Europe offering to help keep peace in Gaza
JERUSALEM – European nations are offering to help enforce the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, a scenario that could provide key international backing for maintaining the peace and step up the pressure on Hamas militants to relinquish power.
The European plan remains vague, and it is unclear whether Israel or the Palestinians will agree.
But a European presence in Gaza could go a long way toward meeting two key demands: the Palestinians’ insistence on freer movement in and out of the territory, and the Israeli requirement that Hamas be kept in check.
French President Francois Hollande laid out the case for European involvement on Thursday, telling international diplomats that Europe could help oversee the destruction of tunnels used by Hamas militants and monitor the territory’s border crossings with Israel and Egypt.
New president sworn in to office in Turkey
ANKARA, Turkey – Recep Tayyip Erdogan took the oath office as Turkey’s first popularly elected president Thursday, a position that will keep him in the nation’s driving seat for at least another five years, and promptly appointed his close ally to form a new government.
Erdogan has tapped Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to succeed him as prime minister. The 55-year-old former academic was expected to announce his new Cabinet on Friday.
Phone call may help with Flight 370 search
CANBERRA, Australia –Shortly after the missing Malaysian airliner disappeared from radar, airline officials on the ground tried repeatedly to call the crew of the Boeing 777 using a satellite phone that might have left clues to the jet’s flight path.
Now an analysis of those failed attempts to reach Flight 370 could alter the search for the plane.
Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said Thursday that the sprawling search area in the southern Indian Ocean may be extended farther south based on the new analysis, which suggests the aircraft turned that direction earlier than previously believed.
Investigators have long been aware of the calls but only recently developed methods to analyze the phone data for hints about the plane’s final hours.
Associated Press
