This undated photo made available by Thames Valley Police on Tuesday May 14, 2013 shows Kamar Jamil, 27, who along with six other men was convicted in London on Tuesday for sexually abusing underage girls, including one who was just 11, by plying them with alcohol and drugs before forcing them to commit sex acts. The guilty verdict followed five months of testimony indicating the pedophile sex ring exploited girls between 2004 and 2012 in the Oxford area, some 60 miles (95 kilometers) northwest of London. (AP Photo/Thames Valley Police)

This undated photo made available by Thames Valley Police on Tuesday May 14, 2013 shows Zeeshan Ahmed, 27, who along with six other men was convicted in London on Tuesday for sexually abusing underage girls, including one who was just 11, by plying them with alcohol and drugs before forcing them to commit sex acts. The guilty verdict followed five months of testimony indicating the pedophile sex ring exploited girls between 2004 and 2012 in the Oxford area, some 60 miles (95 kilometers) northwest of London. (AP Photo/Thames Valley Police)

LONDON (AP) — Seven men were convicted in London on Tuesday for sexually abusing underage girls, including one who was just 11, by plying them with alcohol and drugs before forcing them to commit sex acts.

The guilty verdict followed five months of testimony indicating the pedophile sex ring exploited girls between 2004 and 2012 in the Oxford area, some 60 miles (95 kilometers) northwest of London. Charges include rape, trafficking and child prostitution.

The case follows several other high-profile ones of sex rings that took advantage of underage girls.

Chief prosecutor Baljit Ubhey said the girls were subjected to "truly appalling" abuse by a network of perpetrators.

"No one, let alone a child, should ever be exploited as these young victims were," she said. "The men who have been convicted have still failed to accept any responsibility for their crimes. They are nothing less than vicious sexual predators."

Prosecutors said seven of the men on trial were of Pakistani descent and two had family roots in North Africa. Other recent high profile cases, including one in Rochdale that involved a similar sex ring, have also involved Pakistani men convicted of abusing young white girls, in some cases sparking ethnic tensions and protests.

On Tuesday, Judge Peter Rook told the men that long prison sentences are "inevitable" because of the serious nature of the offenses.

This case was slightly different in that it involved many instances of child prostitution. The girls were taken to various parts of Britain and forced to have sex with men who paid the convicted men for access to the girls. But as in the Rochdale case, it appeared the police missed opportunities to stop the cycle of abuse.

Most of the victims — whose names cannot be released for legal reasons — gave evidence from behind a curtain at the five-month trial, describing forced encounters, physical abuse and intimidation.

One described how she was even threatened with arrest for wasting police time when she tried to report the abuse. She wept as she recounted how the gang threatened to burn her brother alive unless she had sex with them, saying that nothing happened after she went to police when she had decided to break away from her abusers.

"They threatened on a number of occasions to arrest me for wasting police time for turning up at a police station in a state after running away," she told the court. "Any self-respecting police officer would have seen something was wrong. If you pick up a child who is covered in cigarette burns and bruises, something is fundamentally wrong."

One victim said she was "branded" with a hairpin after it was heated up to show that she was the property of one of the abusers.

Another victim said the men told her she would be shot if she did not have sex with them. She was 14 at the time.

The girls were generally from troubled families and many were living in "care homes" where administrators ignored their frequent absences and their substance related problems.

Oxford County Council chief executive Joanna Simons said she was "incredibly sorry" authorities were not able to stop the abuse earlier.

One teenager who said she was groomed at the age of 11 and turned into a sex slave described being followed into a bathroom and raped by one of the men convicted Tuesday. Her rapist later introduced her to other men and told her to perform sex acts on them. At the age of 12, she told the court, she was forced to undergo an illegal abortion on a living room floor.

The men convicted include Akhtar Dogar, 32, who was found guilty of five counts of rape and other charges and his brother Anjum, 31, who was convicted of three counts of rape and other charges.

Another set of brothers, Mohammed Karrar, 38, and his brother, Bassam, 33, were also convicted of rape involving a child under 13 and other charges, including facilitating child prostitution.

