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sister, Hilba, said Saturday. "They're just accusations. ... We'd like to be left alone."
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• HANEGEV JUNCTION, Israel (AP) -- The Israeli military has begun construction of its largest training base ever, moving operations from some of the country's priciest real estate to the barren sands of southern Israel in a new attempt to realize the longtime dream of making the desert bloom.
• The $650 million construction project is the military's biggest in three decades: Beginning in late 2014, 10,000 soldiers will be moved into the new base 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of the city of Beersheba from their current quarters in the country's Tel Aviv-area heartland.

• The program is designed to streamline combat support training, now carried out at multiple facilities, by funneling it into a single site.
• But critics question whether it will jumpstart the economy of the Negev region as officials promise. They also note the project doesn't even discuss benefits for Arab Bedouin who account for a third of the 500,000 Israelis living in the area.
• Not since Israel pulled up its bases from Egypt's Sinai desert in the early 1980s under the two countries' landmark peace treaty has the military carried out a project of this scope, in terms of cost, number of soldiers involved and sheer physical size, said project director Lt. Col. Shalom Alfassy.
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• CAIRO (AP) -- Al-Qaida's most active branch in the Middle East called for more attacks on U.S. embassies Saturday to "set the fires blazing," seeking to co-opt outrage over an anti-Muslim film even as the wave of protests that swept 20 countries this week eased.
• Senior Muslim religious authorities issued their strongest pleas yet against resorting to violence, trying to defuse Muslim anger over the film a day after new attacks on U.S. and Western embassies that left at least eight protesters dead.
• The top cleric in U.S. ally Saudi Arabia denounced the film but said it can't really hurt Islam, a contrast to protesters' frequently heard cries that the movie amounts to

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