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Guide: why Israel and Palestinians are fighting over Gaza

Israelis and Arabs have been fighting over Gaza
on and off, for decades. It's part of the wider
Arab Israeli conflict.
After World War II and the Holocaust in which six
million Jewish people were killed, more Jewish
people wanted their own country.
They were given a large part of Palestine, which they
considered their traditional home but the Arabs who
already lived there and in neighbouring countries felt
that was unfair and didn't accept the new country.

A history of the Gaza conflict
In 1948, the two sides went to war. When it ended,
Gaza was controlled by Egypt and another area, the
West Bank, by Jordan. They contained thousands of
Palestinians who fled what was now the new Jewish
home, Israel.
Israel's recognition
But then, in 1967, after another war, Israel occupied
these Palestinian areas and Israeli troops stayed
there for years. Israelis hoped they might exchange
the land they won for Arab countries recognising
Israel's right to exist and an end to the fighting.
Israel finally left Gaza in 2005 but soon after, a group
called Hamas won elections and took control there.
Much of the world calls Hamas a terrorist
organisation. It refuses to recognise Israel as a
country and wants Palestinians to be able to return to
their old home - and will use violence to achieve its
aims.
Since then, Israel has held Gaza under a blockade,
which means it controls its borders and limits who
can get in and out. 
Life in Gaza. 
Life for the many of the 1.5 million Palestinians who
live in the Gaza Strip is difficult.

Martin Patience reports from Gaza about
children there (29 July)
Israel controls its coastline and all the entry and exit
crossings into Israel. There is another crossing point
into Egypt. There is no working airport. Because
access is so restricted, not many goods get into or
out of Gaza. Food is allowed in, but aid agencies say
families are not eating as much meat or fresh
vegetables and fruit as they used to. There are often
power cuts.
Large numbers of people are unemployed because
businesses can get very few of their products out of
Gaza to sell, and people don't have much money to
buy things. 
Palestinian refugees
During the 1948 and 1967 wars hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians left, or were forced out of,
their homes and moved to neighbouring countries to
become refugees.
More than 4.6 million Palestinians are refugees and
their descendants, many living in camps in the West
Bank, Gaza Strip, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. They get
help from the United Nations.
Violence in Gaza
Though the Palestinians don't have an army, rockets
are regularly fired from Gaza into Israel. Israelis
living in border towns are used to having to take
shelter and adapting their lives to deal with the
rockets.
In the years since Israel withdrew its troops in 2005,
Gaza has seen several Israeli offensives. Israel says
these were aimed at putting a stop to rocket fire.
In 2008, Israel sent soldiers into Gaza. An estimated
1,300 people, many of them civilians, were killed in
Gaza before a ceasefire was declared; 13 Israeli
soldiers also died.
In 2012, at least 167 Palestinians and six Israelis
were killed during an Israeli operation. After eight
days a ceasefire was declared with both sides
promising to stop attacks.
Most recently in July 2014, Palestinian authorities
said over 200 people were killed by Israeli air
strikes and many more injured. Israel says more
than 1,100 rockets were fired from Gaza, seriously
injuring at least four Israelis, with one Israeli man
killed.
Peace Process
Other countries, particularly America, have worked
hard to settle the fighting between the Arabs and
Israelis but so far nothing has worked. Many people
want Gaza and the West Bank to be turned into a new country - Palestine. Israel won't agree to this unless it feels safe - and Hamas accepts its right to exist. The other sticking points are what will happen to Israelis who've settled in the West Bank, who will run Jerusalem and what will happen to the Palestinian refugees.

Awesome Malan celebrated his birthday 7th August

Malaysia flight MH370: New images of 'possible debris'

Malaysia says it has received new satellite images from France showing potential debris from missing flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.

This is the third set of images in a week of possible debris in the area.
Australia is coordinating the search and earlier said it was investigating sightings of a pallet and other items.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on 8 March en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people on board.
Malaysian officials believe the plane was deliberately taken off course.
Based on information received from a satellite, the search has been in two distinct corridors - one stretching to the north-west of the last known location in the Malacca Straits and one to the south-west.
However, none of the countries on the northern corridor have reported any radar contact, and the satellite images of possible debris in the south Indian Ocean have concentrated the search there.
'Could be anything' A statement published on the Malaysian ministry of transport's Facebook page said: "This morning, Malaysia received new satellite images from the French authorities showing potential objects in the vicinity of the southern corridor.