Kamar Jamil, 27, was convicted of multiple rape charges and other crimes; Assad Hussain, 32, was convicted of two counts of sexual activity with a child; and Zeeshan Ahmed, 27, was also convicted of two counts of sexual activity with a child.

Two men were cleared of sex abuses charges Tuesday.

The convicted men will be kept in custody until they are sentenced next month.

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AP writer Cassandra Vinograd in London contributed to this report.

Haleda Somisian, a 20-year-old Rohingya Muslim woman displaced by violence, cries after being beaten by her husband at a former rubber factory that now serves as their shelter near Sittwe April 28, 2013. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Rohingya Muslims living in huts face threats of deadly weather. Julie Noce reports.

SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) - A 16-year-old Muslim boy lay dying on a thin metal table. Bitten by a rabid dog a month ago, he convulsed and drooled as his parents wedged a stick between his teeth to stop him from biting off his tongue.

Swift treatment might have saved Waadulae. But there are no doctors, painkillers or vaccines in this primitive hospital nearSittwe, capital of Rakhine State in western Myanmar. It is a lonely medical outpost that serves about 85,300 displaced people, almost all of them Muslims who lost their homes in fighting with Buddhist mobs last year.

"All we can give him is sedatives," said Maung Maung Hla, a former health ministry official who, despite lacking a medical degree, treats about 150 patients a day. The two doctors who once worked there haven't been seen in a month. Medical supplies stopped when they left, said Maung Maung Hla, a Muslim.

These trash-strewn camps represent the dark side of Myanmar's celebrated transition to democracy: apartheid-like policies segregating minority Muslims from the Buddhist majority. As communal violence spreads, nowhere are these practices more brutally enforced than around Sittwe.

In an echo of what happened in the Balkans after the fall of communist Yugoslavia, the loosening of authoritarian control in Myanmar is giving freer rein to ethnic hatred.

President Thein Sein, a former general, said in a May 6 televised speech his government was committed to creating "a peaceful and harmonious society in Rakhine State."

But the sand dunes and barren paddy fields outside Sittwe hold a different story. Here, emergency shelters set up for Rohingya Muslims last year have become permanent, prison-like ghettos. Muslims are stopped from leaving at gunpoint. Aid workers are threatened. Camps seethe with anger and disease.

In central Sittwe, ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and local officials exult in what they regard as a hard-won triumph: streets almost devoid of Muslims. Before last year's violence, the city's Muslims numbered about 73,000, nearly half its population. Today, there are fewer than 5,000 left.

Myanmar's transformation from global pariah to budding democracy once seemed remarkably smooth. After nearly half a century of military dictatorship, the quasi-civilian government that took power in March 2011 astonished the world by releasing dissidents, relaxing censorship and re-engaging with the West.

Then came the worst sectarian violence for decades. Clashes between Rakhine Buddhists and stateless Rohingya Muslims in June and October 2012 killed at least 192 people and displaced 140,000. Most of the dead and homeless were Muslims.

"Rakhine State is going through a profound crisis" that "has the potential to undermine the entire reform process," said Tomás Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar.

Life here, he said, resembles junta-era Myanmar, with rampant human-rights abuses and a pervasive security apparatus. "What is happening in Rakhine State is following the pattern of what has happened in Myanmar during the military government," he said in an interview.

The crisis poses the biggest domestic challenge yet for the reformist leaders of one of Asia's most ethnically diverse countries. Muslims make up about 5 percent of its 60 million people. Minorities, such as the Kachin and the Shan, are watching closely after enduring persecution under the former junta.

As the first powerful storm of the monsoon season approached western Myanmar this week, the government and U.N. agencies began a chaotic evacuation from the camps, urging thousands of Rohingya Muslims to move to safer areas on higher ground across Rakhine State.

Some resisted, fearing they would lose all they had left: their tarpaulin tents and makeshift huts. More than 50 are believed to have drowned in a botched evacuation by sea.

