Charlie Chaplin’s bowler hat and cane fetch over $60,000 at auction

NEW YORK (Reuters) – One of Charlie Chaplin’s bowler hats and a cane, the staple of Hollywood silent-era comedy, were auctioned for $ 62,500 on Sunday, said auction house Bonhams.

Chaplin’s hat and cane, which fetched more than the initial estimate of $ 40,000-60,000, are synonymous with his “Little Tramp” character in films such as “City Lights” and “Modern Times.”

Bonhams memorabilia specialist Lucy Carr said earlier it is unknown how many of Chaplin’s bowlers and canes still exist. Those auctioned on Sunday are from a private collection but have a direct link to Chaplin, Carr said.

The waddling and bumbling “Little Tramp” character propelled Chaplin to global fame. The character, Hollywood legend says was created by accident on a rainy day at Keystone Studios, first appeared in 1914′s “Kid Auto Races at Venice” and lastly in 1936′s “Modern Times.”

Chaplin’s hat and cane are the highlights of an auction of popular culture artifacts that is still in progress. Other items include a handwritten letter from John Lennon in which the Beatle sketched himself and wife Yoko Ono nude. There is also an archive of Marilyn Monroe photographs, an early Charles Schulz “Peanuts” comic strip, and a wicker chair from Rick’s Cafe in “Casablanca.”

(Additional reporting by Eric Kelsey; editing by Christopher Wilson)

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Oklahoma Compounding Pharmacy Laws Some of Strictest in Nation

Jerrod Roberts, owner of Flourish Integrative Pharmacy, wants people to know that it is not the science of compounding that is behind the current U.S. meningitis outbreak, but some of the people working in the industry who are not following protocol, such as at the New England Compounding Center, NECC, at the center of the outbreak, reported NewsOK.com .

Oklahoma Protects the Public with Strict Regulations for Pharmacies

Loyd Allen, editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Pharmaceutical Compounding headquartered in Edmond, Okla., and a pharmacist of 50 years duration, has been active in helping the state’s legislators develop policy and regulations for pharmacies over the years. Regulations have been in place for 40 years requiring pharmacists practicing in Oklahoma to take continuing education classes in order to renew their licenses, long before most other states put the mandate into practice.

Air quality must be monitored in the state’s compounding pharmacies, and monitor specific parts of a facility for microorganisms. Allen explained to NewsOK.com that all the regulations would mean nothing if there weren’t inspectors to monitor facilities’ adherence to the standards. Allen also told the news source that had the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had closed the NECC in 2006 when poor adherence to sanitation standards was present, the current fungal meningitis outbreak would have been averted.

Why Do We Have Compounding Pharmacies?

In the 18th and 19th centuries, all pharmacies were compounding pharmacies; there were no pharmaceutical manufacturers. But as the population grew and the demand for prescription medications increased, pharmaceutical companies emerged and grew, reducing the need for the corner druggist to compound all his customer’s prescription drugs.

Allen explains though that as the big pharmaceutical companies grew and merged, there were some drugs still needed but no longer manufactured. Couple that with the growing number of medications for which there is a shortage each year, and you can see the continued need for compounding pharmacies.

A compounding pharmacy is regulated to manufacture, package and distribute medications prescribed by a physician for a particular patient. What NECC was doing, in addition to having unsanitary conditions, was manufacturing and distributing medications in mass quantities, overriding its licensure requirements.

Fungal Meningitis Outbreak 2012 Victim Count Continues to Rise

Oklahoma is not one of the 19 states that received shipments of NECC’s tainted drug to its outpatient facilities. Meanwhile, in states such as Michigan, Tennessee, Virginia and Florida, nearly 14,000 people exposed to potentially tainted spinal and joint injections wait and watch for symptoms that may or may not develop.

The case count for fungal meningitis is now 490, with 34 resultant deaths and 11 cases of peripheral joint infection.

A number of people who have developed the fungal infection are considering, or have already filed lawsuits, according to PRweb . Congress continues to delve into exactly how this public health disaster occurred and the FDA has asked for additional regulations to increase its authority over compounding pharmacies nationally.

Smack dab in the middle of the baby boomer generation, L.L. Woodard is a proud resident of “The Red Man” state. With what he hopes is an everyman’s view of life’s concerns both in his state and throughout the nation, Woodard presents facts and opinions based on common-sense solutions.

