Tel Aviv bus blast shakes Gaza truce efforts

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Israeli police officers examine a blown up bus at the site of a bombing in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2012. A bomb ripped through an Israeli bus near the nation's military headquarters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, wounding at several people, Israeli officials said. The blast came amid a weeklong Israeli offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

After talks in Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Clinton held a second meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before travelling to Egypt for discussions withPresident Mohamed Mursi, whose country is the main broker in efforts to end eight days of fighting.

In Tel Aviv, targeted by rockets from Gaza that either did not hit the city or were shot down by Israel's Iron Dome interceptor system, 15 people were wounded when a commuter bus was blown up near the Defence Ministry and military headquarters.

Israel and the United States branded it a terrorist attack, and a White House statement reaffirmed Washington's "unshakeable commitment to Israel's security".

The explosion, which police said was caused by a bomb placed on the vehicle, touched off celebratory gunfire from militants in Gaza and threatened to complicate truce efforts. It was the first serious bombing in Israel's commercial capital since 2006

In Gaza, Israel struck more than 100 targets, including a cluster of Hamas government buildings, in attacks that medical officials said killed 10 people, among them a 2-year-old boy.

Israel's best-selling Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said an emerging outline of a ceasefire agreement called for Egypt to announce a 72-hour ceasefire followed by further talks on long-term understandings.

Under the proposed document, which the newspaper said neither party would be required to sign, Israel would hold its fire, end attacks against top militants and promise to examine ways to ease its blockade of Gaza, controlled by Hamas Islamists who do not recognize the Jewish state's right to exist.

Hamas, the report said, would pledge not to strike any Israeli target and ensure other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip also stop their attacks.

GAZA BLOCKADE

An Israeli political source said differences holding up a deal centered on a Hamas demand to lift the Gaza blockade completely and the kind of activity that would be allowed along the frontier, where Israeli troops often fire into the enclave to keep Palestinians away from an area near a border fence.

Hamas official Ezzat al-Rishq said the main stumbling block was "the temporary timeframe for a ceasefire that the Israelis want us to agree to".

While diplomatic efforts intensified, Palestinians militants fired more than 30 rockets at Israel, causing no casualties, and the Iron Dome interceptor system shot down 14 of them, police said.

Israel has carried out more than 1,500 strikes since the offensive began with the killing of a top Hamas commander and with declared aim of deterring Hamas from launching rocket attacks that have long disrupted life in its southern towns.

Medical officials in Gaza said 146 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, including 36 children, have been killed in Israel's offensive. Nearly 1,400 rockets have been fired into Israel, killing four civilians and a soldier, the military said.

"GOOD INTENTIONS"

The London-based Al Hayat newspaper, citing sources in Hamas and Islamic Jihad, said Israel wanted a 90-day period to determine "good intentions" before discussing Palestinian demands, a position the report said the groups have rejected.

Rishq said a short-term truce, whose proposed duration he did not disclose, "would only buy (Israel) time" until a general election in January and "we would have accomplished nothing in the way of a long-term truce".

Hamas sources said the group was also demanding control over Gaza's Rafah borders with Egypt, so that Palestinians could cross easily, and Israeli guarantees to stop assassinating Hamas leaders.

Israel, one of the Hamas sources said, wanted a commitment from the group to stop smuggling through tunnels that run into Gaza under the Egyptian border. The tunnel network is a conduit for weapons and commercial goods.

News of the Tel Aviv bus bombing caused oil prices to rise by more than $1 per barrel on concerns the Gaza crisis could lead to wider regional conflict that would disrupt oil flows.

But sources close to Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, speaking after the bus blast, said he was quietly confident a ceasefire deal could still be reached.

Clinton, who flew to the region from an Asian summit, said after Tuesday's meeting with Netanyahu that it was "essential to de-escalate the situation".

"The rocket attacks from terrorist organizations inside Gaza on Israeli cities and towns must end and a broader calm restored," she said.

Clinton earlier assured Netanyahu of "rock-solid" U.S. support for Israel's security, and praised Mursi's "personal leadership and Egypt's efforts thus far" to end the Gaza conflict and promote regional stability.

