GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Hamas fighters overran two of the rival Fatah movement's most important security command centers in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, and witnesses said the victors dragged vanquished gunmen into the street and shot them to death execution-style. Meanwhile, an Israeli tank shell struck a group of siblings near the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on Thursday, Hamas security officials said. Hospital workers said five children, all under 16, were killed.

They identified the children as members of the Abu Matrok family. Hamas security officials said they were from the Bedouin community of Showka, east of Rafah. The army said it would look into the report. Hamas also seized control of Rafah in the south, Gaza's third-largest city, according to witnesses and security officials. It was the second main Gaza city to fall to the militants, who captured nearby Khan Younis on Wednesday.

Hamas captured the Preventive Security headquarters and the intelligence services building n Gaza City, major advances in the Islamic group's attempts to take over Gaza. After the rout at the Preventive Security headquarters, some of the Hamas fighters kneeled outside, touching their foreheads to the ground in prayer. Others led Fatah gunmen out of the building, some shirtless or in their underwear, holding their arms in the air. Several of the Fatah men flinched as the crack of gunfire split the air.

A witness, who identified himself only as Amjad, said men were killed as their wives and children watched.
"They are executing them one by one," Amjad said in a telephone interview, declining to give his full name for fear of reprisals. "They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting."

It is a bitter blow to the first woman chancellor of Germany at the end of a year in which Berlin has been the president of the EU. Until recently she harboured high hopes of persuading sceptical members to sign up to a treaty. But yesterday she told the German parliament: "A deal is still not in sight."

All she could offer was the phrase usually applied to the Middle East; a roadmap to a deal in a distant future.

"We want to agree upon a roadmap next week," Mrs Merkel told the German parliament. "If this doesn't succeed, it will not yet be the downfall of Europe, but it will have ... extremely serious consequences."

Mrs Merkel spoke before a round of weekend consultations in Germany with remaining sceptics, including the leaders of the Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic, and as the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in Warsaw, urged Poland to drop objections.

Poland is a major stumbling block. It is threatening to veto a deal by refusing to accept changes to the voting system envisaged under the draft treaty.
Poland, with about 38 million citizens, maintains the new rules favour the bigger countries. Warsaw joined the EU under the Nice agreement, which gave it almost as many votes as Germany with its 82 million residents - and it does not want to relinquish that power.

Mr Sarkozy flew to Poland on Thursday to try to persuade Warsaw to drop its veto threat. "Poland cannot block the European Union," Mr Sarkozy was quoted as saying in the leading daily newspaper in Poland Gazeta Wyborcza. "If every one of us shows total intransigence ... the question arises: what are we doing together?"

Although he is on the way out, Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, gave a strong hint on Wednesday he will resist efforts to resurrect elements of the failed constitution.

Kupelian, author of the bestselling book "The Marketing of Evil," wrote the cover story for the June 2006 edition of Whistleblower magazine, a piece that has since appeared on WND, titled "The war on fathers." Hosted today by Jeff Chamblee and Ed Vitagliano, the program, "Today's Issues," airs weekdays and is broadcast on over 200 radio stations. Kupelian's 40-minute interview is scheduled for 11:15 a.m. Eastern (8:15 a.m. Pacific).

In "The war on fathers," Kupelian explains why:

- Television today portrays husbands as bumbling losers or contemptible, self-absorbed egomaniacs.

- America's judicial system is wildly biased in favor of the mother in child custody disputes.

- In public school classrooms nationwide, in every category and every demographic group, boys are falling behind.

- Between six and nine million American children, mostly males, are taking Ritalin, the most popular treatment for "attention-deficit" and "overactivity" problems at school. But Ritalin is the trade name for Methylphenidate, which the Drug Enforcement Administration classifies as a "Schedule II" substance. "The controlled substances in this schedule," the DEA cautions, "have a high abuse potential with severe psychological or physical dependence liability, but have accepted medical use in the U.S."

The family's investment vehicle, Delta Two, annouced it had bought 123 million Sainsbury's shares at 595 pence per share, making £732m in all. The move takes the family stake to 435 million shares. Ainsbury's was recently at the heart of a takeover battle, fighting off a £10.1bn ($19.9bn) offer from a private equity consortium in April.