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Children of Gaza caught in the crossfire

GAZA (Reuters) - Barefoot boys chase each other in circles around the street, pointing pretend guns made out of rubber pipes up at the Gaza sky, which is thick with Israeli F-16s and surveillance drones.

"We're not afraid of the Jews' bombs!" said Sharif al-Ewad, whose plump cheeks make him look younger than his 15 years. "Al-Qassam (Hamas's armed wing) has raised its head high, and is really beating them up this time!" he smiled.

But beneath the swagger and bravado there is also a yearning for peace and quiet after five days of Israeli airstrikes that killed at least 65 Palestinians, including 20 children.

With one of the youngest populations in the world, over half of Gaza's 1.7 million residents are aged under 18 and they have little to comfort them beside the heady local culture of armed struggle against Israel.

The Jewish state pulled its troops and settlers out of the coastal territory in 2005 but ever since has come under regular rocket fire from Islamist group Hamas and its allies in the Gaza Strip, which refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist.

Israel launched its latest widescale operation last Wednesday with the stated aim of putting a halt to the attacks.

Psychiatrist Hasan Zeyada says the constant exposure to shocking violence has left many children suffering trauma and all that it entails -- bed-wetting, nightmares, flashbacks, and fear of going out in public.

"Part of this is related to our culture and religion, which values sacrifice and duty. The other part is a kind of denial. it's normal to be scared, but in the messages they've watched and heard, they're taught just to show strength," said Zeyada, manager of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program.

"When there's no safe place to go, they respond naturally with denial. In a situation like Gaza's, the best families and the community can do for children is to keep them close and go about life as normally as possible," he said.

That isn't very easy.

SMALL VICTIMS

With schools shut while the fighting rages, some children express delight at their newfound freedom. "Of course we're happy!" squealed one boy, drawing out giggles from his mates.

Looking more serious, Sharif shook his head. "No, it's no good. We want to learn. It's boring, and our parents try to make us stay inside. But we're not scared," he insisted.

On the other side of the fence, Israeli schools are also shuttered within a 40-km radius of Gaza because of an incessant rain of incoming rockets, with children confined to their homes.

Tragically, some young Gazans will never get to see school.

Tamer, 1, and Joumana Abu Sefan, 3, were blasted from their beds by an Israeli strike early on Sunday. Their father Salama, blood gushing down his face from his owns wounds, rushed them to hospital, where they were pronounced dead.

Male relatives stared on in tears, women cried out and swooned while the little bodies were swaddled in white cloth and gauze was placed in their nostrils to keep still-flowing blood from staining their faces.

At their joint funeral march just hours later, Salama cradled their heads as uncles held them aloft at his side.

Green Hamas flags were suddenly draped over their shrouds, and the militant group's religious songs, playing in the background, announced that the tiny pair had achieved martyrdom and that heaven would be their reward.

"What does Israel want with their blood?" Salama heaved, inconsolable and seeming to sleepwalk through the spectacle.

For its part, Israel denies targeting civilians and says it is constantly warning residents, who it says are used by as human shields, away from areas where militants operate.

Abdullah Zumlot, 15, the first hints of moustache speckling his upper lip, scoffed at this as he loitered around the hospital where the Abu Sefan children were earlier carried away.

"It's not fair what we have to live through, we're not happy. All my family and I do is sit at home and watch the news 24 hours," he complained.

(Editing by Crispian Balmer)

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Rebels in Congo reach door of Goma

GOMA, Congo (AP) — A Rwandan-backed rebel group advanced to within 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) of Goma, a crucial provincial capital in eastern Congo, marking the first time that rebels have come this close since 2008.

Congolese army spokesman Col. Olivier Hamuli said the fighting has been going on since 6 a.m. Sunday and the front line has moved to just a few kilometers (miles) outside the city. After more than nine hours of violent clashes the two sides took a break, with M23 rebels establishing a checkpoint just 100 meters (yards) away from one held by the military in the village of Munigi, exactly 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) outside the Goma city line.

Contacted by telephone on the front line, M23 rebel spokesman Col. Vianney Kazarama said the group will spend the night in Goma.

“We are about to take the town. We will spend the night in Goma tonight,” said Kazarama. “We are confident that we can take Goma and then our next step will be to take Bukavu,” he said mentioning the capital of the next province to the south.

