Gazan fire killed an IDF soldier and an Israeli civilian on Tuesday, as over 140 rockets rained down on Israel throughout the day.
Cpl. Yosef Partuk, 18, of Emanuel was killed Tuesday morning in a mortar attack in the Eshkol Regional Council area, the IDF released for publication Tuesday evening. Partuk was posthumously promoted to corporal. The civilian killed was a Beduin from one of the South's unrecognized villages.
The announcements came on the heels of a Gaza rocket attack that lightly injured six people after striking an apartment building in the central city of Rishon Letzion.The upper floors of the building went up in flames, according to Channel 2.
Also Tuesday evening, a person was moderately to seriously wounded when a rocket fired from Gaza struck a building in Ashkelon.
That attack followed a barrage of rockets fired at Ashdod, in which seven people were lightly injured after two direct rocket hits on the city, including one that completely destroyed a grocery store.
Earlier Tuesday, two rockets fired from Gaza towards Jerusalem landed in the Gush Etzion region, with one hitting an open area of a Palestinian village in the West Bank, police and the IDF reported. It was unclear if the rocket caused any damage or injuries, although AFP reported Palestinian paramedics made their way to the scene.
The rocket set off the warning siren in the nation's capital for the second time since the start of Operation Pillar of Defense. The two rockets that set off the first such siren on Friday also landed outside the city.
Also on Tuesday, a salvo of rockets and mortars moderately wounded a reserve Armored Corps IDF officer near the Gaza border. Emergency forces evacuated the officer to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.
Palestinians fired some 20 rockets at Beersheba Tuesday morning, following a relatively quiet night on the home front. The Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted at least 11 of the Grad rockets but three struck the city, damaging a bus, homes and a car but causing no injuries.
Dozens more Palestinian rockets flew toward southern Israel throughout Tuesday, with direct hits also reported in Kiryat Malachi and Sderot. Iron Dome intercepted at least five rockets on trajectories toward populated areas.
The Israel Air Force has struck more than 1,400 targets in Gaza since Operation Pillar of Defense, entering its seventh day on Tuesday, began with the targeted killing of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari last Wednesday.
MDA forces have dealt with over 252 casualties since the beginning of the Gaza operation, including three killed by a rocket in Kiryat Malachi and 21 injured as a result of falling shrapnel. Iron Dome has intercepted more than 350 rockets in total since the start of the operation.
Jerusalem Post
Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has warned that the fiscal cliff poses a "substantial threat" to the US recovery.
In his first speech since president Barack Obama's re-election, Bernanke said that the year-end expiration of Bush-era tax cuts and imposition of deep spending cuts would send the US "toppling back into recession."
Speaking at the New York Economic Club, Bernanke called the US recovery "disappointingly slow". He added: "Indeed, since the recession trough in mid-2009, growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) has averaged only a little more than 2% per year."
He acknowledged some positive indicators: the job market continues to improve, inflation remains low and the housing market appears to be improving. But Bernanke said the Federal Reserve remained concerned about the fragility of the recovery, not least because of threats from abroad.
"The elevated levels of stress in European economies and uncertainty about how the problems there will be resolved are adding to the risks that US financial institutions, businesses, and households must consider when making lending and investment decisions," Bernanke said.
He also said the row over the fiscal cliff presented a major challenge to the US economy. "The realization of all of the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that make up the fiscal cliff, absent offsetting changes, would pose a substantial threat to the recovery – indeed, by the reckoning of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and that of many outside observers, a fiscal shock of that size would send the economy toppling back into recession."
In his speech, Bernanke warned that a row over increasing the US debt ceiling in Washington would have dire consequences. A row over raising the debt limit in the summer of 2011 led to a historic downgrade of US debt by ratings agencies and triggered panic on financial markets around the world. "A failure to reach a timely agreement this time around could impose even heavier economic and financial costs," said Bernanke.