"THEY ALL TELL LIES"

Sittwe's last remaining Muslim-dominated quarter, Aung Mingalar, is locked down by police and soldiers who patrol all streets leading in and out. Muslims can't leave without written permission from Buddhist local authorities, which Muslims say is almost impossible to secure.

Metal barricades, topped with razor wire, are opened only for Buddhist Rakhines. Despite a ban against foreign journalists, Reuters was able to enter Aung Mingalar. Near-deserted streets were flanked by shuttered shops. Some Muslims peered from doors or windows.

On the other side of the barricades, Rakhine Buddhists revel in the segregation.

"I don't trust them. They are not honest," said Khin Mya, 63, who owns a general store on Sittwe's main street. "Muslims are hot-headed; they like to fight, either with us or among themselves."

Ei Mon Kyaw, 19, who sells betel nut and chewing tobacco, said Muslims are "really dirty. It is better we live apart."

State spokesman Win Myaing, a Buddhist, explained why Aung Mingalar's besieged Muslims were forbidden from speaking to the media. "It's because they all tell lies," he said. He also denied the government had engaged in ethnic cleansing, a charge leveled most recently by Human Rights Watch in an April 22 report.

"How can it be ethnic cleansing? They are not an ethnic group," he said from an office on Sittwe's main street, overlooking an empty mosque guarded by soldiers and police.

His comments reflect a historic dispute over the origins of the country's estimated 800,000 Rohingya Muslims, who claim a centuries-old lineage in Rakhine State.

The government says they are Muslim migrants from northern neighbor Bangladesh who arrived during British rule from 1824. After independence in 1948, Myanmar's new rulers tried to limit citizenship to those whose roots in the country predated British rule. A 1982 Citizenship Act excluded Rohingya from the country's 135 recognized ethnic groups, denying them citizenship and rendering them stateless. Bangladesh also disowns them and has refused to grant them refugee status since 1992.

The United Nations calls them "virtually friendless" and among the world's most persecuted people.

BOAT PEOPLE EXODUS

The state government has shelved any plan to return the Rohingya Muslims to their villages on a technicality: for defying a state requirement that they identify themselves as "Bengali," a term that suggests they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

All these factors are accelerating an exodus of Rohingya boat people emigrating in rickety fishing vessels to other Southeast Asian countries.

From October to March, between the monsoons, about 25,000 Rohingya left Myanmar on boats, according to new data from Arakan Project, a Rohingya advocacy group. That was double the previous year, turning a Rakhine problem into a region-wide one.

The cost of the one-way ticket is steep for an impoverished people - usually about 200,000 kyat, or $220, often paid for by remittances from family members who have already left.

Many who survive the perilous journeys wind up in majority-Muslim Malaysia. Some end up in U.N. camps, where they are denied permanent asylum. Others find illegal work on construction sites or other subsistence jobs. Tens of thousands are held in camps in Thailand. Growing numbers have been detained in Indonesia.

MOB VIOLENCE

Rakhine State, one of the poorest regions of Southeast Asia's poorest country, had high hopes for the reform era.

In Sittwe's harbor, India is funding a $214 million port, river and road network that will carve a trade route into India's landlocked northeast. From Kyaukphyu, a city 65 miles southeast of Sittwe, gas and oil pipelines stretch to China's energy-hungry northwest. Both projects capitalize on Myanmar's growing importance at Asia's crossroads.

That promise has been interrupted by communal tensions that flared into the open after the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by Muslim men in May last year. Six days later, in retribution, a Buddhist mob beat 10 Muslims to death. Violence then swept Maungdaw, one of the three Rohingya-majority districts bordering Bangladesh, on June 8. Rohingya mobs destroyed homes and killed an unknown number of Rakhines.

The clashes spread to Sittwe. More than 2,500 homes and buildings went up in flames, as Rohingya and Rakhine mobs rampaged. When the smoke cleared, both suffered losses, though the official death toll for Rohingya - 57 - was nearly double that for Buddhist Rakhines. Entire Muslim districts were razed.