The M23 rebel group is made up of soldiers from a now-defunct rebel army, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, a group made-up primarily of fighters from the Tutsi ethnic group, the ethnicity that was targeted in Rwanda‘s 1994 genocide. In 2008, the CNDP led by Rwandan commando Gen. Laurent Nkunda marched his soldiers to the doorstep of Goma, abruptly stopping just before taking the city.

In the negotiations that followed and which culminated in a March 23, 2009 peace deal, the CNDP agreed to disband and their fighters joined the national army of Congo. They did not pick up their arms again until this spring, when hundreds of ex-CNDP fighters defected from the army in April, claiming that the Congolese government had failed to uphold their end of the 2009 agreement.

Reports, including one by the United Nations Group of Experts, have shown that M23 is actively being backed by Rwanda and the new rebellion is likely linked to the fight to control Congo’s rich mineral wealth.

The latest fighting broke out Thursday and led to the deaths of 151 rebels and two soldiers. On Saturday U.N. attack helicopters targeted M23 positions in eastern Congo.

Also on Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had called Rwandan President Paul Kagame “to request that he use his influence on the M23 to help calm the situation and restrain M23 from continuing their attack,” according to peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous who spoke at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Saturday.

North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Saturday that the Congolese army had earlier retreated from Kibumba, which is 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Goma, after thousands of Rwandans, who he says were backing the rebels, attacked early Saturday.

“Rwandan forces bombarded our positions in Kibumba since early this morning and an estimated 3,500 crossed the border to attack us,” he said Saturday.

In downtown Goma, panicked residents had come out to try to get more information on what was happening. A 45-year-old mother of five said that she has nowhere to go.

“I don’t really know what is happening, I’ve seen soldiers and tanks in the streets and that scares me,” said Imaculee Kahindo. Asked if she planned to leave the city, she said: “What can we do? I will probably hide in my house with my children.”

Hamuli, the spokesman for the Congolese army, denied reports that soldiers were fleeing.

In 2008 as Nkunda’s CNDP rebels amassed at the gates of Goma, reporters inside the city were able to see Congolese soldiers running in the opposite direction, after having abandoned their posts. The Congolese army is notoriously dysfunctional with soldiers paid only small amounts, making it difficult to secure their loyalties during heavy fighting.

“We are fighting 3 kilometers from Goma, just past the airport. And our troops are strong enough to resist the rebels,” said Hamuli. “We won’t let the M23 march into our town,” he said. Asked if his troops were fleeing, he added: “These are false rumors. We are not going anywhere.”

U.N. peacekeeping chief Ladsous said that the rebels were very well-equipped, including with night vision equipment allowing them to fight at night.

Reports by United Nations experts have accused Rwanda, as well as Uganda, of supporting the rebels. Both countries strongly deny any involvement and Uganda said if the charges continue it will pull its peacekeeping troops out of Somalia, where they are playing an important role in pushing out the Islamist extremist rebels.

The U.N. Security Council called for an immediate stop to the violence following a two-hour, closed-door emergency meeting. The council said it would add sanctions against M23 rebels and demanded that rebels immediately stop their advance toward the provincial capital of Goma.

“We must stop the M23″ because Goma’s fall “would, inevitably, turn into a humanitarian crisis,” said France‘s U.N. Ambassador, Gerard Araud. He added that U.N. officials would decide in the coming days which M23 leaders to target for additional sanctions.

___

Associated Press writer Maria Sanminiatelli at the United Nations and Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

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Cablevision subscribers sue over Hurricane Sandy outages

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Even as workers scramble to clean up the mess that Hurricane Sandy left in the Northeast two weeks ago, a legal mess is beginning to spill into the court system.

Cablevision subscribers Jeffery and Irwin Bard filed a class-action lawsuit against the cable provider in New York Supreme Court this week, seeking restitution for television, telephone and internet outages caused by Sandy, according to court papers obtained by TheWrap.

The suit, which alleges breach of contract and unjust enrichment, claims that Cablevision “continued to advertise falsely that it was providing services to its customers” even after the storm caused outages for its customers, and “could not restore services to many of its customers for days, or even weeks.”

Moreover, according to the complaint, Cablevision continued to issue bills for services it was unable to provide in the aftermath of the storm, and “instituted a secretive policy to offer ‘customer credits’ only to customers who affirmatively and actively demanded rebates on a discretionary basis,” rather than offer across-the-board rebates to its customers, even though it had access to which customers had lost power and for how long.

