Briefly
Boys killed while imitating militants
Jebaliya Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip An Israeli missile strike on Thursday killed two Palestinian teenagers who were playing with a tube and a gasoline-filled bottle in a game imitating militants firing rockets at Israel, relatives said.
The deaths brought to 84 the number of Palestinians killed since Israel began its offensive into northern Gaza on Sept. 29 after a rocket attack killed two Israeli children, according to a count by the Associated Press. More than half those killed were militants. Sixteen of the civilians were age 16 and under.
Throughout the raid, which Israel launched to prevent militants from firing homemade Qassam rockets at Israeli towns, Palestinian children have emulated the violence in a series of games, using pieces of wood to represent guns in games of “firefight” and holding simulated funerals.
On Thursday morning, an unmanned Israeli aircraft spotted two suspicious figures on the edge of the Jebaliya refugee camp as they set up a rocket launcher, the army said. The drone spotted a flash, the figures ran away, then returned to the launcher and were struck by the missile, the army said.
The badly disfigured bodies were identified by relatives as Suleiman Abu Foul, 14, and Raed Abu Zeid, 15.
According to Suleiman’s 19-year-old brother, Mohammed, friends said the two boys had been playing on the outskirts of Jebaliya, about 200 yards from an Israeli tank position, using an empty tube and gasoline-filled bottles to pretend to launch rockets at Israel.
Base-closure delay dropped from bill
Washington Congressional negotiators on Thursday dropped a House proposal to delay military base closings for two years as part of an agreement on a massive defense bill.
The House voted in May to put off the base closings from 2005 to 2007. A similar provision failed in the Senate, and the Bush administration threatened to veto the entire bill authorizing defense programs for the government spending year that began Oct. 1.
There have been four previous rounds of base closings from 1988 to 1995, in each case over the objections of lawmakers concerned about the economic losses a closure would bring to their districts.
The bill includes an across-the-board 3.5 percent pay raise for military personnel and expanded health care for reservists. It still must be approved by the House and Senate. Votes could come as early as today.
Lawmakers also formally rejected Boeing’s $23.5 billion bid to lease and sell 100 air tankers to the Air Force. Industry analysts said in May that the Pentagon had effectively killed the deal because of mounting controversy that it was tilted in Boeing’s favor.
New York reporter found in contempt
Washington A reporter for the New York Times was held in contempt Thursday by a federal judge and faces possible jail time for refusing to divulge confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer’s identity.
U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ordered reporter Judith Miller jailed until she agrees to testify about her sources before a grand jury, but said she could remain free while pursuing an appeal. Miller could be jailed up to 18 months.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago is investigating whether a crime was committed when someone leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose name was published by syndicated columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak cited two “senior administration officials” as his sources.
The Novak column appeared after Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was critical in a newspaper opinion piece of President Bush’s claim that Iraq sought to obtain uranium in Niger. The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to investigate that claim, which he concluded was unfounded.
Wilson has said he believes his wife’s name was leaked as payback for his outspokenness.
NASA may expand Mars rovers’ territory
Los Angeles NASA’s Mars rovers don’t seem to be wearing out, so mission planners have begun to think more boldly – including a plan to let one climb up a steep slope from a crater it has been exploring to set out across a plain.
“The rovers have lasted longer than expected, but as long as we have them we’re going to keep them busy,” project manager Jim Erickson said Thursday in a conference call with reporters.
Already on the second extension of their mission, rovers Spirit and Opportunity have lasted so long that mission scientists have left NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and returned to their own institutions, working via telephone and video conferences and remote networking.
The rovers are still capable of work, and controllers may even have Opportunity leave Endurance Crater soon via a 25- to 30-degree slope dubbed “escape hatch.”
The next target would require a 1 1/2 -mile trip across the smooth Meridiani plains to a place called “etched terrain,” where scientists believe they will find rocks exposed by the gentle erosion of wind, unlike the rocks they’ve found so far that were exposed by violent impact.
The rovers together have sent to Earth some 50,000 images, including a new 360-degree panorama from Spirit, looking back from its position in the hills.