Maybe Diamonds Aren’t Forever

Ian Harebottle is looking for the next Marilyn Monroe. The chief executive officer of London-based Gemfields (GEM), the world’s largest producer of emeralds, says he’s seeking “an A-lister” who can do for the green gems what Monroe did for diamonds when she sang Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Monroe’s performance in the 1953 flick added extra sparkle to diamond sales.

Diamonds still dominate the $ 21 billion precious stone market, accounting for 90 percent of all sales, according to BMO Capital Markets (BMO). But for the first time in decades they have a little competition from the colored also-rans in the gem trade. Rarer than diamonds yet cheaper, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires are gaining favor just as sales for diamonds are beginning to show weakness. Polished diamond prices have fallen for five straight quarters as jewelry buyers in Asia and Europe become more cautious about luxury shopping, according to PolishedPrices.com. Uncut diamond prices are heading for their first annual decline since 2008, according to WWW International Diamond Consultants.

Colored gems’ rising popularity is starting to worry the diamond industry. “During the past three years these other gemstone categories have taken away yet another half percent from our market share,” Moti Ganz, president of the International Diamond Manufacturers Association, said in a speech at the World Diamond Congress on Oct. 15. As a result, colored stones are becoming more valuable. Prices for high-quality emeralds have soared more than tenfold in the past three years, according to Gemfields company filings. Cut rubies have risen in value 63 percent since 2005 and sapphires by 45 percent, according to Gemval, an online gem appraisal site.

The reason for the shift in tastes is multifaceted. Colored stones are still less expensive, a plus for star-struck lovers on a budget during hard times. A 0.9-carat round diamond that’s internally flawless and of rare white color costs about $ 7,000, according to online retailer Blue Nile (NILE). A round emerald with “excellent clarity” of the same size costs about half as much, according to online vendor AfricaGems.

Some of the interest in colored stones is “celebrity driven,” says Caitlin Mociun, a Brooklyn-based jewelry designer. “One reason might be Kate Middleton having a sapphire engagement ring, or even Beyoncé having a black diamond engagement ring. Those things, especially for a mass market, can definitely drive a trend.” Hollywood personality Jessica Simpson’s engagement ring sported two diamonds, but the ruby in its center got all the press and sparked numerous knockoffs. Halle Berry’s ring featured a 4-carat emerald that several celebrity magazines breathlessly announced came from “closed-down mines in Muzo, Colombia.” At a gem trade show in Hong Kong last year, Russell Shor, an analyst with the Gem Institute of America, immediately noticed the new interest in colored stones. “People were all of a sudden really hot to buy emeralds,” he says.

That may not be an accident. Harebottle, whose company produces about 20 percent of the world’s emeralds, is increasing Gemfields’ marketing budget, trying to exploit fissures in the diamond industry that until recent years was controlled by De Beers. Until the 1940s, the colored-stone market was about equal in size to the diamond industry. Then, in 1947, De Beers coined the slogan “A Diamond Is Forever,” later voted the best of the 20th century by Advertising Age. De Beers funded most of the marketing for the diamond industry through its generic marketing, similar to the dairy industry’s “Got Milk?” campaign. That changed in 2004 when De Beers’s monopoly ended after it pleaded guilty to price fixing in the U.S., concluding a 10-year legal battle. The diamond industry became chaotic and the amount spent on marketing plummeted, with De Beers cutting its ad budget in half, according to Stephen Lussier, the company’s executive director in London. The industry tried to reorganize in 2008 at a meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, that led to the creation of the International Diamond Board. But members, including Russian state monopoly OAO Alrosa and mining giant Rio Tinto (RIO), failed to come to an agreement over how to fill the advertising void left by De Beers. “Not all people were willing to do their part,” says Lussier. “De Beers can do its part, but it alone is not enough.”

Anish Aggarwal, a partner at consulting firm Gemdax, says the diamond industry has had “four to five years without any real category marketing, and there are some markets that are suffering, such as Japan.” He adds that there’s “a danger of losing some of the cultural imperative.”