A spokesman for Cablevision told TheWrap that the lawsuit “misstates the facts and is without merit,” and that Cablevision has “an extremely broad and customer friendly credit policy following Sandy.”

“Blanket or arbitrary credits for cable outages could shortchange customers because each case is different and our policy covers the entire period of time when Cablevision service was out, including when the service interruption was caused by the loss of electrical power,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Cablevision does allow for customers to call and process their credit, or go to optimum.net/credit, where they can detail the period of their outage to receive credit.

The suit, filed Tuesday, seeks unspecified damages for each member of the class, plus attorneys’ fees and court costs, along with a permanent restraint barring Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision from billing or invoicing customers when there’s a service outage of more than 24 hours.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this report)

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Questions of Blame Linger 34 Years After Jonestown

From the age of 13, Leslie Wagner Wilson had been indoctrinated in the California-based Peoples Temple, led by the charismatic Jim Jones, whose mission was to foster racial harmony and help the poor.

But on Nov. 18, 1978, she and a handful of church members fought their way through thick jungle in the South American country of Guyana, escaping a utopian society gone wrong where followers were starved, beaten and held prisoner in the Jonestown compound.

She walked 30 miles to safety with her 3-year-old son, Jakari, strapped to her back and a smaller group of defectors. But just hours later, the mother, sister and brother and husband she left behind were dead.

“I was so scared,” said Wagner, now 55. “We exchanged phone numbers in case we died. I was prepared to die. I never thought I would see my 21st birthday.”

Today, on the 34th anniversary, Wilson said it’s important to remember the California-based Peoples Temple Jonestown massacre, especially the survivors who have wrestled with their consciences for decades.

PHOTOS: Jonestown Massacre Anniversary

Nine members of her family were among the 918 Americans who died that day, 909 of them ordered by Jones to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid in the largest ritual suicide in history.

Her husband, Joe Wilson, was one of Jones’ top lieutenants who helped assassinate congressman Leo Ryan and his press crew when they tried to free church members who were being held against their will.

After arriving back in the United States, Wilson said she “went through hell” — three failed marriages, drug use and suicidal thoughts she describes in her 2009 book, “Slavery of Faith.”

“I was like Humpty Dumpty, but you couldn’t put me back together again,” she said.

Survivors, many of them African-American like Wilson, say they felt guilt and shame and faced the most agonizing question surrounding the nation’s single largest loss of life until 9/11: Was it suicide or murder?

Full Coverage: Jonestown Massacre

In the now-famous “death tape,” supporters clapped and babies cried as Jones instructed families to kill the elderly first, then the youngest in protest against capitalism and racism. Mothers poisoned 246 children before taking their own lives.

“We really can’t understand the Peoples Temple without looking at the historical time period when it arose,” said Rebecca Moore, a professor of religious studies at San Diego State University.

“With the liberation movements of the ’60s and ’70s, the collapse of the black-power movement, the Peoples Temple was the main institution in the San Francisco Bay area that promoted a message of integration and racial equality.”

Moore lost her two sisters and her nephew, the son of Jim Jones. “They were hardcore believers,” she said of her siblings.

Jim Jones, who was white, came from a “wrong side of the tracks,” poor background in Indiana where in the 1950s he became known as a charismatic preacher with an affinity for African-Americans.

“A number of survivors, including those who defected, believe to this day he had paranormal abilities,” said Moore, who met him years later. “He could heal them and read their minds.”

In the 1960s, Jones moved to San Francisco, where at the height of the Peoples Temple there were about 5,000 members.

WATCH: A Look Back at Jonestown Massacre

“They wanted my parents to join,” she said. “Like most outsiders, we didn’t have any idea what was happening outside closed doors.”

Jones ingratiated himself with celebrities and politicians, mobilizing voters to help elect Mayor George Moscone in 1975 and becoming chairman of the city’s housing authority.

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Obama: Historic Myanmar visit underscores democratic progress

BANGKOK (AP) — On the eve of his landmark trip to Myanmar, President Barack Obama tried to assure critics that his visit was not a premature reward for a long-isolated nation still easing its way toward democracy.

