, then around 60 years old, on Pinta Island. The population had been wiped out by human settlers, who overharvested the tortoises for meat and introduced goats and pigs that destroyed the tortoises' habitat and much of the island's vegetation.

Now, in an area known as Volcano Wolf—on the secluded northern tip of Isabela, another Galápagos island—the researchers have identified 17 hybrid descendants of C.n. abingdoni within a population of 1,667 tortoises.

Genetic testing identified three males, nine females, and five juveniles (under the age of 20) with DNA from C.n. abingdoni. The presence of juveniles suggests that purebred specimens may exist on the island too, the researchers said.

"Even the parents of some of the older individuals may still be alive today, given that tortoises live for so long and that we detected high levels of ancestry in a few of these hybrids," Yale evolutionary biologist Danielle Edwards said.

(See pictures of Galápagos animals.)

Galápagos Castaways

How did Lonesome George's relatives end up some 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Pinta Island? Edwards said ocean currents, which would have carried the tortoises to other areas, had nothing to do with it. Instead, she thinks humans likely transported the animals.

Crews on 19th-century whaling and naval vessels hunted accessible islands like Pinta for oil and meat, carrying live tortoises back to their ships.

Tortoises can survive up to 12 months without food or water because of their slow metabolisms, making the creatures a useful source of meat to stave off scurvy on long sea voyages. But during naval conflicts, the giant tortoises—which weighed between 200 and 600 pounds (90 and 270 kilograms) each—were often thrown overboard to lighten the ship's load.

That could also explain why one of the Volcano Wolf tortoises contains DNA from the tortoise species Chelonoidis elephantopus, which is native to another island, as a previous study revealed. That species is also extinct in its native habitat, Floreana Island.

(Related: "No Lovin' for Lonesome George.")

Life After Extinction?

Giant tortoises are essential to the Galápagos Island ecosystem, Edwards said. They scatter soil and seeds, and their eating habits help maintain the population balance of woody vegetation and cacti. Now, scientists have another chance to save C.n. abingdoni and C. elephantopus.

With a grant from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, which also helped fund the current study, the researchers plan to return to Volcano Wolf's rugged countryside to collect hybrid tortoises—and purebreds, if the team can find them—and begin a captive-breeding program. (National Geographic News is part of the Society.)

If all goes well, both C.n. abingdoni and C. elephantopus may someday be restored to their wild homes in the Galápagos. (Learn more about the effort to revive the Floreana Galápagos tortoises.)

"The word 'extinction' signifies the point of no return," senior research scientist Adalgisa Caccone wrote in the team's grant proposal. "Yet new technology can sometimes provide hope in challenging the irrevocable nature of this concept."

More: "Galápagos Expedition Journal: Face to Face With Giant Tortoises" >>

The new Lonesome George study was published by the journal Biological Conservation.

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Israel's Iron Dome Proves Effective Defense

Israel said that it will install a fifth "Iron Dome" battery before the end of the year, adding another installation to the country's missile defense system, which has proven itself this week, intercepting more than 150 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip.

The missile defense system, which can identify enemy rockets, determine if they pose a threat to populated areas, and destroy them within a matter of seconds, has been praised by Israel's leaders for saving hundreds of lives.

The system, however, comes with a steep price. Each interceptor missile, which includes a radar guidance system, costs $40,000. Israel has not disclosed how many missiles are required to take down an enemy rocket or how many interceptors it has fired, but experts estimate the country has fired $8 million worth of missiles in the past three days.

The Israelis are only trying to shoot down about a third of the rockets fired by militants, those on a trajectory towards populated areas, said Ben Goodlad, a senior aerospace and defense analyst at IHS Jane's. But of the rockets Iron Dome has targeted, the system is between 87 and 90 percent successful in destroying.

"That is an incredibly high success rate for the system," he said. "What isn't clear is how many interceptor missiles are fired. There may be two, three, or four fired at a one time to take down a rocket."

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Palestinian militants working out of the Gaza Strip, a ribbon of coastline controlled by Hamas, have for years been stockpiling short- and medium-range rockets, built at a fraction of the cost of the Iron Dome missiles and then stored in highly populated areas near hospitals and schools.

Hamas is considered by the U.S. and Europe Union as a terrorist organization.

Militants this week fired rockets further into Israel than ever before, targeting the country's two largest cities, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but there were no casualties in those cities. Three Israelis were killed by rockets elsewhere in Israel.

"We are very pleased with the interception rates," aerial defense commander Brig. Gen. Shachar Shochet told reporters on Thursday. "We have intercepted dozens of Grad and Qassam rockets fired by Hamas and other groups, and prevented serious harm to our civilians."

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the country the system had saved lives.

"No other country in the world has technology like the Iron Dome," Barak said. "Had the system not existed, many civilians would be in harm's way. However, the system is not a 100 percent foolproof defense, and does not absolve citizens of their duty to closely follow instructions given by Homefront Command."

The system is not perfect, and can be breeched by a large volley of rockets fired at once, a problem of "saturation," said former White House counterterrorism adviser and ABC News consultant Dick Clark.

Israel, therefore, plans to target the rocket stockpiles rather than continue to shoot down individual missiles. Israel has called up more than 60,000 reserve soldiers and appears to be planning a ground strike in Gaza soon.

Currently four mobile batteries equipped with sophisticated radar technology and missiles and on-board radar, are combined to create a shield over the country.

In 2006, 4,000 rockets were fired at Israel during a war with Lebanon that left 44 civilians dead. In response, the Israeli Defense Forces and Israeli defense manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems began developing Iron Dome.

In 2010, after tests proved effective, the United States began funding the program in part. Earlier this year, Congress authorized $600 million for the program, with instructions that the U.S. would eventually begin co-production of the system.

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