"As a regional leader and neighbor, Egypt has the opportunity and responsibility to continue playing a crucial and constructive role in this process. I will carry this message to Cairo tomorrow (Wednesday)," she said, pledging to work for a truce "in the days ahead".

"LONG-TERM" SOLUTION

Netanyahu told Clinton he wanted a "long-term" solution. Failing that, Netanyahu made clear, that he stood ready to step up the military campaign to silence Hamas' rockets.

"A band-aid solution will only cause another round of violence," said Ofir Gendelman, a Netanyahu spokesman.

Along the Gaza border, Israeli tanks, artillery and infantry remained poised for a possible ground offensive in the densely populated enclave of 1.7 million Palestinians.

But an invasion, likely to entail heavy casualties, would be a major political risk for Netanyahu, who is currently favored to win the upcoming Israeli election. More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in Israel's three-week war in the Gaza Strip in 2008-9, prompting international criticism of Israel.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Clinton held talks with Palestinian President Abbas, reiterating U.S. opposition to his bid to upgrade the Palestinians' status at the United Nations. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington believed "the best way to achieve statehood is through direct bilateral negotiations". Those talks collapsed in 2010 in a dispute over Israeli settlement building in the West Bank.

"Secretary Clinton informed the president that the U.S. administration is exerting every possible effort to reach an immediate ceasefire and the president expressed his full support for this endeavor," said Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.

"Once the Israelis accept to stop their bombardments, their assassinations, there will be a comprehensive ceasefire sustained from all parties," Erekat said.

A Palestinian official with knowledge of Cairo's mediation told Reuters that Egyptian intelligence officials would hold further discussions on Wednesday with leaders of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group.

(Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem and Cairo bureau; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Video: Attacker stabs guard at U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv

Egypt confiscates warheads smuggled from Libya

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian authorities confiscated trucks carrying explosive warheads and a variety of small-arms ammunition smuggled from Libya, security officials said Wednesday.

A flood of weapons from its western neighbor has added to Egypt's security concerns as police have yet to fully return to their duties since last year's uprising. Smuggled weapons often fall into the hands of Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula, or pass via underground tunnels to the Gaza Strip, the site of fierce fighting over the past week between Hamas militants and Israeli forces.

The Egyptian officials said authorities seized the pick-up trucks, carrying 108 warheads for Soviet-designed Grad rockets, near Marsa Matrouh, 270 miles (430 kilometers) northwest of Cairo on the Mediterranean coast. Suspected smugglers had fled the scene.

Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to brief reporters.

Also on Wednesday in Egypt's troubled northern Sinai region, troops from a multinational observer force fired on protesters demonstrating outside their base against the Israeli offensive in Gaza. Egyptian security officials said that one person was killed and another injured. The 12-nation observer force is part of the peace treaty signed by Egypt and Israel in 1979. American troops make up the largest contingent of the 1,650-strong force.

Libya's revolution last year unleashed a flood of small arms and heavy weapons, including shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, into circulation through the vast Sahara desert of North Africa. Military experts say weapons that cross Libya's porous borders with neighboring Egypt and Sudancould be falling into the hands of Islamic militants.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza have stockpiled Grad rockets and fired them at Israeli territory over the years, including in the latest round of fighting.

US drought worsens after weeks of improvement

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The worst U.S. drought in decades has deepened again after more than a month of encouraging reports of slowly improving conditions, a drought-tracking consortium said Wednesday, as scientists struggled for an explanation other than a simple lack of rain.

While more than half of the continental U.S. has been in a drought since summer, rain storms had appeared to be easing the situation week by week since late September. But that promising run ended with Wednesday's weekly U.S. Drought Monitor report, which showed increases in the portion of the country in drought and the severity of it.

The report showed that 60.1 percent of the lower 48 states were in some form of drought as of Tuesday, up from 58.8 percent the previous week. The amount of land in extreme or exceptional drought — the two worst classifications — increased from 18.3 percent to 19.04 percent.

The Drought Monitor's map tells the story, with dark red blotches covering the center of the nation and portions of Texas and the Southeast as an indication of where conditions are the most intense. Those areas are surrounded by others in lesser stages of drought, with only the Northwest, Florida and a narrow band from New England south to Mississippi escaping.