October saw more violence. This time, Buddhist mobs attacked Muslim villages across the state over five days, led in some cases by Rakhine nationalists tied to a powerful political party, incited by Buddhist monks and abetted at times by local security forces..

U.S. President Barack Obama, on a groundbreaking visit in November, urged reconciliation. "The Rohingya ... hold within themselves the same dignity as you do, and I do," he said. The week he visited, Thein Sein vowed to forge ethnic unity in a letter to the United Nations.

But the violence kept spreading. Anti-Muslim unrest, whipped up by Buddhist monks, killed at least 44 people in the central city of Meikhtila in March. In April and May, Buddhist mobs destroyed mosques and hundreds of Muslim homes just a few hours' drive from Yangon, the country's largest city.

Thein Sein responded by sending troops to volatile areas and setting up an independent commission into the Rakhine violence. Its recommendations, released April 27, urged meetings of Muslim and Buddhist leaders to foster tolerance, Muslims to be moved to safer ground ahead of the storm season, and the continued segregation of the two communities "until the overt emotions subside."

It sent a strong message, calling the Rohingya "Bengalis," a term that suggests they belong in Bangladesh, and backing the 1982 citizenship law that rendered stateless even those Rohingya who had lived in Myanmar for generations.

The Rohingya's rapid population growth had fueled the clashes with Buddhists, it said, recommending voluntary family-planning education programs for them. It suggested doubling the number of soldiers and police in the region.

Rohingya responded angrily. "We completely reject this report," said Fukan Ahmed, 54, a Rohingya elder who lost his home in Sittwe.

Local government officials, however, were already moving to impose policies in line with the report.

THE HATED LIST

On the morning of April 26, a group of state officials entered the Theak Kae Pyin refugee camp. With them were three policemen and several Border Administration Force officers, known as the Nasaka, a word derived from the initials of its Burmese name. Unique to the region, the Nasaka consists of officers from the police, military, customs and immigration. They control every aspect of Rohingya life, and are much feared.

Documented human-rights abuses blamed on the Nasaka include rape, forced labor and extortion. Rohingya cannot travel or marry without the Nasaka's permission, which is never secured without paying bribes, activists allege.

State spokesman Win Myaing said the Nasaka's mission was to compile a list identifying where people had lived before the violence, a precondition for resettlement. They wanted to know who was from Sittwe and who was from more remote townships such as Pauktaw and Kyaukphyu, areas that saw a near-total expulsion of Muslims in October.

Many fled for what Win Myaing said were unregistered camps outside Sittwe, often in flood-prone areas. "We would like to move them back to where they came from in the next two months," said Win Myaing. The list was the first step towards doing that.

The list, however, also required Muslims to identify themselves as Bengali. For Fukan Ahmed and other Rohingya leaders, it sent a chilling message: If they want to be resettled, they must deny their identity.

Agitated crowds gathered as the officials tried to compile the list, witnesses said. Women and children chanted "Rohingya! Rohingya!" As the police officers were leaving, one tumbled to the ground, struck by a stone to his head, according to Win Myaing. Rohingya witnesses said the officer tripped. Seven Rohingya were arrested and charged with causing grievous hurt to a public servant, criminal intimidation and rioting.

Compiling the list is on hold, said Win Myaing. So, too, is resettlement.

"If they trust us, then (resettlement) can happen immediately. If you won't even accept us making a list, then how can we try and do other things?" he asked. The crisis could be defused if Rohingya accepted the 1982 Citizenship Law, he said.

But doing so would effectively confirm their statelessness. Official discrimination and lack of documentation meant many Rohingya have no hope of fulfilling the requirements.

Boshi Raman, 40, said he and other Rohingya would never sign a document calling themselves Bengali. "We would rather die," he said.

Win Myaing blamed the Rohingya for their misfortune. "If you look back at the events that occurred, it wasn't because the Rakhines were extreme. The problems were all started by them," the Muslims, he said.

