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Israeli military officials said their bombardment of Gaza may “intensify” in the final hours before a four-day cease-fire begins early Friday — as reports say Hamas morale has plummeted, causing many terrorists to retreat south. “[It’s] business as usual,” said Lt. Col Richard Hecht, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), told reporters Thursday. Artillery airstrikes “may even intensify” in the coming hours, Recht added, according to NBC News. Israeli shells have been reported falling north of Gaza and in the southern city of Khan Younis Thursday, according to the BBC, while heavy fighting is still raging in northern...

Just a breaking news banner and video at link: http://go.cnn.com/?stream=cnn Full title: French air force conducting major bombardment against ISIS targets in Raqqa, Syria, the French Ministry of Defense says. Watch CNNgo.

Among the roughly 300 killed during intense fighting in Aleppo was Molhem Barakat, a Reuters photographer. Barakat's death last Friday, in the indiscriminate barrage on Aleppo that the White House criticized Monday, has raised serious questions about Reuters' hiring practice. Hannah Lucinda Smith, a British freelance photojournalist and acquaintance of Barakat, writes that Barakat tried to join Al Qaeda. According to Smith, Barakat wanted to join the terrorist organization for the 11,000 Syrian lira monthly salary. "It is a pitiful wage for a potential suicide bomber, but enough to tempt an eighteen-year-old stuck in a war zone with no job."...

Migrating planets caused meteor stormMonday, 25 March 2013 Stuart GaryABC New research supports the theory of planetary migration sparking a massive meteor storm that rocked the inner solar system 3.9 billion years ago(Source: NASA) Related Stories Moon map reveals deeply fractured crust, Science Online, 06 Dec 2012Vesta a baby planet, not an asteroid, Science Online, 11 May 2012 Meteor storm Migration of giant gas planets such as Jupiter created the biggest meteor storm in our solar system's history, according to a new study. The research in the journal Nature Geoscience paints the clearest picture yet of the causes of the...

The planned unveiling in London of a memorial to the 55,573 Royal Air Force Bomber Command airmen killed in World War II has sparked muted criticism in Germany, where many regard the Allied air raids that destroyed entire cities and killed over 500,000 civilians as unjustified and criminal. Helma Orosz, the mayor of Dresden, which was devastated in an Allied attack in February 1945, criticized the plans for the monument when they first became public in 2010, and spoke to London Mayor Boris Johnson about it. "The planned memorial triggered astonishment in Dresden and was judged critically by us in...

Probe to 'look inside' asteroids By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff in Paris, France Studies of asteroids would aid Earth-protection strategies A new space mission concept unveiled at a Paris conference aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved. The perceived threat of asteroids colliding with our planet has renewed interest in space missions to understand these...

The lightning attack by 3 Commando Brigade of the Royal Marines came within an hour of a massive aerial bombardment which lit up the skies above northern Kuwait. The Royal Marines launched an aerial and amphibious assault on a vital beach at the head of the Persian Gulf where the strategically important Al Faw peninsula meets the Shatt-al-Arab waterway and Iranian border. Soon after the Commandos landed, a second wave of British forces was being carried to the beach on high-speed hovercrafts to advance on Basra. 40 and 42 Commandos, which include hundreds of Britain's elite marines, had taken the...

A Palestinian man from the West Bank city of Jenin was said to have been killed in the US missile strikes on Baghdad early Thursday morning. The family of Ahmed Raed Elbaz received a phone call from relatives in the Iraqi capital to say that Elbaz had been killed in the bombardment that targeted Iraqi leaders. The family set up a mourning tent and said that Elbaz was a bus driver in Baghdad. Both Iraq and the International Red Cross said that one civilian had been killed and 14 wounded in the air strikes.