GAZA – Three men convicted of murder were hanged in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the territory’s interior ministry said.

A total of 14 Palestinians have now been executed since the Islamist group Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction.

No details of the murder cases were given and the Hamas-run ministry identified the executed men only by their initials.

Under Palestinian law, Abbas is supposed to have the final say on whether executions are carried out, but Hamas runs its justice system without consulting the president.

Human rights groups have repeatedly condemned the use of the death penalty in Gaza. Hamas rejects such criticism.

The executions were carried out “in accordance with our religion (and the) rulings of Palestinian law,” the ministry statement said.

Gaza courts have handed out 30 death sentences since 2007, many of them to people convicted of helping Israeli security forces. three Gaza men for murder

Accused Russia on Monday that the West of trying to use an effective blackmail to secure a new UN Security Council resolution that could allow the use of force in Syria – Moscow.

Discussed by the Security Council a new draft resolution on Syria and plan international envoy to the United Nations Kofi Annan to stop the fighting and apparently dead and the escalation of violence in Syria.

The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meeting Annan later Monday, with his country facing severe criticism as a stand in the way of putting an end to the conflict.

Russia strongly opposes the international military intervention in Syria. It was such a move all but ruled out publicly by Western countries, but the text on the decision of the Western-backed circulated by Britain, which calls for the imposition of sanctions would leave the way open for the enforcement of the military under the chapter of the Charter of the United Nations on 7 has made Russia the text of the rival .

The debate comes as a mandate to form a force of observers from the United Nations ends on July 20, and Lavrov insisted that the West was using the deadline as a bargaining chip.

“Unfortunately, there are elements of extortion,” Lavrov said at a news conference. “We are told that if you do not agree to pass a resolution under Chapter 7 of the Charter of the United Nations, we must refuse to extend the mandate of the monitoring mission.”

“We consider that this approach is completely counterproductive and dangerous, since it is not acceptable to use screens as a bargaining chip,” he said.

British project threatens to impose sanctions against non-military government of President Bashar al-Assad, if they did not withdraw troops and heavy weapons from the population centers within 10 days.

Throughout the crisis, which lasted 16 months, the Syrian, who says militants and killed some 17,000 people in fighting between troops Assad and rallies of the opposition, Russia has strongly opposed the international military intervention, fearing a repeat of this type of international action which contributed to Libya Muammar Gaddafi out of power.

Russia says it does not support publicly-Assad, an ally of Russia for a long time, which strongly supports the Annan plan. It keeps no change of power in Syria must be achieved through negotiations, but the Syrian opposition has repeatedly said any negotiations with the Assad regime is not possible to leave power 1.

Lavrov emphasized Moscow’s position on Monday, saying it was unrealistic to try to persuade Assad to resign.

“We will not leave, not because we are defending him, but simply because a very large part of the population in Syria was behind it,” he said.

The comments to Annan last week that he supported the draft resolution, the British and it was not clear yet if you have any great influence to do in Russia during the two-day visit to Moscow, which also includes a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.

Lavrov said he would not describe the situation as a state of deadlock, but expressed his frustration for the continuation of the fighting.

Officials from the Russian special forces killed eight insurgents, including two regional leaders of the rebel groups, in this country’s troubled North Caucasus region, on Saturday – Moscow.

More than a decade after the expulsion of the separatist forces of the Federal power in the war in Chechnya, Russia is still struggling to contain the Islamic insurgency in the region around the Caucasus Muslim in the first place.

Islamist rebels claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow that killed 37 people in January, January 2011, and two bombings that killed 40 people in the Moscow metro in 2010.

Russia has said the National Counterterrorism Committee (NAK) Security forces launched two late on Friday.

A spokesman for NAK leaders in Moscow, who were killed, Islam Mammadov (28 years) and Arsene Mammadov (29 years) was on the list of special forces “wanted since 2010, told Reuters.

The spokesman said they were responsible for several attacks, including bombings against civilians and law enforcement officers.