The consortium led by CVC Partners dropped their 600 pence-a-share proposal after the founding Sainsbury family, which owns 18% of the firm, had opposed its plans. In early trading, Sainsbury's shares were up 4.3% to 589.5 pence. In the UK, Sainsbury's has about 770 stores and employs about 155,000 people.

They are "defining their lifestyle" by this behaviour, encouraged by celebrity culture, the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV says. The increase in sexually-transmitted infections and high teenage pregnancy rates are "disturbing", it says. The Department of Health said sexual health was among its "top priorities".

The report said recent government campaigns had failed to recognise the link between drink, drugs and sexual health. The IAG also points out that the UK has the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and sexual infections in Europe. Anne Weyman, one of the vice chairs of the independent advisory group and chief executive of the fpa, said: "We need to look at it from young people's point of view.

"They see around them this culture of celebrities, in the newspapers, around sex and drugs, alcohol, all being brought together, and they're not being given alongside that the information and the education they need to handle issues like drugs and alcohol and sex as they're growing up."

Warnings have been issued for Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire. About 100 people have been trapped by rising flood water at a tool factory in Sutton Coldfield.

Train services have been badly disrupted by heavy rainfall, with services in Yorkshire and the Midlands particularly affected. Birmingham to Euston rail services are subject to delays, while roads across Sheffield have also been affected by rain.

The workers, trapped at the Sutton Coldfield factory because the River Tame burst its banks, are not at risk and are waiting for the water levels to recede. The Met Office has warned of heavy rain in much of England, with persistent downpours continuing.

It was drastic action, but it cannot do much to touch the Hamas military wing in Gaza. It is not clear how much influence even the elected Hamas politicians there have over events. The fighting has left masked Hamas gunmen in control of most of the centres of power in Gaza. Fatah's vaunted Preventive Security Force has been defeated, and its headquarters seized.

A state of emergency is supposed to bring violence under control. The risk is that this one will make it worse.
Some Palestinians fear that the end of the unity government could cause the collapse of the Palestinian Authority and the other institutions they had hoped would become part of the apparatus of an independent state.

The institutions, and the hopes behind them, have already taken a severe battering from Israel's military actions over the last seven years and, more recently, by the punishing financial sanctions imposed by Israel and other countries after Hamas won a free election at the beginning of last year. The events of this week feel like a breaking point.

One Palestinian analyst contacted by the BBC said he feared the damage being done to Palestinian society by the current meltdown and the years of pressure that created it would be on a par with the destruction of Palestinian social structures in 1948, when Israel was created. It is an event Arabs still refer to as "the catastrophe".

What has happened also shows the failure of the decision of the world's big powers to isolate Hamas. The financial sanctions they imposed, which caused severe hardship and helped fuel the violence in Gaza by making people even more desperate, were designed to either force Hamas to recognise Israel or to push it out of power. The policy has achieved neither objective.

The Saudis, who have given Mr Abbas vital backing, will not want to see the end of the unity government, since they worked hard to create it. It was supposed to be the centrepiece of a new activist Saudi foreign policy. The Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya, will want to maintain a working relationship with Mr Abbas. Without it, Hamas will be even more isolated. So Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, will try to force Hamas and Fatah to negotiate.

If they cannot, and their future is to spill each other's blood over rival statelets - Gaza and the West Bank - under the eye of the occupying power, Israel, then they have no chance of a wider Middle East peace deal. The military leaders of Hamas do not believe one is possible anyway. And that would mean that the dream so many Palestinians have of an independent state will die for another generation.

Cardinal Renato Martino told the National Catholic Register that THE RECENT DECISION BY THE HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP TO PROMOTE ABORTION "RIGHTS" IS A BETRAYAL OF ITS IDENTITY.

"By pushing for the decriminalization of abortion as part of their platform, Amnesty International has disqualified itself as a defender of human rights," he said. "IF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL IS NO LONGER WILLING TO STAND UP FOR THE MOST BASIC HUMAN RIGHT -- THE RIGHT TO LIFE -- THEN THE VERY INTEGRITY OF THE ORGANIZATION IS CALLED INTO QUESTION."

Amnesty International was founded in 1961 by Peter Benson as a defender and promoter of the inalienable rights of the human person.

