Although Israel stepped up its threatening rhetoric on Thursday, Gaza terrorists intensified their attacks, firing at least 25 mortar shells at the South overnight, one of which hit a building in the Eshkol region. No one was wounded in the attacks, but the building was damaged.
A PRC terrorist on the...
A PRC terrorist on the outskirts of Gaza City prepares to fire a rocket at southern Israel.
Photo: AP
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Despite the mortar shell fire, Israel allowed humanitarian aid into Gaza on Friday morning.
The army said the first of approximately 90 trucks had started to deliver medicine, fuel, cooking gas and other vital goods into Gaza. The shipment includes a large donation of goods from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's wife.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided Thursday to open the Kerem Shalom and Sufa crossings to allow the transfer of the humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
Considering that she was abandoned by her mother at age 3, forced to pick cotton by age 6 and kicked out of the house at 16, Eartha Mae Kitt did not appear destined for global stardom.
Yet by her 20s she had willed herself into becoming a singing sensation in Europe—the next Josephine Baker, proclaimed critics in the late 1940s and early '50s. In quick succession thereafter, Ms. Kitt seduced American audiences, singing in Broadway and Hollywood musicals in the mid-'50s and purring as Catwoman on TV's " Batman" in the '60s.
Triply blessed with a pliant voice, a palpable charisma and a voracious appetite to succeed, Ms. Kitt conquered virtually every medium she took on, earning multiple Tony and Grammy Award nominations. Yet if she made her triumphs look easy, her journey was tumultuous from start and practically to finish.
The singer-actor-dancer-raconteur died Thursday at age 81 in Connecticut of colon cancer.
Born of a white father (who immediately disavowed her) and an impoverished black mother who gave her away at age 3, Ms. Kitt found herself trapped in a biracial identity that caused her anguish.
COVINA, Calif. — Stinging from an acrimonious divorce, a man plotting revenge against his former wife dressed up like Santa Claus, went to his former in-laws' Christmas Eve party and slaughtered at least eight people before killing himself hours later.
In addition to the eight people whose bodies were found in the ashes of the house, none of whom was identified, at least one other person was thought to be missing, and perhaps as many as three.
Among the total of dead or missing were the couple who owned the home, James and Alicia Ortega, and their daughter Sylvia, the estranged wife of the gunman, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, police said.
Pardo, 45, had no criminal record and no history of violence, according to police, but he was angry after last week's settlement of his divorce after a marriage that lasted barely a year. It was unclear if they had children.
"It was not an amicable divorce," police Lt. Pat Buchanan said.
Pardo chose to exact his revenge at the annual Christmas party his former in-laws held at the two-story home on a cul-de-sac in a quiet Covina neighborhood 25 miles east of Los Angeles.