Israel, Gaza militants agree to a 12-hour truce

GAZA/JERUSALEM: Israel and Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip have agreed to a UN-requested 12-hour humanitarian truce to begin on Saturday morning, and efforts to secure a long-term cease-fire moved ahead.
Israel’s military said it would hold fire starting at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) but would continue searching for tunnels used by militants. A spokesman for the Islamist group Hamas, which is dominant in the Gaza Strip, said all Palestinian factions would abide by the brief truce.
Fighting continued overnight as US Secretary of State John Kerry, on a visit to the region, has been spearheading international efforts to end 19 days of fighting.
Gaza officials said five people were killed in Israeli air strikes, bringing the Palestinian death toll to 865, most of them civilians.
Earlier, militants fired a barrage of rockets out of Gaza, triggering sirens across much of southern and central Israel. No injuries were reported, with the Iron Dome interceptor system knocking out many of the missiles.
Israel on Friday rejected international proposals for a more permanent cease-fire, a government source said, but Kerry, speaking in Cairo, said no formal proposals had yet been put forward.
The top US diplomat said there were still disagreements on the terminology, but he was confident there was a framework that would ultimately succeed and that “serious progress” had been made, although there was more work to do.

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ATLANTA HAMAS LEADER: "F**K YOU & ISRAEL"

Contact lost with Air Algerie plane carrying 116 people

ALGIERS: Authorities have lost contact with an Air Algerie flight en route from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to Algiers with 110 passengers on board, Algeria's APS state news agency and a Spanish airline company said.
APS said authorities lost contact with flight AH 5017 an hour after it took off from Burkina Faso, although other officials gave other timings, adding to confusion about the fate of the flight and where it might be.
Spanish private airline company Swiftair confirmed it had no contact with its MD-83 aircraft operated by Air Algerie, which it said was carrying 110 passengers and six crew.
The company said in a notice posted on its website that the aircraft took off from Burkina Faso at 0117 GMT and was supposed to land in Algiers at 0510 GMT but never reached its destination.
An Algerian aviation official said the last contact Algerian authorities had with a missing Air Algerie aircraft carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algiers was at 0155 GMT when it was flying over Gao, Mali.
Aviation authorities in Burkina say they handed the flight to the control tower in Niamey, Niger, at 1:38 am (0138 GMT). They said last contact with the flight was just after 4:30 a.m. (0330 GMT).
Burkinabe authorities have set up a crisis unit in Ouagadougou airport to provide information to families of people on the flight.
A diplomat in the Malian capital Bamako said that the north of the country - which lies on the plane's likely flight path - was struck by a powerful sandstorm overnight.
Issa Saly Maiga, head of Mali's National Civil Aviation Agency, said that a search was under way for the missing flight.
"We do not know if the plane is Malian territory," he said. "Aviation authorities are mobilised in all the countries concerned — Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Algeria and even Spain."
Whatever is the fate of the flight, the loss of contact is likely to add the to jitters in the airline industry after a Malaysia Airlines plane was downed over Ukraine last week, a TransAsia Airways crashed off Taiwan during a thunderstorm on Wednesday and airlines cancelled flights into Tel Aviv due to the conflict in Gaza.

TOKYO ( Japanese Supermarket serving " NASTY NUGGETS " )

Japanese Supermarket Chain Newly Affected by Chinese Meat Scam

TOKYO – The 24-hour Japanese convenience chain FamilyMart announced on Wednesday it had stopped buying chicken from the Chinese company Husi, which was shut down after selling meat past its expiry date.

FamilyMart was the second Japanese company hit by the Chinese meat scam after McDonald’s subsidiary in Japan announced on Tuesday it would stop serving chicken McNuggets, which were also supplied by Husi.

McDonald’s Holdings Japan, which last year imported 4,300 tons of McNuggets from the Shanghai-based meat processing firm, announced it will resume chicken sales in its 3,300 restaurants in Japan on Wednesday, after finding new suppliers in China and Thailand.

The meat scandal has also led to the withdrawal of some of the most popular items on menus of fast food chains Burger King, McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Burger King and Dicos in China, all of which bought meat supplies from Husi.

The fraud was uncovered last week in a report on Chinese television channel Dragon TV, which led health authorities to shut down the Husi factory in Shanghai.

The Shanghai channel revealed on Sunday that Husi had consistently falsified meat expiration dates.

The TV released footage filmed at the Husi plant showing how chicken discarded after routine checks were repeatedly reprocessed to pass quality controls.

The report, made with a hidden camera and undercover journalists, also showed employees picking up meat from the floor and throwing it into the grinder to make hamburgers.

A Husi director told the journalists top company executives had allowed personnel to use expired meat to make hamburgers.

Husi is the Chinese subsidiary of the OSI Group, a food processing company with its main U.S. headquarters in Aurora, Illinois, that has issued a statement apologizing for “the problems caused or if any consumer has been affected.”

This is the latest case regarding food insecurity in China, one of the most serious problems affecting the country, where irregularities of this kind are on the rise leading to growing public concern.

This is not the first time that foreign fast food chains have been affected.

In 2012, KFC was involved in another such scandal when it was found buying chicken with excessive levels of antibiotics in Shanghai for two years despite being aware of it, according to local authorities.

KABUL ( Drone Attack Kills Six Taliban Members in Afghanistan )

Drone Attack Kills Six Taliban Members in Afghanistan

KABUL – Six alleged Taliban members died in an air attack launched by an unmanned US aerial vehicle in the eastern Afghan province of Logar, an official reported on Wednesday.

The drone attack took place late Tuesday in the area of Baboos, near the provincial capital of Pul-e-Alam, said Din Mohammed Darwish, spokesperson of the local government.

At least six insurgents died when their vehicle laden with explosives was destroyed, Darwish said.

This was the fourth American drone attack this month and the sixth this year, according to Afghan authorities.

Over the past year Afghanistan has been the scene of the worst violence since the invasion of US troops led to the fall of the Taliban regime 12 years ago.

In 2011 international troops started to gradually withdraw from the Asian country and transfer security to Afghan forces.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force will conclude its mission in Afghanistan by the end of this year, while the United States has announced that it will maintain around 9,800 soldiers in the country until its complete exit in 2016

Mexico ( Mexican Man Arrested After Posting Murder Confession on Facebook )

MEXICO CITY – A 32-year-old schizophrenic was arrested in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon after he confessed to murdering his fiance’s mother in a Facebook post, officials said Monday.

Roberto Alejandro Santos was arrested on Sunday and is being held in connection with the killing of 61-year-old Lucila Reyes, Nuevo Leon deputy prosecutor’s office spokesman David Perales told Efe.

Reyes’s body was found Saturday afternoon at her house in the city of San Nicolas, but investigators suspect she was killed in the early morning hours.

“I did it, I don’t know how they can allow me to live another day,” Santos said in a Facebook post.

Santos was already a suspect in the case because his fiance, 25-year-old Julibeth, had filed a complaint with police after he beat her.

The suspect is being held on a preventive arrest order of up to 30 days, prosecutors said, adding that a judge will decide whether to charge him once the order expires.

Santos’ confession is not enough to charge him and the case will depend on what he tells prosecutors.