Even if Gemfields does find a modern Marilyn Monroe, it’s doubtful the company will ever be able to match De Beers’s old business model, in which a single firm mines, markets, and largely controls wholesale prices. Still, Harebottle has learned from the former monopoly’s experience. The colored-stone industry has traditionally been highly fragmented, divided up among many small, family-owned outfits. By bringing corporate heft to it, Harebottle hopes to boost supplies and raise prices at the same time. He aims to increase Gemfields’ share of the global emerald market to about 30 percent by expanding production at its African emerald and ruby mines. The company already owns 75 percent of the Kagem emerald mine in Zambia, the world’s largest, and controls 75 percent of the Montepuez ruby field in Mozambique.

De Beers still spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on advertising, according to Lussier. But if Gemfields can demonstrate “clear industry leadership, they will have a chance” to capitalize on the diminished marketing power of diamonds, says Aggarwal of Gemdax.

Harebottle plans to boost his marketing budget to at least $ 4 million next year, up from just $ 150,000 in 2009. Next year’s budget will likely contain money for a celebrity endorser. Gemfields currently pays for about 70 percent of global emerald advertising, says Harebottle, but he doesn’t mind bearing the marketing cost for the entire colored- gems industry: “The fact that people free carry, I don’t mind—so long as it benefits us.”

The bottom line: Gemfields, the No. 1 emerald producer, is adding corporate heft to the colored-stone market, boosting its ad budget to $ 4 million.

With Caroline Winter

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Turbulence on Cuba-Italy flight leaves 30 bruised

ROME (AP) — An airliner flying from Havana to Milan abruptly plunged some 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) when it hit unusually strong turbulence over the Atlantic on Monday, terrifying passengers and leaving some 30 people aboard with bruises and scrapes, airline officials said.

The flight continued to Milan’s Malpensa airport after the plane’s captain determined that it suffered no structural damage and two passengers who are physicians found no serious injuries, Giulio Buzzi, head of the pilots division at Neos Air, told Sky TG24 TV.

The ANSA news agency quoted bruised passenger Edoardo De Lucchi as saying meals were being served when suddenly there was “10 seconds of terror.” He recounted how plates went flying and some passengers not wearing seatbelts bounced about.

Buzzi had said that the drop measured some 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) in a cloudless sky. But Milan daily’s Corriere della Sera’s web site, quoting Neos official Davide Martini, later reported that the plane first bounced up some 500 meters (1,650 feet), then dropped some 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) to some 500 meters (1,650 feet) below the original altitude.

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Cisco to buy cloud-networking start-up Meraki for $1.2 billion

(Reuters) – Networking equipment company Cisco Systems Inc said it will buy privately held cloud networking company Meraki for $ 1.2 billion in cash as part of its cloud and networking strategy.

Cisco said the acquisition of Meraki, which was founded in 2006 by members of MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science, is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco’s 2013 fiscal year and is subject to regulatory approval.

Cisco’s second quarter runs until the end of January.

Meraki – funded by Sequoia Capital and Google Inc – offers Wi-Fi technology, switching, security and mobile device management from the cloud with a focus on mid-sized businesses.

“This is a very logical move for Cisco,” said ZK research analyst Zeus Kerravala.

He said the deal will allow Cisco to offer alternative solutions to traditional Wi-Fi deployment models like smaller competitors, such as Aruba Networks and Ruckus Wireless, which debuted on Friday.

“Cisco didn’t really have anything to counter that before,” Kerravala noted.

Meraki’s Chief Executive Sanjit Biswas said in a letter to employees posted on the company website that Cisco had approached the company several weeks ago.

The company’s founders had at first rejected the offer in favor of continuing Meraki’s strategy aimed at an initial public listing.

“After several weeks of consideration, we decided late last week that joining Cisco was the right path for Meraki,” Biswas said.

He also said that Meraki had achieved a $ 100 million bookings run rate, grown to 330 employees and had a positive cash flow.

(Reporting by Nicola Leske, editing by Gary Crosse)

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One in 20 youth has used steroids to bulk up: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – About five percent of middle and high school students have used anabolic steroids to put on muscle, according to a new study from Minnesota.

In addition to steroid use, more than one-third of boys and one-fifth of girls in the study said they had used protein powder or shakes to gain muscle mass, and between five and 10 percent used non-steroid muscle-enhancing substances, such as creatine.

