Violence escalates, no truce in sight
JERUSALEM, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Frenzied efforts to achieve a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas teetered Wednesday as officials met and a bomb exploded on a Tel Aviv bus.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was set to convene the nine-member ministerial forum to discuss terms for a truce. He was also expected to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a second time on her return from Ramallah where she met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. No details of the meeting were released.
An unnamed Israeli government official told Ynetnews.com "misunderstandings are withholding the cease-fire. It is not over until it is over. It is in the interest of Egypt, Hamas and Israel to end [the conflict] but there is nothing set yet," he said.
Initially a truce was to have been announced simultaneously in Jerusalem and Cairo on Tuesday night, but shortly before midnight, Netanyahu at a joint press conference with Clinton said discussions concerning a cease-fire were still ongoing.
On the ground, missiles fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza exploded in Beersheba, Be'er Tuviya, Ashdod, and Ashkelon and other Israeli communities surrounding Gaza. No injuries were reported but extensive damage was caused to property. In Tel Aviv, a bomb exploded aboard a bus, injuring 10 people.
The Israeli air force bombed terrorist targets in Gaza, including buildings, bridges, smuggling tunnels and rocket launching sites. Ma'an news agency said two Palestinians were killed in an airstrike in Khan Yunis earlier in the day.
2008 Mumbai attack gunman executed
PUNE, India, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, a Pakistani national under death sentence in India for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, was executed Wednesday, the government said.
In a brief announcement, the Indian Home Ministry said Indian President Pranab Mukherjee had rejected the clemency petition filed by Kasab, 24, on Nov. 5 and that the death sentence "was executed today at 7:30 a.m. at Yerawada Central Prison" in Pune, where he was taken from a jail in nearby Mumbai.
Last month the ministry rejected the clemency request and sent its report to Mukherjee for a final decision on whether to commute Kasab's death penalty.
Kasab was the lone survivor among 10 gunmen involved in the November 2008 attacks at various locations around Mumbai. The assault lasted three days and left 166 people, including foreigners, dead and more than 200 wounded. The other gunmen were killed by security forces during the siege.
Voting team may aid Obama on fiscal cliff
WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Obama campaign staff and technology could be used to press U.S. lawmakers to agree to the president's fiscal cliff position, campaign manager Jim Messina said.
"It would be very easy for supporters today to go and start asking people to call members of Congress," Messina said at a Washington event sponsored by Politico.
"I am sure you will see our supporters start doing that," he said.
Messina said a decision was not made yet, but if it is, the effort would include the re-election campaign's online organizing tool, called Dashboard.
"You could easily see people using Dashboard to say, 'OK, I want to talk about the choices ahead of us in the fiscal cliff [debate] and I want to start organizing my friends,'" he said.
"Dashboard would be very easy to start a group," he said. "We did over 350,000 events on Dashboard the last couple months of the campaign."
As part of his fiscal cliff proposal, President Barack Obama wants to let tax rates rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent on taxable incomes of more than $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples.
Black lawmakers see racism in Rice blame
WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Congress' highest-ranking black lawmaker says he suspects Republicans are pillorying U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice because she is black.
Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., and other black Democrats say they're especially upset Republicans continually use variations of the word "incompetent" to describe Rice, 48, a potential secretary of state nominee who was a Rhodes scholar, Clinton administration assistant secretary of state and Brookings Institution senior fellow. At Brookings she focused on U.S. foreign policy, weak and failing states, the implications of global poverty and transnational threats to security.
Republicans have harshly criticized her for more than two months for saying Sept. 16 the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, began as a "spontaneous reaction" to an anti-Islamic video widely disseminated throughout the Arab and Muslim world that had also set off protests elsewhere.
Later State Department accounts made no mention of a protest in the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Instead, they pointed to the extremist Ansar al-Sharia militia, as well as al-Qaida's North African arm, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
Pope: Donkey and ox in manger scene a myth
VATICAN CITY, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- The presence of a donkey and an ox in the Nativity scene in Bethlehem is a myth, Pope Benedict XVI says in his final book about Jesus, published Wednesday.
By contrast, the Christian doctrine of Jesus' virgin birth is certain, Benedict writes in "Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives," which examines the details and context of Jesus' birth found in the Gospels.
"There is no mention of animals in the Gospels," Benedict writes, explaining the inclusion of domestic animals in the manger scene may have been inspired by pre-Christian traditions.
But despite the fact that the animals are fictitious, "No one will give up the oxen and the donkey in their Nativity scenes," Benedict writes.
Indeed, animals appear in the Vatican's own Nativity scene in St. Peter's Square each year, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph said in quoting Benedict's book.