(IsraelNN.com) Two women from Gaza - a pregnant mother of eight, and her niece, a mother of four - planned a joint two-pronged suicide attack in Tel Aviv and Netanya. They have been arrested.
The GSS says that the two women "took advantage of Israel's humanitarian policies, receiving a fraudulent medical permit to enter Israel."

One of the women, Fatma Hassan Zeck, 39, is the mother of eight children and is pregnant with her ninth. She worked in the Islamic Jihad employment office for women in Gaza, and was in regular contact with terrorist elements. She served as a coordinator between the Islamic Jihad terror outfit and women who wished to commit suicide attacks against Israel.

Three months ago, her niece Roda Ibrahim Habib, a mother of four, turned to her, and the two of them decided to commit a joint suicide attack. Zeck made contact with Islamic Jihad handlers, and the preparations began.
The two mothers took along some of their young children to the meetings with their terrorist handlers, at which was discussed precisely how the women would blow themselves up. The 19-year-old son of the older woman, an Islamic Jihad terrorist himself, was present at the traditional picture-taking ceremony, at which the women were photographed holding a Koran and a rifle.

The plan was for them to blow themselves up simultaneously in an area crowded with soldiers or civilians in Tel Aviv and Netanya. They were trained in activating explosives-laden vests, and Zeck was also trained in using a Kalachnikov rifle.

The problem of actually getting into Israel was solved as follows: Islamic Jihad was able to obtain a forged medical permit indicating that Habib required an urgent medical check in Ramallah, to which Zeck was to be her escort. Once in Ramallah, they were to go to the hospital and actually have the test done, to avoid suspicion, and then they were to be taken to the intended target locations.

They set out from northern Gaza on May 20 for their mission, but were arrested at the Erez Crossing into Israel.

Israel is often castigated by left-wing organizations that complain that Arabs from the PA are sometimes forced to wait at checkpoints for security checks, and are allegedly denied medical care. The GSS, however, notes that the case at hand is only one of many in which Arabs attempt to take advantage of Israel's humanitarian policies in order to murder Israelis

A senior Palestinian Authority official from the Fatah party told WND today "Gaza has fallen. It's now Hamas land. We (Fatah) have lost." The official said Hamas seeks to create an "Islamic caliphate" in Gaza and that it is expected to put former Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar in control of the terror group's reign in Gaza.

Israeli security officials said they were "gravely concerned" about Iran's influence over the territory Hamas now controls. An announcer on a Hamas radio station said today the group's offensive would proceed to the Ansar Compound and the National Security Forces, where the U.S. has the past few months delivered large quantities of weaponry to Fatah purportedly to aid it in clashes against Hamas. The U.S. recently designated $4 million in taxpayer funds to refurbish Ansar.

Hamas said if the Fatah security forces don't turn over their weapons, including U.S. arms, by 7 p.m. Friday, they will take the weapons by force. The terror group has surrounded Ansar. At least 27 Palestinians, including a U.N. relief worker, have been killed today. In several spots in Gaza, thousands of local Palestinians rallied against the violence, but Hamas gunmen reportedly shot live ammunition into the crowds, killing two protestors at two different locations.

The U.S. in the past year has given large quantities of weapons to bolster Fatah in clashes against Hamas. Hamas officials repeatedly told WND they would seize any American weaponry provided to Fatah in Gaza.

Hamas' Al Aqsa Television broadcast footage of Hamas gunmen brandishing American assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, rocket launchers and ammunition the U.S. reportedly provided to Fatah over the past few months. Hamas fighters also showed what they said were 10 American-provided armored personnel carriers the terror group said it seized from Fatah security compounds it took over yesterday.

Abu Abdullah, considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas' so-called military wing, told WND today, "We informed you many times we would obtain all American arms brought to Gaza in the conspiracy against our government."

According to a recent United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of the World Population Report, these practices, combined with neglect, have resulted in at least 60 million "missing" girls in Asia, CREATING GENDER IMBALANCES AND OTHER SERIOUS PROBLEMS THAT EXPERTS SAY WILL HAVE FAR REACHING CONSEQUENCES FOR YEARS TO COME.