David Semmens, senior US economist at Standard Chartered, said the speech signaled the Fed was unlikely to raise interest rates any time soon. "This is certainly a speech that is signally the risks remain firmly to the downside. We are likely to see the Fed on hold for longer rather than shorter and that they will only be hiking when they are assured of a self-sustaining recovery," he said.
Guardian
Suicides among active-duty forces across the military are now occurring at a rate faster than one per day.
7:46PM EST November 18. 2012 - With six weeks left in the year, the Army and Navy are already reporting record numbers of suicides, with the Air Force and Marine Corps close to doing the same, making 2012 the worst year for military suicides since careful tracking began in 2001.
The deaths are now occurring at a rate faster than one per day. On Nov. 11, confirmed or suspected suicides among active-duty forces across the military reached 323, surpassing the Pentagon's previous high of 310 suicides set in 2009.
Of that total, the Army accounted for 168, surpassing its high last year of 165; 53 sailors took their own lives, one more than last year.
The Air Force and Marine Corps are only a few deaths from record numbers. Fifty-six airmen had committed suicide as of Nov. 11, short of the 60 in 2010. There have been 46 suicides among Marines, whose worst year was 2009 with 52.
"We continue to reach out to and embrace those who are struggling," the Army's chief personnel officer, Lt. Gen. Howard Bromberg, said in a statement Sunday. "We've taken great strides to prevent suicides, but our work isn't done."
Military and medical leaders have been searching for answers to what Defense Secretary Leon Panetta describes as an "epidemic" of suicides ever since the numbers began increasing among soldiers and Marines in 2005.
Military suicide researcher David Rudd sees a direct link with the effects of combat and frequent deployments.
"The reason you're going to see record numbers is because these wars are drawing down and these young men and women are returning home," Rudd said. "When they return home, that's where the conflicts surface."
While post-traumatic stress disorder was not a factor in large numbers of suicides, data show, among nearly 85% there were failed relationships, something linked to frequent separations.
Still, at at least a third of soldiers who killed themselves this year never went to war, and some leaders draw a correlation with societal stress, perhaps related to the poor economy.
"This is not just a military issue or an Army issue," said Gen. Lloyd Austin III, Army vice chief of staff.
"Across the military, we're a microcosm of what's in the nation," said Navy Vice Adm. Martha Herb, director personnel readiness.
The trend in suicides now seems to be impacting the branches that have had fewer troops in combat: the Navy and Air Force.
Suicide rates for the military, while rising, have remained lower than for the general population until this year. The current rate for the Army is close to 30 per 100,000, outpacing an estimated 24-per-100,000 rate among a demographically similar civilian population, according to military statistics.
The record-setting numbers reported by the military pertain only to active duty troops. The Army, for example, has recorded an additional 114 suicides among G.I.s in the National Guard or Reserve who were demobilized — its citizen soldiers.
When Army suicides among those on active duty and demobilized status are combined, the number exceeds the 207 soldiers who have died so far this year in Afghanistan, a difference further skewed because some of those combat zone deaths were also suicides.
The military in recent years has invested more than $50 million in research efforts to produce evidence-based tools for preventing suicide.
Among the first studies is one involving 50 soldiers who attempted suicide at Fort Carson, Colo. It recently found that by teaching them meditation and relaxation skills to manage emotions and relationships, suicidal behavior was dramatically reduced, said Rudd, who is leading the research.
"We weren't thinking about the issue as really one of curing mental illness," he said. "(It) is about installation of hope."
USA Today
Witnesses say masked gunmen have publicly killed six suspected collaborators with Israel at a busy Gaza City intersection.
The Hamas military wing claimed responsibility.
Witnesses said the six men were pulled out of a van Tuesday, forced to lie face down on the street and then shot dead.
Five bodies lay in a pile as a mob stomped and spit on them. A sixth body was tied to a motorcycle and dragged through the streets as people screamed, “Spy! Spy!”
Hamas posted a sign on an electricity pole, naming the six alleged informers.
Israel relies on a network of local informants to identify its targets.
