WASHINGTON (AP) — Senior U.S. intelligence officials say they have no evidence of direct Russian government involvement in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

They say the passenger jet was likely felled by an SA-11 surface-to-air missile fired by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine and that Russia "created the conditions" for the downing by arming the separatists.

The officials briefed reporters Tuesday under ground rules that their names not be used in discussing intelligence related to last week's air disaster, which killed 298 people.

They said they did not know if any Russians were present at the missile launch, and they wouldn't say that the missile crew was trained in Russia.

A senior official said the most likely explanation was the plane was shot down by mistake.

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli soldier is missing following a deadly battle in the Gaza Strip, a defense official said Tuesday, as Israeli airstrikes pummeled a wide range of locations along the coastal area and diplomatic efforts intensified to end the two week war that has killed more than 600 Palestinians and 29 Israelis.

It was not immediately known if the missing soldier was alive or dead, the Israeli defense official told The Associated Press. The disappearance raised the possibility that he had been captured by Hamas — a nightmare scenario for Israel. In the past, Israel has paid a heavy price in lopsided prisoner swaps to retrieve captured soldiers or remains held by its enemies.

Military officials said the soldier, identified as Sgt. Oron Shaul, was among seven soldiers in a vehicle that was hit by an anti-tank missile in a battle in Gaza over the weekend. The other six have been confirmed as dead, but no remains have been identified as Shaul, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident with media.

Hamas' claimed earlier this week that it had captured an Israeli soldier. Israel's U.N. ambassador initially denied the claim but the military neither confirmed nor denied it.

A representative of Shaul's family, Racheli Gazit, said that "so long as the verification has not been completed ... as far as the family is concerned Oron is not a fallen soldier."

In Cairo, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Egyptian officials Tuesday in the highest-level push yet to end the deadly conflict. Ban then traveled to Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, urged the international community to hold Hamas accountable for the latest round of violence, saying its refusal to agree to a cease-fire had prevented an earlier end to the fighting.

"What we're seeing here with Hamas is another instance of Islamist extremism, violent extremism that has no resolvable grievance," Netanyahu said at a joint press conference with Ban in Tel Aviv. He compared Hamas with al-Qaida and extremist Islamic militant groups in Iraq, Syria and Africa.

"Hamas is like ISIS, Hamas is like al Qaida, Hamas is like Hezbollah, Hamas is like Boko Haram," he said.

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Palestinians inspect the rubble of the destroyed Al Aqsa Martyrs' mosque in Gaza City, 22 July 2014. …

Netanyahu was responding to a call by Ban that the sides address the root causes of the fighting and work toward bringing about a two-state solution.

"My message to Israelis and Palestinians is the same: stop fighting, start talking and take on the root causes of the conflict so we are not back to the same situation in another six months or a year," Ban said. Netanyahu responded that Hamas, a group whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, does not want a two-state solution.

Hamas, with some support from Qatar and Turkey, wants guarantees on lifting the blockade before halting fire. The Islamic militant group has no faith in mediation by Egypt's rulers, who deposed a Hamas-friendly government in Cairo a year ago and tightened restrictions on Gaza — to the point of driving Hamas into its worst financial crisis since its founding in 1987.

The border blockade has set Gaza back years, wiping out tens of thousands of jobs through bans on most exports and on imports of vital construction materials Israel says could be diverted by Hamas for military use. Israel allows many consumer goods into Gaza, but experts say Gaza's economy cannot recover without a resumption of exports.

Israel launched a massive air campaign on July 8 to stop relentless Hamas rocket fire into Israel. It expanded it on July 17 to a ground war aimed at destroying tunnels the military says Hamas has constructed from Gaza into Israel for attacks against Israelis. The military says Hamas has launched 2,000 rockets since the war began.

The Gaza Health Ministry says at least 609 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. The U.N. office of humanitarian affairs estimates that at least 75 percent of them were civilians, including dozens of children.

An Israeli soldier was killed Tuesday in fighting in southern Gaza, raising the number of Israeli troops confirmed dead to 27. Two Israeli civilians also have been killed.

