Friday,  April 5, 2013 • Vol. 14--No. 260 • 38 of 43 •  Other Editions

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lice said. Rescue workers with sledgehammers, gasoline-powered saws and hydraulic jacks were struggling to break through the rubble in their search for possible survivors. Six bulldozers had been brought to the scene.
• "There may be (a) possibility people have been trapped inside right now," the local police commissioner K.P. Raghuvanshi said Friday.
• More than 20 people remained missing and three floors of the building remained to be searched, said R. S. Rajesh, an official with the National Disaster Response Force who was at the scene.
• "All the three floors are sandwiched ... so it's is very difficult for us," he said, adding that rescuers were continuing to pull survivors from the wreckage.
• ___

Op-ed piece sparks debate over stone-throwing as Palestinian 'birthright' or act of violence

• JERUSALEM (AP) -- A newspaper op-ed piece by an Israeli writer has revived an emotional debate surrounding Israel's 45-year rule over the West Bank and east Jerusalem: Do Palestinians who throw rocks at Israelis exercise a "birthright" of resisting military occupation, as the author argued? Or is stone-throwing an indefensible act of violence?
• The heated argument -- along with a police complaint West Bank settlers filed against the author -- was another sign of the deepening gulf between the two peoples after decades of conflict.
• The debate comes at a time when Israelis are watching for any signs of a third Palestinian "intifada," or uprising, against the occupation that began in 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.
• Palestinians want the three territories for a state. However, two decades of intermittent Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have come up empty and Israel -- while withdrawing from Gaza in 2005 -- has moved more than half a million of its civilians to the rest of the occupied lands during the four-decade occupation in what much of the world says violates international law.
• In the past 25 years, Palestinians have launched two uprisings. The first erupted in 1987 and was characterized by large demonstrations, often accompanied by stone-throwing. Israeli troops responded with tear gas, live fire and mass arrests. The revolt led to negotiations that produced interim peace deals.
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