Search planes involved

• Australia: Two P3 Orions; two Bombardier Global Express; one Gulfstream 5; one Airbus 319
• China: Two IL-76 jets (not yet deployed)
• Japan: Two P3 Orions (not yet deployed)
• New Zealand: One P3 Orion
• US: One P8 Poseidon

"Malaysia immediately relayed these images to the Australian rescue co-ordination centre."

No further details were given.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa), which is overseeing the search, said eight planes were sent out from Perth in western Australia on Sunday over a wider search area.
They included four civil aircraft and a US P8 Poseidon.
Two Chinese IL-76 search planes have arrived in Perth but have not yet been deployed. Japan is sending two P3 Orions.

HMAS Success, under Capt Allison Norris, is the only ship so far in the search zone

A Japanese crew prepares to fly from Malaysia to Perth to join the operatio

  The flights to the search zone are long and tiring - New Zealand's Orion returns to Perth on Saturday

The Australian navy's HMAS Success is the only ship in the area, though others, including from the US, UK and China are on the way.
A key focus on Sunday was the sighting on Saturday of a wooden cargo pallet, along with belts or straps.
Mike Barton, operations coordinator at Amsa, said: "Part of the description was a wooden pallet and a number of other items which were nondescript around it and some belts of some different colours around it as well, strapping belts of different lengths."
He added: "We tried to re-find that yesterday, one of the New Zealand aircraft, and unfortunately they didn't find it. That's the nature of it - you only have to be off by a few hundred metres in a fast-travelling aircraft."
Pallets are used for shipping as well as plane cargo and Mr Barton cautioned the sighting "could be anything".
Amsa released a statement on Sunday's search, detailing the aircraft involved and saying the area would cover about 59,000 sq km (22,800 square miles).
The weather in the area is not ideal.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said on Sunday: "Drizzle and associated low cloud and reduction in visibility will continue through the weekend. Another cold front forecast to pass through the area today will bring rain, low cloud and associated poor visibility."
'I miss my son' Earlier, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the sightings of objects were encouraging signs.
"Obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope - no more than hope, no more than hope - that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft," he said.

The Indian Ocean search was sparked by this satellite image taken on 16 March of an object 24m in size

China on Saturday released a satellite image showing an object floating in the southern Indian Ocean near to the area already being searched, some 2,500 km (1,550 miles) south-west of Perth.
The grainy image was released by China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.
The Xinhua state news agency said the image was taken at about 04:00 GMT on 18 March and showed objects about 120km "south by west" from the site of possible debris shown in another satellite image from 16 March.
Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein put a message on his Twitter account on Sunday urging a "prayer please" for the passengers and crew on flight MH370.
Relatives and friends are still waiting anxiously for news in hotels in Beijing and Malaysia.
In the Everly Hotel in Putrajaya, Malaysia, Kamariah Sharif, the mother of missing passenger Mohamad Razahan Zamani, told Reuters: "Allah give me strength and guidance, I can't tell you how much I miss my son. This has gone on so long. I pray that he is safe."
In Beijing, Wang Zheng, whose father and mother were on the plane, told Associated Press: "I can't eat, I can't sleep. I've been dreaming of my parents every day."

Humans Can Detect One Trillion Smells

Washington (AFP) - The human nose can distinguish at least one trillion different odors, millions more than previously estimated, US researchers said Thursday.

For decades, scientists accepted that humans could detect only 10,000 scents, putting the sense of smell well below the capabilities of sight and hearing.
"Our analysis shows that the human capacity for discriminating smells is much larger than anyone anticipated, said study co-author Leslie Vosshall, head of Rockefeller University's Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior.
The previous estimate for the nose's capabilities -- which are carried out with the help of 400 olfactory receptors -- dated to the 1920s and was not backed by data.
Researchers have estimated that the human eye and its mere three receptors can distinguish several million colors and that the ear can discriminate 340,000 sounds.
"For smell, nobody ever took the time to test," Vosshall said.

US researchers have found that the human capacity for discriminating smells is much larger than anyo …

To conduct their research, scientists subjected 26 participants to mixtures made with 128 different odorant molecules that individually might evoke grass, citrus or various chemicals, but were combined in groupings of up to 30.
"We didn't want them to be explicitly recognizable, so most of our mixtures were pretty nasty and weird," Vosshall said.