Overnight, the Israeli military said it bombed more than 180 militant targets in Gaza, including concealed rocket launchers, a weapon manufacturing facility and surface-to-surface missile launchers. Gaza police spokesman Ayman Batniji said mosques, a sports complex and the home of a former Hamas military chief also were hit.

Diplomatic Push Intensifies to End War in GazaPlay Video

Since the war began Israel has struck almost 3,000 sites in Gaza, killed more than 180 armed Palestinians and uncovered 66 access shafts of 23 tunnels, the military said.

Airstrikes in Gaza set off huge explosions that turned the night sky over Gaza City orange early Tuesday. The sound of the blasts mixed with the thud of shelling, often just seconds apart, and the pre-dawn call to prayer from mosque loudspeakers.

Tank shells damaged several houses along the eastern border of the territory, Batniji said. At least 19 fishing boats were burned by Israeli navy shells fired from the Mediterranean Sea, he added.

Officials also said that six Palestinians with German citizenship were among the people killed when an airstrike caused a Gaza high-rise apartment building to partially collapse on Monday.

Saleh Kelani, 49, said his brother Ibrahim Kelani, 53, his wife Taghreed and their five children ages 4 to 12, were killed. Saleh Kelani said his brother and the five children had German citizenship while the wife did not.

He said his brother lived in Germany for 20 years. Standing outside the morgue of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, Saleh Kelani said he was waiting for condemnation of Israel's actions by the international community, particularly Germany.

"Where is Germany?" he asked, fighting back tears. "When one Israeli is killed all the world talks about it. But six with German nationality? Nothing is happening."

In Israel, thousands attended the funeral on Monday night of Nissim Sean Carmeli, 21, an Israeli-American soldier from Texas who was killed in the fighting.

"He's a hero to us and he's a hero to everyone," said Seth Greenberg, a friend who tattooed Carmeli's initials on his neck in the form of a Star of David. "Even though we know he is looking down on us from heaven and he is with us the whole time we felt that we actually want him a part of us, so we all decided to get a tattoo."

Beyond the grief over the fallen soldiers, concerns were growing in Israel over what many consider to be an even more ominous result: that of an abducted soldier

Abductions of Israeli soldiers have turned in the past into drawn-out mediation with opponents leading to prisoner releases. In 2008, Israel released five Lebanese militants in exchange for the remains of two soldiers killed in the 2006 Lebanon war.

Also in 2006, Hamas-allied militants seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid and held him captive in Gaza until Israel traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for his return in 2011.

Hamas had threatened in the past to kidnap more Israelis and Israel says the militant group's attacks through tunnels that stretch into Israel are for this purpose.

Egypt, Israel and the U.S. back an unconditional cease-fire, to be followed by talks on a possible new border arrangement for Gaza. Israel and Egypt have severely restricted movement in and out of Gaza since Hamas seized the territory in 2007.

___

Laub reported from Gaza City, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writer Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza contributed to this report.

Income inequality has dominated Democrats’ political rhetoric across the country, with politicians in Washingtonand on the campaign trail introducing plans to narrow the growing gulf between the rich and the poor.

Yet, in the country’s largest city, which recently elected a mayor who ran on a platform that derided income inequality, the issue is getting more and more visible - especially for some of New York’s low-income residents living in buildings that segregate them from their rich neighbors.

Related: Income Inequality is Hobbling the Middle Class

That’s right: So-called “poor doors” (or separate entrances for poor people, usually located in the back of the building, out of view from the upper-class tenants) are increasingly common among New York’s swanky residential buildings that house the super-rich alongside a handful of low-income people in order to get tax credits from the city.

Last week, the New York Department of Housing Preservation and Development approved a request by a swanky new condo on the Upper West Side to have a separate entrance in a back alley for its lower income residents (in New York City that means people with an annual income of $51,540 or less).

The front doors, meanwhile, will be reserved for wealthy tenants only.

Chinese Buy Up Manhattan Real EstatePlay Video

The proposal was part of an application for the city’s Inclusionary Housing Program, which gives tax credits and other benefits to big real estate developers in exchange for offering some affordable housing units in addition to their pricey condos.

