Jerusalem – Israeli ground troops entered the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday night, a day after rocket fire from the Palestinian territory wounded dozens of Israeli soldiers. But the military described the incursion as routine and said it was not part of a large-scale mission.
The army gave no further information.
Early Tuesday morning, a Palestinian rocket from Gaza struck an army base in Israel just north of Gaza and wounded 40 soldiers as they slept in their tents. One soldier was in critical condition.
But Israel has ruled out a large-scale military retaliation, a decision some Israelis questioned.
Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and officials have ruled out a reoccupation. But ministers were to meet Sunday to discuss other punitive measures, such as cutting off electricity, fuel and water supplies.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has faced growing calls to respond to the near-daily rocket attacks out of Gaza. Israel has limited its response to brief, limited ground incursions and airstrikes aimed at rocket squads.
The army is reluctant to mobilize large numbers of troops during the Jewish New Year holiday, which began Wednesday.
NEW YORK
Infant-death rate drops for first time
For the first time since record keeping began in 1960, the number of deaths of young children around the world has fallen below 10 million a year, according to figures from the U.N. Children’s Fund being released today.
This public-health triumph has arisen, UNICEF officials said, partly from campaigns against measles, malaria and bottle-feeding, and partly from improvements in the economies of most of the world outside Africa.
The estimated drop, to 9.7 million deaths of children under 5, “is a historic moment,” said Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF’s executive director, noting that it shows progress toward the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of cutting the rate of infant mortality in 1990 by two-thirds by 2015.
LOS ANGELES
“Dr. Phil” gets papers in Aruba teen case
The “Dr. Phil” show can have access to documents about two brothers who were once suspected in the case of an Alabama teenager who vanished while on vacation in Aruba, a judge ruled Wednesday.
The documents were sought as part of the talk show’s defense against the brothers, who sued last year, claiming defamation, fraud and invasion of privacy.
Deepak and Satish Kalpoe claim the “Dr. Phil” show altered portions of a secretly recorded conversation between Deepak Kalpoe and a private investigator to “create false, incriminating, and defamatory statements that the plaintiffs engaged in criminal activity against Natalee Holloway.”
The Sept. 15, 2005, episode of the show alleged the brothers gave Holloway a date-rape drug and had group sex with her, the suit contended.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
Clues sought to astronaut meltdowns
NASA e-mails released Wednesday indicate the space agency was looking for ways to prevent astronaut meltdowns just three months before one-time shuttle flier Lisa Nowak was arrested in a scandalous love triangle.
The e-mails from late last year show that space-program employees interviewed the former colleagues and the “common-law wife” of ex-astronaut Charles Brady Jr. after he committed suicide in July 2006. It seemed to be an effort to find behavioral clues that could be a tip-off in future cases.
Brady, who had flown in space once 10 years earlier, left NASA in 2002.
The e-mails, which included no medical details and were heavily blacked out, were obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.
“Following Charles Brady’s suicide, NASA employees at the Johnson Space Center felt it would be beneficial to see if there were any ‘lessons learned’ that could be gained by speaking with friends and family of the former astronaut. The interviews were conducted on a confidential basis,” said David Steitz, a NASA spokesman in Washington.
ALLEN PARK, Mich.
Man builds guillotine to kill himself
Police say a 41-year-old man from the Detroit suburb of Melvindale built and used a guillotine to kill himself.
His body was discovered Monday in a wooded area by workers from a shopping center near his home.
Police say the roughly 6-foot-tall guillotine had been bolted to a tree and included a swing arm. Several store receipts detailing the materials used to assemble the device also were found.