“We have been the elimination of seven militants, including two local commanders, in an exchange of fire in Kayakent Sergokala and regions of Dagestan,” the spokesman said.

He said that killing 8 militants during an operation in the region of Kabardino-Balkaria.

In the North Caucasus militants say they are fighting for a separate Islamic state in the Gaza Strip from the provinces along the southern border of Russia.

In May, Russian authorities said they had foiled a plot to attack the Winter Olympic Games in 2014 in the resort of Sochi on the Black Sea, an area of the militants considered part of their historic homeland.

CHAMONIX, France — A climber trying to scale Mont Blanc accidently caused a slab of ice to snap off Thursday high in the French Alps, sparking an avalanche that swept nine European climbers to their deaths, authorities said. Eleven other climbers were hospitalized and at least four were still unaccounted for.

As a sheet of snow and ice thundered down the steep slope, several other climbers managed to turn away from the slide in time, regional authorities in Haute-Savoie said.

Two other climbers were rescued as emergency crews using dogs and helicopters scoured the churned-up, high-altitude area in a frantic search for the missing. Their quest, hampered by the possibility of further avalanches, was called off before nightfall.

Three Britons, three Germans and two Spaniards were among the dead, their governments confirmed. The other victim was from Switzerland, according to the gendarme service in the French mountain town of Chamonix.

Early summer storms apparently left behind heavy snow that combined with high winds to form dangerous overhanging conditions on some of the popular climbing routes around Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in western Europe. Regional authorities had warned climbers earlier this summer to be careful because of an unusually snowy spring. Mont Blanc summer avalanche

HANOI, Vietnam — Tran Minh Giang has spent more than a third of his young life in a Vietnamese hospital, and it could be many months more before he can go home. All for a disease that in Asia is as common as chicken pox, and usually about as severe.

The 20-month-old boy was sickened by a particularly menacing form of hand, foot and mouth disease that has killed hundreds of young children across the region. They sometimes suffer high fever, brain swelling, paralysis and respiratory shutdown, even though they may have been infected by people with few or no symptoms.

When the strain hit Cambodia recently, doctors there had no idea what it was, and even now experts don’t fully understand why it can be so devastating. Seven months after becoming sick, Giang still breathes using a ventilator connected to a hole in his tiny throat.

“It may take time, maybe years, before he can recover. When he sleeps, his lungs don’t work,” his father, Tran Nam Trung, said Thursday while fanning the toddler. “When he first got a high fever, I didn’t think that he would be in a situation like this.”

The enterovirus 71 strain, or EV-71, raised fears earlier this week when it was detected in some lab samples taken after 52 of 59 Cambodian children died suddenly from a mystery illness that sparked international alarm. The World Health Organization said via Twitter on Thursday that its investigation has found most cases were caused by the disease.

An expert at the U.N. health agency earlier said it’s the first time EV-71 had been identified in the country, but it’s a well-known pathogen elsewhere in Asia. In the first half of this year alone, 356 people in China and 33 in Vietnam have died from it. common child illness deadly in Asia

Security firm TrustedSec has found that more than 450,000 passwords have been exposed after a successful hack into Yahoo’s Voices website, the Guardian reports. Voices, formerly known as Associated Content before being purchased by Yahoo in 2010, is a news and analysis site that relies on user-generated content.

The big problem with this particular hack, the Guardian says, is that “the passwords for the accounts were not encrypted — meaning that any hacker could scoop up the emails and immediately start using them against other services, including Yahoo Mail.”

TrustedSec says the hack was executed using SQL injection attacks that are commonly used to hack into databases, and security expert Anders Nilsson has an analysis of the data that is linked below. 450,000 Yahoo passwords just got hacked

LONDON — British lawmakers clamored for an explanation Thursday about why the military needs to field more troops to protect the Olympics after a private security contractor that was paid millions to do that failed to recruit enough staff.

The development is considered a major embarrassment for London’s Olympic Organizing Committee just two weeks ahead of the games.