The whole program is supposed to help alleviate the city’s overcrowding and increasingly expensive housing situation.

Last year, the average rent for an apartment in Manhattan was $3,014, compared to the national average of a little more than $1,000, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Related: Why Economists Are Finally Taking Income Inequality Seriously

Extell’s justification for segregating its residents, according to Think Progress, is that it considers the affordable segment to be legally separate from the rest of the building, so they are required to have different entrances.

There are many luxury high rises in New York City that cater to wealthy people, yet also house rent-regulated tenants. Some buildings offer amenities such as gyms, playgrounds and pools to only their higher-paying tenants. Developers, for their part, say that amenities are a way to lure in tenants willing to pay higher prices, and that offering those same amenities to tenants who pay far less would be problematic.

However, the attention surrounding 40 Riverside may spell the end of them.

“The city has just begun to wake up and see that if we don’t act, this is going to be an increasing problem,” Mark Levine, a member of the New York City Council, told The New York Times. Levine and Johnson are working on legislation to expand the city’s anti-discrimination code to include rent-regulated tenants.

But some developers are defending the practice of limiting amenities to certain tenants.

David Von Spreckelsen, senior vice president at Toll Brothers, another company that specializes in luxury residencies (complete with poor doors), told The Real Deal, “No one ever said the goal was full integration of these populations.”

He added, “It’s unfair to expect very high-income homeowners who paid a fortune to live in their building to have to be in the same boat as low-income renters, who are very fortunate to live in a new building in a great neighborhood.”

The escalating controversy surrounding a planned execution in Arizona has caused one judge to cynically suggest that states return to the practice of using the guillotine and firing squad rather than lethal injection.

“The guillotine is probably best but seems inconsistent with our national ethos. And the electric chair, hanging and the gas chamber are each subject to occasional mishaps," Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in an opinion on the court’s decision to temporarily halt the execution of convicted murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood. "The firing squad strikes me as the most promising. Eight or 10 large-caliber rifle bullets fired at close range can inflict massive damage, causing instant death every time."

Kozinski made his comments in protest after Arizona refused to release important details to Wood about his execution, including where the chemicals to be used in the process are obtained.

The death penalty at large and lethal injection in particular have come under increased scrutiny over the past year after a number of botched executions raised questions about whether the procedure constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

However, while public approval of the death penalty has fallen to its lowest level in 40 years, it still remains popular with 60 percent of the country, according to Gallup. Thirty-five percent of Americans say they oppose its use. Like so many issues, support for capital punishment is largely split along ideological lines: 84 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of Democrats support the death penalty.

Wood's lawyers have demanded that the condemned prisoner should have access to information detailing which chemicals or methods will be used to carry out his execution.

On Monday, a federal appeals court ruled that the state cannot carry out Wood’s execution without providing the requested information, meaning that the case will now be placed for consideration before the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful — like something any one of us might experience in our final moments," Kozinski wrote. "But executions are, in fact, nothing like that. They are brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should it. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf."

Thirty-five states currently allow the use of lethal injection to carry out an execution sentence, making it by far the most popular form of state-sanctioned murder.

And while Kozinski might have framed his firing squad comments as biting sarcasm, his insincere recommendation could theoretically be carried out in Utah and Oklahoma. As recently as 2010, Utah executed a prisoner by firing squad but said it will no longer do so unless the inmate requested death by firing squad before the ban went into effect. Similarly, in Oklahoma the state may perform an execution by firing squad if the use of lethal injection and electrocution are ruled unconstitutional.

Three states (Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington) permit execution by hanging.

The guillotine was reportedly used only once in America. But elsewhere it had a much longer lifespan, remaining France’s official method of capital punishment until 1981 when the country outlawed all executions.

Follow Eric Pfeiffer on Twitter (@ericpfeiffer).

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Judge: Forget lethal injection, use firing squad

A federal judge who opposes the death penalty suggests we stop masking "the brutality of executions."
'Guillotine is probably best'