SCORCHED EARTH

In Theak Kae Pyin camp, a sea of tarpaulin tents and fragile huts built of straw from the last rice harvest, there is an air of growing permanence. More than 11,000 live in this camp alone, according to U.N. data. Naked children bathe in a murky-brown pond and play on sewage-lined pathways.

A year ago, before the unrest, Haleda Somisian lived in Narzi, a Sittwe district of more than 10,000 people. Today, it is rubble and scorched earth. Somisian, 20, wants to return and rebuild. Her husband, she says, has started to beat her. In Narzi, he worked. Now he is jobless, restless and despondent.

"I want to leave this place," she said.

Some of those confined to the camps are Kaman Muslims, who are recognized as one of Myanmar's 135 official ethnic groups; they usually hold citizenship and can be hard to tell apart from Rakhine Buddhists. They fled after October's violence when their homes were destroyed by Rakhine mobs in remote townships such as Kyaukphyu. They, too, are prevented from leaving.

Beyond Sittwe, another 50,000 people, mostly Rohingya, live in similar camps in other parts of the state destroyed in last year's sectarian violence.

Across the state, the U.N relief agency has provided about 4,000 tents and built about 300 bamboo homes, each of which can hold eight families. Another 500 bamboo homes are planned by year-end. None are designed to be permanent, said agency spokeswoman Vivian Tan. Tents can last six months to a year; bamboo homes about two years.

The agency wants to provide the temporary shelter that is badly needed. "But we don't want in any way to create permanent shelters and to condone any kind of segregation," Tan said.

Aid group Doctors Without Borders has accused hardline nationalists of threatening its staff, impairing its ability to deliver care. Mobile clinics have appeared in some camps, but a U.N. report describes most as "insufficient."

Waadulae, suffering from rabies, was treated at Dar Paing hospital, whose lone worker, Maung Maung Hla, was overwhelmed. "We have run out of antibiotics," he said. "There is no malaria medicine. There's no medicine for tuberculosis or diabetes. No vaccines. There's no equipment to check peoples' condition. There are no drips for people suffering from acute diarrhea."

State spokesman Win Myaing said Rakhine doctors feared entering the camps. "It's reached a stage where they say they'd quit their jobs before they would go to these places," he said.

The treatment of the Rohingya contrasts with that of some 4,080 displaced ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in central Sittwe. They can leave their camps freely, work in the city, move in with relatives in nearby villages and rebuild, helped by an outpouring of aid from Burmese business leaders.

Hset Hlaing, 33, who survives on handouts from aid agencies at Thae Chaung camp, recalls how he earned 10,000 kyat ($11 a day) from a general-goods stall in Sittwe before his business and home went up in flames last June. Like other Muslims, he refuses to accept the term Bengali.

"I don't want to go to another country. I was born here," he says, sipping tea in a bamboo shack. "But if the government won't accept us, we will leave. We'll go by boat. We'll go to a country that can accept us."

(Edited by Andrew R.C. Marshall and Bill Tarrant.)

In this image provided by the U.S. Navy an X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator is towed Monday, May 13, 2013 into the hangar bay of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush. The carrier is scheduled to be the first aircraft carrier to catapult-launch an unmanned aircraft from its flight deck Tuesday May 14, 2013. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication (AP Photo/US Navy, Specialist 2nd Class Timothy Walter)

ABOARD THE USS GEORGE H.W. BUSH (AP) — A drone the size of a fighter jet took off from the deck of an American aircraft carrier for the first time Tuesday in a test flight that could eventually open the way for the U.S. to launch unmanned aircraftfrom just about any place in the world.

The X-47B is the first drone designed to take off and land on a carrier, meaning the U.S. military would not need permission from other countries to use their bases.

"As our access to overseas ports, forward operating locations and airspace is diminished around the world, the value of the aircraft carrier and the air wing becomes more and more important," Rear Adm. Ted Branch, commander of Naval Air Forces Atlantic, said after the flight off the Virginia coast. "So today is history."

The move to expand the capabilities of the nation's drones comes amid growing criticism of America's use of Predators and Reapers to gather intelligence and carry out lethal missile attacks against terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.

