In brief: U.S. offers to broker peace between Israel, Hamas to end rocket attacks
Washington – President Barack Obama offered the help of the United States on Thursday in negotiating a cease-fire to end escalating violence between Israel and Hamas, as world leaders warned of an urgent need to avoid another Israeli-Palestinian war that could engulf the fragile region.
In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama lent his support to Israel’s efforts to defend itself against an onslaught of rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, but he also called on both Israel and the Palestinians to protect civilians and restore calm. The White House said the U.S. was willing to “facilitate a cessation of hostilities,” potentially along the lines of a 2012 cease-fire that the U.S. helped broker.
More than 85 people have been killed since Israel began an offensive on Tuesday against the Hamas militant group in Gaza. The offensive aims to put an end to unrelenting rocket fire from Gaza that has reached ever deeper into the Jewish state amid spiraling tensions over the killing of three Israeli teenagers and the apparent revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager.
Suspicious activity reports challenged
Washington – Five California men who say they came under police scrutiny for innocent behavior sued the Obama administration Thursday over an information-sharing program designed by the federal government to help flag potential terrorist activity in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The men, including an accountant and a photographer of public art, say law enforcement produced “suspicious activity reports” on them even though they had done nothing wrong.
One plaintiff, an accountant of Egyptian descent, said a “suspicious activity report” was filed about him after he tried to make a bulk computer purchase for work from Best Buy.
The lawsuit filed in San Francisco challenges the legality of the federally designed Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative.
Selective Service not seeking the elderly
No, the United States isn’t trying to build a military force of centenarians.
It just seems that way after the Selective Service System mistakenly sent notices to more than 14,000 Pennsylvania men born between 1893 and 1897, ordering them to register for the nation’s military draft and warning that failure to do so is “punishable by a fine and imprisonment.”
The agency realized the error when it began receiving calls from bewildered relatives last week.
The glitch, it turns out, originated with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation during a transfer of nearly 400,000 records to the Selective Service. A clerk working with the state’s database failed to select the century, producing records for males born between 1993 and 1997 – and for those born a century earlier.