"This is not an endorsement of the government," Obama said Sunday in Thailand as he opened a three-country dash through Asia. "This is an acknowledgement that there is a process under way inside that country that even a year and a half, two years ago, nobody foresaw."

Obama was set to become the first U.S. president to visit Myanmar with Air Force One scheduled to touch down in Yangon on Monday morning. Though Obama planned to spend just six hours in the country, the much-anticipated stop came as the result of a remarkable turnaround in the countries' relationship.

The president's Asia tour also marks his formal return to the world stage after months mired in a bruising re-election campaign. For his first postelection trip, he tellingly settled on Asia, a region he has deemed the region as crucial to U.S. prosperity and security.

Aides say Asia will factor heavily in Obama's second term as the U.S. seeks to expand its influence in an attempt to counter China.

China's rise is also at play in Myanmar, which long has aligned itself with Beijing. But some in Myanmar fear that China is taking advantage of its wealth of natural resources, so the country is looking for other partners to help build its nascent economy.

Obama has rewarded Myanmar's rapid adoption of democratic reforms by lifting some economic penalties. The president has appointed a permanent ambassador to the country, also known as Burma, and pledged greater investment if Myanmar continues to progress following a half-century of military rule.

But some human rights groups say Myanmar's government, which continues to hold hundreds of political prisoners and is struggling to contain ethnic violence, hasn't done enough to earn a personal visit from Obama.

Speaking from neighboring Thailand, Obama said Sunday he was under no illusions that Myanmar had done all it needed to do. But he said the U.S. could play a critical role in helping ensure the country doesn't slip backward.

"I'm not somebody who thinks that the United States should stand on the sidelines and not want to get its hands dirty when there's an opportunity for us to encourage the better impulses inside a country," Obama said during a joint press conference Sunday with Thailand's prime minister.

Even as Obama turned his sights on Asia, widening violence in the Middle East competed for his attention.

Obama told reporters Sunday that Israel had the right to defend itself against missile attacks from Gaza. But he urged Israel not to launch a ground assault in Gaza, saying it would put Israeli soldiers, as well as Palestinian citizens, at greater risk and hamper an already vexing peace process.

"If we see a further escalation of the situation in Gaza, the likelihood of us getting back on any kind of peace track that leads to a two-state solution is going to be pushed off way into the future," Obama said.

The ongoing violence is likely to trail Obama as he makes his way from Thailand to Myanmar to Cambodia, his final stop before returning to Washington early Wednesday.

Obama will meet separately in Myanmar with Prime Minister Thein Sein, who has orchestrated much of his country's recent reforms. The president will also meet with longtime Myanmar democracy activist Aung Sun Suu Kyi in the home where she spent years under house arrest.

The president, as he seeks to assuage critics, has trumpeted Suu Kyi's support of his outreach efforts, saying Sunday that she was "very encouraging" of his trip.

The White House says Obama will express his concern for the ongoing ethnic tensions in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, where more than 110,000 people — the vast majority of them Muslims known as Rohingya — have been displaced.

The U.N. has called the Rohingya — who are widely reviled by the Buddhist majority in Myanmar — among the world's most persecuted people.

The White House says Obama will press the matter Monday with Thein Sein, along with demands to free remaining political prisoners as the nation transitions to democracy.

The president will cap his trip to Myanmar with a speech at Rangoon University, the center of the country's struggle for independence against Britain and the launching point for many pro-democracy protests. The former military junta shut the dormitories in the 1990s fearing further unrest and forced most students to attend classes on satellite campuses on the outskirts of town.

Obama began his Asian tour on a steamy day in Bangkok with a visit to the Wat Pho Royal Monastery. In stocking feet, the president and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton walked around a golden statue of a sitting Buddha. The complex is a sprawling display of buildings with colorful spires, gardens and waterfalls.

Obama then paid a courtesy call to the ailing, 84-year-old U.S.-born King Bhumibol Adulyadej in his hospital quarters. The king, the longest serving living monarch, was born in Cambridge, Mass., and studied in Europe.

_

Associated Press writer Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

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Israel hits Hamas buildings, shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the “Iron Dome” defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh – where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister – and struck a police headquarters.

Along the Tel Aviv beachfront, volleyball games came to an abrupt halt and people crouched as sirens sounded. Two interceptor rockets streaked into the sky. A flash and an explosion followed as Iron Dome, deployed only hours earlier near the city, destroyed the incoming projectile in mid-air.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia’s foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh’s office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister’s office and pledged: “We will declare victory from here.”