Critics in the U.S. and abroad have charged that drone strikes cause widespread civilian deaths and are conducted with inadequate oversight.

Still, defense analysts say drones are the future of warfare.

The new Joint Strike Fighter jet "might be the last manned fighter the U.S. ever builds. They're so expensive, they're so complex, and you put a human at risk every time it takes off from a carrier," said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"This is the next generation of military technology — the unmanned vehicles, the unmanned submersibles, the unmanned aircraft. This will be the future of warfare, and it will be a warfare that is a little less risky for humans but maybe a little more effective when it comes to delivering weapons and effect."

While the X-47B isn't intended for operational use, it will help Navy officials develop future carrier-based drones. Those drones could begin operating by 2020, according to Rear Adm. Mat Winter, the Navy's program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons.

The X-47B is far bigger than the Predator, has three times the range and can be programmed to carry out missions with no human intervention, the Navy said.

While the X-47B isn't a stealth aircraft, it was designed with the low profile of one. That will help in the development of future stealth drones, which would be valuable as the military changes its focus from the Middle East to the Pacific, where a number of countries' air defenses are a lot stronger than Afghanistan's.

"Unmanned systems would be the likely choice in a theater or an environment that was highly defended or dangerous where we wouldn't want to send manned aircraft," Branch said.

During Tuesday's flight, the X-47B used a steam catapult to launch, just as traditional Navy warplanes do. The unarmed aircraft then made two low approaches toward the aircraft carrier as it if was going to land, before being waved off and returning to a higher altitude. The jet then landed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland about an hour later.

The next critical test for the tailless plane will come this summer, when it attempts to land on a moving aircraft carrier, one of the most difficult tasks for Navy pilots.

Earlier this month, the X-47B successfully landed at the air station using a tailhook to catch a cable and bring it to a quick stop, just as planes setting down on carriers have to do.

The X-47B has a wingspan of about 62 feet and weighs 14,000 pounds, versus nearly 49 feet and about 1,100 pounds for the Predator.

While Predators are typically piloted via remote control by someone in the U.S., the X-47B relies only on computer programs to tell it where to fly unless a human operator needs to step in. Eventually, one person may be able to control multiple unmanned aircraft at once, Branch said.

The group Human Rights Watch said it is troubled by what it described as a trend toward the development of fully autonomous weapons that can choose and fire upon targets with no human intervention.

"We're saying you must have meaningful human control over key battlefield decisions of who lives and who dies. That should not be left up to the weapons system itself," said Steve Goose, director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch.

Developed by Northrop Grumman under a 2007 contract at a cost of $1.4 billion, the X-47B is capable of carrying weapons and is designed to be the forerunner for a drone program that will provide around-the-clock intelligence, surveillance and targeting, according to the Navy, which has been giving updates on the project over the past few years.

The X-47B can reach an altitude of more than 40,000 feet and has a range of more than 2,100 nautical miles, versus 675 for the Predator. The Navy plans to show the drone can be refueled in flight, which would give it even greater range.

FILE - In this May 7, 2013 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center left, and his wife Sara, center right, attend the ribbon cutting ceremony at the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum in Shanghai, China. As his government is slashing welfare benefits and hiking takes for the working class to overcome a huge deficit, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is finding himself under fire again for his lavish lifestyle. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

FILE In this Aug. 26 1997 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu draws his cigar while pondering a question during a press luncheon at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Tokyo. As his government is slashing welfare benefits and hiking takes for the working class to overcome a huge deficit, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is finding himself under fire again for his lavish lifestyle. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye, File)

JERUSALEM (AP) — For years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saddled with an image of a cigar-smoking, cognac-drinking socialite. Now a new disclosure about his soaring spending on housekeeping, furniture, clothing and other expenses is increasing pressure on him in a country whose leaders once were known for washing their own dishes and taking out the garbage.

The uproar, which began with a TV station's report that Netanyahuspent $127,000 in public funds for a special sleeping cabin on a recent five-hour flight to London, fuels criticism that he is out of touch with average Israelis who are struggling with tax increases amid a huge budget deficit.