"We wanted people to pay attention to 'here's this really complex thing – can I pick another complex thing as being different?'"

Volunteers would sample three vials of scents at a time -- two that were the same and one that was different -- to see if they could detect which was the outlier, completing 264 such comparisons.

Although volunteers' abilities varied greatly, they could on average discern the difference between vials with up to 51 percent of the same components, with fewer volunteers detecting a difference once the mixtures shared more components.
Researchers then extrapolated how many odors the average person could detect if all possible combinations of the 128 odorants were sampled, coming to their estimate of at least one trillion.
Lead researcher Andreas Keller, also of Rockefeller University, said the number is almost certainly too low given that there are numerous other odorants that can mix in countless ways in the real world.
He said our ancestors relied more on the sense of smell, but that refrigeration and the development of personal hygiene have limited odors in the modern world.
"This could explain our attitude that smell is unimportant, compared to hearing and vision," Keller said.
He added that upright posture, which raised humans' noses far from the ground where odors often emanate, may also have contributed.
The sense of smell is closely linked to human behavior and the researchers stressed that studying it could shed light on how the human brain processes complex information.
The study was published in the journal Science.

Pistorius forensic handling queried

LIVE: Coverage of murder trial of Oscar Pistorius                            

A forensics expert has defended police handling of evidence from the scene where athlete Oscar Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

Defence lawyers allege that evidence from the scene went missing and that investigative techniques such as microscopic analysis were not used.
Mr Pistorius says he mistakenly shot Ms Steenkamp through a bathroom door, believing she was a burglar.
The prosecution says he tried to beat down the door and then fired the gun.
 

Defence lawyer Mr Roux said that pieces of the door pictured at the scene subsequently went missing, and that the door was improperly stored in a body bag.

Mr Roux also asked forensic expert police colonel Johan Vermeulen why he had failed to notice marks on the bottom of the door.
 

INTERACTIVE

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• 1. Balcony

   
  Mr Pistorius said in his statement at the start of the trial that he woke in the early hours and walked on his stumps to the balcony, pulled in two fans, closed the sliding door and drew curtains. He said that shortly before he had spoken to Reeva, who was in bed beside him.
  He said he rejected prosecution claims that a witness heard arguing coming from the house before the shooting.
  

• 2. Bathroom noise

  Mr Pistorius said he heard the bathroom window sliding open and believed that an intruder, or intruders, had entered the bathroom through a window which was not fitted with burglar bars.
  "Unbeknown to me, Reeva must have gone to the toilet in the bathroom at the time I brought in the fans," he said.
  Mr Pistorius said he approached the bathroom armed with his firearm, to defend himself and his girlfriend, believing Ms Steenkamp was still in bed.
  

• 3. Shooting

  Both sides agree four bullets were fired. Ms Steenkamp was hit three times.
  Mr Pistorius said he fired his weapon after hearing a noise in the toilet which he thought was the intruder coming out of the toilet to attack him and Ms Steenkamp.
  He said he was in a fearful state, knowing he was on his stumps and unable to run away or properly defend himself.
  Mr Pistorius said he rejected claims that he was on his prostheses when he shot at the door.
  A witness told the trial she woke to hear a woman screaming and a man shouting for help. She said that after the screams she heard four shots.
  

• 4. Bedroom

  At his bail hearing last year, Mr Pistorius said he went back to the bedroom after shooting at the toilet door, then noticed Ms Steenkamp was not in bed.
  Mr Pistorius said he then realised she could have been in the toilet.
  

• 5. Toilet door

  Mr Pistorius said he went back to the bathroom but the toilet was locked, so he returned to the bedroom, pulled on his prosthetic legs, turned on the lights before bashing in the toilet door with a cricket bat.
  Forensics expert Johannes Vermeulen told the court that the height of the marks on the door caused by the cricket bat suggest Mr Pistorius was on his stumps at the time.
  

• 6. Emergency calls

  Mr Pistorius's defence team has said he then called security at the gated housing complex and a private paramedic service before carrying Ms Steenkamp downstairs.
  But security guard Pieter Baba told the trial he had called Mr Pistorius first, in response to neighbours' reports of gunfire, and not the other way round.
  He said Mr Pistorius had told him: "Everything is fine," before calling him back a few minutes later and crying down the phone.
  

The lawyer said that the marks were caused by Mr Pistorius trying to kick down the door using his prosthetic legs.