Home Secretary Theresa May confirmed that the British government will deploy an additional 3,500 troops at the London Olympics. That’s because of concerns that the firm G4S — which had been contracted to provide the bulk of the 13,200 private security guards protecting 100 Olympic venues — may not hit its target because of problems recruiting and training staff.

May stressed to lawmakers that the security operation for the Olympics — which officially kick off on July 27 but have soccer games as early as July 25 — had been meticulously planned. Still she said contingency planning had always been necessary amid a constantly changing security environment.

“Concerns have arisen about the ability of G4S to deliver the required number of guards for all Olympics venues,” she said Thursday. “We have now agreed that it would be prudent to deploy additional military support.”

The move brings the total number of military personnel including reservists protecting the games to 17,000 — dwarfing the 9,500 troops Britain has in Afghanistan, and at a time when the armed forces are coping with thousands of job cuts. why Olympics needs more troops

NEW YORK — Bob Dylan and historians at PBS are in a dispute over the whereabouts of an electric guitar that the singer plugged in at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, quite possibly the most historic single instrument in rock ‘n’ roll.

The New Jersey daughter of a pilot who flew Dylan to appearances in the 1960s says she has the guitar, which has spent much of the past 47 years in a family attic. But a lawyer for Dylan claims the singer still has the Fender Stratocaster with the sunburst design that he used during one of the most memorable performances of his career.

If the authentic “Dylan goes electric” guitar ever went on the open marketplace, experts say it could fetch as much as a half million dollars.

The guitar is the centerpiece of next Tuesday’s season premiere of PBS’ “History Detectives,” and the show said late Wednesday it stood by its conclusion that Dawn Peterson, the pilot’s daughter who works as a customer relations manager for an energy company, has the right instrument.

On July 25, 1965, that guitar was more an object of derision than desire.

With his acoustic songs of social protest, a young Bob Dylan was a hero to folk music fans in the early 1960s and the Newport festival was their Mecca. Bringing an electric guitar and band with him onstage to launch into “Maggie’s Farm” was more than an artistic change, it was a provocative act. Most folk purists disdained rock ‘n’ roll. historic guitar in dispute

MILAN – The political movement founded by Ferrari’s chairman held its first meeting in Italy’s wealthy Lombardy region on Thursday, extending its footprint as it gears up to contest national elections in 2013.

The question of who will run Italy after Prime Minister Mario Monti steps down came sharply into focus this week when Monti repeated he would not run and ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s party indicated the billionaire businessman would.

Opinion polls point to a victory for the center left, but with ample space for other groupings to grab votes.

Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo founded Italia Futura as a think tank in 2009, but decided in late 2011 to transform it into a national movement that could field political candidates in the 2013 election.

“Our goals are twofold: to generate content that can be debated in a national election, and to find people to build a new political class to run for office,” said the party’s organizing coordinator for Lombardy, Nicolo’ Bastianini.

Italy’s fragmented party landscape and turbulent political climate makes it extremely difficult to predict the outcome of next year’s elections, increasing the uncertainty for nervous financial markets and Italy’s European partners.

Italia Futura has extended its network across Piedmont, Veneto and Tuscany. Setting up shop in Lombardy, Italy’s largest and wealthiest region, is a key step for the group’s reach and credibility. Offices in Lazio and Sicily, Italy’s second- and third-largest regions, are yet to come. Ferrari boss’s party gears

JERUSALEM — Israel’s vice premier is pessimistic about finding a formula to obligate ultra-Orthodox Jews to serve in the military before a court-determined Aug. 1 deadline.

Moshe Yaalon said failure could endanger Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.

The current law largely exempts ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service. That infuriates many Israelis, since almost all are required to serve. Israel’s Supreme Court ruled the law must be revised.

Yaalon, a former military chief, is from Netanyahu’s Likud Party.

Netanyahu’s largest coalition partner, Kadima, is threatening to quit the government if an agreement on universal conscription is not reached by next week.

Kadima and Likud parties disagree over whether the ultra-Orthodox should face sanctions if they refuse to serve. pessimistic over draft change