"Twenty-five million men in China currently can't find brides because there is a shortage of women," said Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute in Washington, D.C. "The young men emigrate overseas to find brides."

The imbalances are also giving rise to a commercial sex trade; the 2005 report states that up to 800,000 people being trafficked across borders each year, and as many as 80 percent are women and girls, most of whom are exploited.

It comes despite the two sides saying they had agreed to a truce to end days of fighting which has killed 80 people. But Hamas's military wing says it has so far received no orders to put down its guns. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, is expected to make a statement on the unity government.

Fatah forces are said to have abandoned key positions in central Gaza, following a series of battles on Wednesday in which Hamas made systematic gains in the north and south. Fighting has also spilled over into the West Bank. Analysts say that if the fighting is not checked, Palestinians could be split into a Fatah-controlled West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the idea of an international peace-keeping force in Gaza should be explored. Mr Ban said both Mr Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had floated the option.
The international community has called for a ceasefire, and Arab League head Amr Moussa said the fighting was destroying the Palestinian cause.

The Vatican also said it was suspending all financial aid to Amnesty over what it said was the group's recent change of policy on the issue. Amnesty said it was not promoting abortion as a universal right. But the group said that women had a right to choose, particularly in cases of rape or incest.

"No more financing of Amnesty International after the organisation's pro-abortion about-turn," said a statement from the Roman Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
The council's president, Cardinal Renato Martino, described abortion as "murder".

"And to justify it selectively, in the event of rape, that is to define an innocent child in the belly of its mother as an enemy, as 'something one can destroy'," the cardinal said.
Amnesty says it does not take any position on whether abortion is right or wrong.

But it defended its new position in support of abortion for women when their health is in danger or human rights are violated, especially in cases of rape or incest. "We are saying broadly that to criminalise women's management of their sexual reproductive right is the wrong answer," Amnesty's deputy Secretary General Kate Gilmore told Reuters news agency.

"The Catholic Church, through a misrepresented account of our position on selective aspects of abortion, is placing in peril work on human rights," Ms Gilmore said.

WHERE'S GOD IN THE LIBERAL MORAL EQUATION? NOWHERE TO BE FOUND ? AND WITH GOOD REASON. THE AMERICAN LEFT NOW STANDS FOR THE WHOLESALE DISPLACEMENT OF TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS MORALITY AND THE UTTER REJECTION OF THE DIVINE. "We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion," atheistic commentator Christopher Hitchens writes in his new best-seller, "God Is Not Great." Hitchens, consciously or unconsciously, speaks for the liberal movement.

A recent Gallup poll showed overwhelming liberal support for homosexual activity (83 percent), premarital sex (89 percent), illegitimacy (83 percent), abortion (67 percent) and doctor-assisted suicide (73 percent). Liberals support polygamy, adultery and cloning humans at an exponentially higher rate than conservatives. The top moral issue on the liberal agenda seems to be global warming. ("It is a moral issue, it is an ethical issue," spouts Al Gore.) Liberals seem far less comfortable discussing the moral implications of a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq.

This, then, is the "ethical life" proposed by the liberals who echo Hitchens: the unethical life of moral lassitude. It is a collective program of moral abdication on the international and domestic fronts. It is the substitution of libertinism for liberty, accompanied by the substitution of enforced fairness for individual freedom.

Liberalism's morality is philosophically bankrupt. Its atheism precludes the human capability for free will - without a soul, we are nothing but mechanistic products of genetics and environment - yet it simultaneously insists on an infinite capability for individual and societal perfection. It asserts the potentiality for a triumph of the will, while obliterating the basis for willpower. It champions the "natural," while maintaining that nature need not dictate social relations. IT WEDS DETERMINISTIC DARWINISM TO MARXIST UTOPIANISM.

The president is elected by the 120 members of the Knesset. Peres ran against Reuven Rivlin from the opposition Likud party and the leftist Labor party's Collette Avital.

The Peres Peace Center, headed by the former prime minister, advocates the division of Jerusalem and Israeli withdrawals from the strategic West Bank and Golan Heights. The West Bank borders Jerusalem while the Golan looks down on Israeli population centers and twice was used by Syria to mount ground invasions into the Jewish state.

Peres repeatedly has come under fire by critics for policies and plans many say would greatly undermine Israel's security.