However, Col Vermeulen told the court in the South Africa capital Pretoria on Wednesday that the angle of marks on the door proved that Mr Pistorius was not wearing his prosthetic legs when he hit the door repeatedly with a cricket bat.
This contradicts testimony previously given by Mr Pistorius in which he said that he put on his prosthetic legs before he attempted to break down the door with the bat.
The damaged toilet door, with four bullet holes, is in court along with a replica of the bathroom where Ms Steenkamp died.
The trial is now in its ninth day and is expected to call on over 100 witnesses.

Oscar Pistorius shot Reeva Steenkamp through a bathroom door

The state is seeking to convince the court that Mr Pistorius and Ms Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, and reality TV star, had an argument before the athlete fired the shots that killed her.
There are no juries at trials in South Africa, and his fate will ultimately be decided by the judge, assisted by two assessors.
If found guilty, the 27-year-old, a national sporting hero dubbed the "blade runner", could face life imprisonment.

Report: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 kept flying for hours after last contact

The puzzle over the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 grew even more complex Thursday when a report emerged suggesting the missing plane may have flown on for about four hours after its last reported contact.

The report from the Wall Street Journal said U.S. aviation investigators and national security officials were basing their belief that the missing plane kept flying on data automatically transmitted to the ground from the passenger jet's engines.

The newspaper attributed the information to two unidentified people who were "familiar with the details." CNN was not immediately able to confirm the report.

If the plane did indeed stay in the air for several hours after it lost contact with air traffic controllers early Saturday, the challenge facing investigators and search teams becomes immensely more complicated.

Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Four more hours in the air could put the plane many hundreds of miles beyond the area currently being searched.

And the new report opens the door to a fresh round of theories about what has become of the plane, which vanished early Saturday while flying over Southeast Asia on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Engine data

The mystery over the fate of the passenger jet, a Boeing 777-200, and the 239 people it was carrying has so far left government officials and aviation experts flummoxed.

Searchers have already been combing a vast area of sea and land for traces of the plane. But so far, with the search well into its sixth day, their efforts have been fruitless.

The Wall Street Journal report said the plane's engines have an onboard monitoring system supplied by their manufacturer, Rolls-Royce PLC. The system "periodically sends bursts of data about engine health, operations and aircraft movements to facilities on the ground," the newspaper said.

Malaysia Airlines sends its engine data live to Rolls-Royce for analysis, the report said, and that data is now being analyzed to figure out the flight path of the missing plane after contact was lost with its transponder, a radio transmitter in the cockpit that communicates with ground radar.

Erin Atan, a spokeswoman for Rolls Royce in Asia, declined to comment on the report Thursday, telling CNN the matter was "an official air accident investigation."

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the director general of Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation, said he was aware of the Wall Street Journal report but couldn't comment further.

Still no trace

As word of the report spread, searchers appeared to draw another blank in the so far frustrating endeavors to find traces of the plane.

A Vietnamese search team reported seeing no sign of debris when they flew over an area of sea that Chinese authorities had flagged as the location of possible remnants of the missing plane.

A plane from Vietnam's National Committee for Search and Rescue carried out a flight Thursday morning over the area identified by Chinese satellite imagery, said Doan Luu Van, International Affairs Coordinator with the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam. He said the committee would send another scouting mission "early this afternoon" to the same location.

China's State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said satellite images showed "three suspected floating objects" that it described as "a suspected crash site."

The images were captured around 11 a.m. Sunday, the day after the plane went missing, but weren't released until Wednesday.

The Chinese agency gave coordinates of 105.63 east longitude, 6.7 north latitude, which would put the objects in waters between Malaysia and southern of Vietnam, near where the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers.

Meanwhile, India is joining the multinational search, dispatching two of its naval ships off the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a military spokesman told CNN on Thursday.

Navy and coastguard aircraft are also expected to be sent toward the Strait of Malacca once "exact coordinates" are received for the search area, Andaman and Nicobar's joint naval command spokesman Harmeet Singh said.

Last known words

Also on Thursday, a Malaysian aviation official told CNN that the last known words from the flight crew of the missing plane were "Alright, good night."

Malaysian civil aviation officer Zulazri Mohd Ahnuar said he couldn't confirm which member of the flight crew sent the message, which was transmitted from the plane back to Malaysian flight controllers as the aircraft transferred into Vietnamese airspace early Saturday