Netanyahu's expenses have soared nearly 80 percent since he took office in 2009, totaling about $905,000 last year, according to a civil liberties group that obtained government figures after filing a freedom of information request.

His spending on catering, housekeeping, cleaning, furniture, clothing and makeup all doubled during the four-year period, according to the group, called the Movement for Freedom of Information.

Netanyahu and his family split their time among three homes, including an official Jerusalem residence, a private apartment in Jerusalem and a villa in the upscale coastal town of Caesarea.

Although Netanyahu was re-elected in January, his victory margin was much narrower than expected. The vote came on the heels of a protest movement against Israel's high cost of living and widening gaps between rich and poor, and the campaign focused largely on domestic economic issues.

The new national budget, passed Monday, increases income, sales and real estate taxes while cutting family subsidies and medical benefits. Additional taxes were also slapped on cigarettes, alcohol and luxury goods.

Against this backdrop, veteran Israeli political reporter Shimon Shiffer recounted in the Yediot Ahronot daily that Netanyahu and his wife Sara are always accompanied abroad by hairdressers and makeup artists. On a recent flight with Netanyahu, he said he saw two young men holding large bags.

"For a moment, under the influence of movies I'd seen about things that can happen in the American president's plane, I thought that it might be the suitcase containing the codes to operate the nuclear weapons that Israel allegedly possesses," he wrote.

"A brief investigation turned up slightly less heroic results: The two men were hairdressers who had been flown ... to make sure his hair was properly styled and brushed," Shiffer wrote.

In a statement, the prime minister's office said the figures included expenses for events and working meetings that took place at the official residence.

Israeli leaders were once lauded for their modesty. Prime ministers lived in humble homes, took the bus to work and performed household tasks like washing the dishes and taking out the garbage. But as Israel has evolved from its socialist, agrarian roots to an affluent, high-tech power, its leaders have also taken a liking to the spoils of office.

Netanyahu isn't the first leader to be criticized by Israelis for living it up. Former Defense Minister Ehud Barak angered his Labor party supporters with a lavish lifestyle that included buying a Tel Aviv apartment reportedly worth more than $10 million. And Ehud Olmert, who served as prime minister before Netanyahu, was known for his love of the finer things in life like fancy pens and cigars.

Israeli leaders are of course not alone in this regard. Two runways at Los Angeles International Airport were shut down for nearly an hour in 1993 while U.S. President Bill Clinton got a haircut from a high-priced hairdresser while Air Force One sat on the tarmac. He later said it was a mistake and that he never meant to inconvenience anyone.

Though not linked to major corruption scandals like some of his predecessors, Netanyahu has developed a reputation for small-scale antics with the public coffers.

Earlier this year, Netanyahu was forced to stop buying ice cream from his favorite Jerusalem parlor after an Israeli newspaper discovered his office was spending $2,700 a year for the treat.

His wife has also come under fire for reportedly treating her domestic staff poorly, her expensive tastes and for insisting on traveling overseas with her husband.

Reflecting the public mood, famed Israeli photographer David Rubinger published a photo he took in the early 1980s of then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin slouched across two seats in a plane, sound asleep, his legs covered by a simple red blanket. In an accompanying essay, he said the image highlighted how leaders have since abandoned their role of setting personal examples.

"I grew up at a time when half the ministers in the Israeli government were kibbutz (collective village) members, who on Saturdays would go home to their kibbutzim to work in the kitchen," he wrote in Yediot Ahronot. "I don't think the prime minister has to sleep in a seat. Maybe some kind of bed has to be provided for him, but it should be done at the right time, not the same week that cuts are being made to others."

Netanyahu is said to have a painful back condition.

The Israeli prime minister's office does not have its own plane, in contrast with the U.S. presidential aircraft, Air Force One. Instead, Israeli leaders must charter a plane when traveling abroad. Some analysts say it would be cheaper in the long run to purchase and maintain a special plane reserved for official travel by the prime minister and other officials.