Hamas‘s armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday’s rocket attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

“Well that wasn’t such a big deal,” said one woman, who had watched the interception while clinging for protection to the trunk of a baby palm tree on a traffic island.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Among those killed in airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding on motorcycles.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, along with appeals to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

RESERVIST CALL-UP

At a late night session on Friday, Israeli cabinet ministers decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said, in a signal Israel was edging closer to an invasion.

Around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”

“We have a plan … it will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favorite to win a January national election.

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 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

“Israel should understand that many things have changed and that lots of water has run in the Arab river,” Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem said as he surveyed the wreckage from a bomb-blast site in central Gaza.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s manoeuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

“DE-ESCALATION”

Netanyahu spoke late on Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama for the second time since the offensive began, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

“(Netanyahu) expressed his deep appreciation for the U.S. position that Israel has a right to defend itself and thanked him for American aid in purchasing Iron Dome batteries,” the statement added.

The two leaders have had a testy relationship and have been at odds over how to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

A White House official said on Saturday Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to discuss how the two countries could help bring an end to the Gaza conflict.

Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters that Washington “wants the same thing as the Israelis want”, an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. He said the United States is emphasizing diplomacy and “de-escalation”.

In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had spoken to Netanyahu and Egypt’s Mursi, stressing to the Israeli leader that Israel had a right to self-defense and that a ceasefire must be agreed as soon as possible to avoid more bloodshed.

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.

The Israeli military said 492 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since the operation began. Iron Dome intercepted another 245.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

Some families in Gaza have abandoned their homes – some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets – and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv, Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Jeff Mason aboard Air Force One, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Crispian Balmer)

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Lady Gaga tweets some racy images before concert

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Lady Gaga’s tweets were getting a lot of attention ahead of her Buenos Aires concert Friday night.

The Grammy-winning entertainer has more than 30 million followers on Twitter and that’s where she shared a link this week to a short video showing her doing a striptease and fooling around in a bathtub with two other women.

She told her followers that it’s a “surprise for you, almost ready for you to TASTE.”

Then, in between concerts in Brazil and Argentina, she posted a picture Thursday on her Twitter page showing her wallowing in her underwear and impossibly high heels on top of the remains of what appears to be a strawberry shortcake.

“The real CAKE isn’t HAVING what you want, it’s DOING what you want,” she tweeted.

Lady Gaga wore decidedly unglamorous baggy jeans and a blouse outside her Buenos Aires hotel Thursday as three burly bodyguards kept her fans at bay. Another pre-concert media event where she was supposed to be given “guest of honor” status by the city government Friday afternoon was cancelled.

After Argentina, she is scheduled to perform in Santiago, Chile; Lima, Peru; and Asuncion, Paraguay, before taking her “Born This Way Ball” tour to Africa, Europe and North America.

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Gaza hospitals stretched, need supplies to treat wounded: WHO

GENEVA (Reuters) – Gaza hospitals are overwhelmed with casualties from Israel‘s bombings and face critical shortages of drugs and medical supplies, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday.

The U.N. health agency appealed for $ 10 million from donors to meet the need for drugs and supplies over the next three months.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket fired from the enclave on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The WHO, quoting Health Ministry officials in Gaza, said 382 people have been injured – 245 adults and 137 children.

“Many of those injured have been admitted to hospitals with severe burns, injuries from collapsing buildings and head injuries,” the WHO said in a statement issued in Geneva.

Health authorities have declared an emergency situation in all hospitals to cope with patients, it said.

“Before the hostilities began, health facilities were severely over stretched mainly as a result of the siege of Gaza,” the WHO said. Israel maintains a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip with the help of neighboring Egypt.

The Gaza Ministry of Health‘s supplies of many life-saving drugs and disposable equipment were at “zero stock”, it said.

“The Ministry of Health has postponed all elective surgeries due to the emergency and shortages in anaesthesia drugs,” it said. Non-urgent cases are being transferred to hospitals run by aid groups and health personnel have been asked to report to the nearest health facility for extended shifts, it said.

“WHO appeals to the international and regional community for urgent financial support to provide essential medicines to cover pre-existing shortages, as well as emergency supplies for treating casualties and the chronically ill,” it said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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