A federal meteorologist cautioned that Wednesday's numbers shouldn't be alarming, saying that while drought usually subsides heading into winter, the Drought Monitor report merely reflects a week without rain in a large chunk of the country.

"The places that are getting precipitation, like the Pacific Northwest, are not in drought, while areas that need the rainfall to end the drought aren't getting it," added Richard Heim, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center. "I would expect the drought area to expand again" by next week since little rain is forecast in the Midwest in coming days.

He said there was no clear, scientific explanation for why the drought was lingering or estimate for how long it would last.

"What's driving the weather? It's kind of a car with no one at the steering wheel," Heim said. "None of the atmospheric indicators are really strong. A lot of them are tickling around the edges and fighting about who wants to be king of the hill, but none of them are dominant."

The biggest area of exceptional drought, the most severe of the five categories listed by the Drought Monitor, centers over the Great Plains. Virtually all of Nebraska is in a deep drought, with more than three-fourths in the worst stage. But Nebraska, along with the Dakotas to the north, could still see things get worse "in the near future," the USDA's Eric Luebehusen wrote in Wednesday's update.

The drought also has been intensifying in Kansas, the top U.S. producer of winter wheat. It also is entirely covered by drought, and the area in the worst stage rose nearly 4 percentage points to 34.5 percent as of Tuesday. Much of that increase was in southern Kansas, where rainfall has been 25 percent of normal over the past half year.

After a summer in which farmers watched helpless as their corn dried up in the heat and their soybeans became stunted, many are now worrying about their winter wheat.

It has come up at a rate on par with non-drought years, but the quality of the drop doesn't look good, according to the USDA. Nearly one-quarter of the winter wheat that germinated is in poor or very poor condition, an increase of 2 percentage points from the previous week and 9 percentage points worse than the same time in 2011. Forty-two percent of the plantings are described as in fair shape, the same as last week.

Farmers who might normally irrigate in such circumstances worry about low water levels in the rivers and reservoirs they use, and many are hoping for snow to ease the situation. But it would take a lot. About 20 inches of snow equals just an inch of actual water, and many areas have rain deficits of a foot or more.

Greenhouse Gases Hit Record High in 2011

These charts show the concentrations and growth rates of atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide from 1984 to 2011.

The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit a record high in 2011, the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported Tuesday (Nov. 20).

Chief among these heat-trapping gases is carbon dioxide (CO2), the biggest culprit behind global warming. Carbon dioxide levels reached about 390.9 parts per million last year, which is 140 percent of the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million and nearly 2 parts per million higher than the 2010 carbon dioxide level, according to the WMO report.

The international body estimates that about 413 billion tons (375 billion metric tons) of carbon have been released into the atmosphere since 1750, primarily from fossil fuel combustion. About half of this atmospheric carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere, and much of it will linger for centuries, causing the planet to warm further, WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud warned.

Historically, the Earth's oceans and forests have helped balance the atmosphere's carbon equation by sucking up large amounts of the greenhouse gas. But Jarraud said natural carbon sinks might not be able to mitigate the problem as effectively in the future.

"Until now, carbon sinks have absorbed nearly half of the carbon dioxide humans emitted in the atmosphere, but this will not necessarily continue in the future," Jarraud said in a statement. "We have already seen that the oceans are becoming more acidic as a result of the carbon dioxide uptake, with potential repercussions for the underwater food chain and coral reefs. There are many additional interactions between greenhouse gases, Earth's biosphere and oceans, and we need to boost our monitoring capability and scientific knowledge in order to better understand these."

Greenhouse cases trap heat within the Earth's atmosphere and create a warming effect on the climate known as radiative forcing. From 1990 to 2011, radiative forcing by greenhouse gases shot up 30 percent, with carbon dioxide blamed for about 80 percent of this increase, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Besides carbon dioxide, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are also implicated in the greenhouse effect. In 2011, the level of methane in the atmosphere reached a new high of about 1,813 parts per billion, or 259 percent of the pre-industrial level, due to increased emissions from human activities, such as cattle breeding, rice farming and fossil fuel use. The atmospheric concentration of nitrous oxide, meanwhile, hit about 324.2 parts per billion last year, or 120 percent of the pre-industrial level and 1 part per billion above the 2010 level.

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