Researchers said a more muscular body ideal in the media may be one factor driving teens to do anything possible to get toned, as well as pressure to perform in sports.

“Really the pressure to start using (steroids) is in high school,” said Dr. Linn Goldberg, from Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

“You get the influence of older teens in high school, so when you’re a 14-year-old that comes in, you have 17-year-olds who are the seniors, and they can have great influence as you progress into the next stage of your athletic career.”

The new data came from close to 2,800 kids and teens at 20 different middle and high schools in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. During the 2009-2010 school year, those students completed a survey on food and weight-related behaviors, including activities tied to muscle gain.

The majority of kids surveyed were poor or middle-class.

Almost all of them had engaged in at least one muscle-building activity in the past year, most often working out more to get stronger. But up to one-third of kids and teens used what the researchers deemed to be unhealthy means to gain muscle mass, including taking steroids and other muscle-building substances or overdoing it on protein shakes, dieting and weight-lifting.

Student-athletes were more likely than their peers to use most methods of muscle-building. Steroid use, however, was equally common among athletes and non-athletes.

According to findings published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, Asian students were three to four times more likely to have used steroids in the past year than white students. Most Asians in the study were Hmong, lead researcher Marla Eisenberg from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and her colleagues noted.

Their study shows higher adolescent use of steroids and other muscle-boosting substances than most other recent research and “is cause for concern,” according to the researchers. But it’s not clear whether the findings would apply to an area outside of the Twin Cities, or among wealthier students, they noted.

ROID RAGE?

Anabolic steroids are synthetic versions of testosterone, the male sex hormone. Steroids are prescribed legally to treat conditions involving hormone deficiency or muscle loss, but when they’re used for non-medical purposes, it’s typically at much higher doses, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

In those cases, steroids can cause mood swings – sometimes known as roid rage – and for adolescents, stunted growth and accelerated puberty.

Anabolic steroids have become pervasive in professional sports, including baseball, football and boxing. (Another example of performance-enhancing drug use is “blood doping” with erythropoietin or EPO, which is behind the Lance Armstrong cycling controversy that caused him to be stripped of his Tour de France titles last month.)

Experts have worried that the drive to get ahead of competitors at any cost could trickle down to college and high school athletes, as well.

Goldberg, co-developer of the ATLAS and ATHENA programs to prevent steroid and other substance use on high school teams, said it’s important to give teens healthier alternatives to build muscle.

“I would stay away from all supplements, because you don’t know what’s in them,” Goldberg, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.

“What’s important is to teach kids how to eat correctly,” he said. Goldberg said getting enough protein through food, eating breakfast and avoiding muscle toxins like alcohol and marijuana can all help young athletes get stronger without shakes or supplements.

Eisenberg’s team did not find clustering of steroid use and other muscle-enhancing behaviors within particular schools.

“Rather than being driven by a particular school sports team coach or other features of a school’s social landscape, this diffusion suggests that muscle-enhancing behaviors are widespread and influenced by factors beyond school, likely encompassing social and cultural variables such as media messages and social norms of behavior more broadly,” the researchers wrote.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/jsoh2P Pediatrics, online November 19, 2012.

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Schools dubbed ‘exam factories’

18 November 2012 Last updated at 19:05 ET

By Angela Harrison Education correspondent, BBC News

Business leaders say some UK schools have become “exam factories” and are calling for children to be given a broader education.

The CBI is calling for radical changes to schools.

It says there is too much focus on exams at 16 and that should be switched to 18, with more emphasis on skills people need for life and work.

It calls for schools inspectors and league tables to look beyond exam results.

But it says improved attainment would boost the UK’s economic growth.

The CBI, the employers’ organisation, made the recommendations in a report released at the start of its annual conference.

Its director general John Cridland said: “In some cases secondary schools have become an exam factory.

“Qualifications are important, but we also need people who have self-discipline and serve customers well. As well as academic rigour, we need schools to produce rounded and grounded young people who have the skills and behaviours that businesses want.”

The business leaders say their report is for the UK as a whole, but power over education is devolved from Westminster and policies and exams taken differ.

Some of their recommendations relate most closely to schools in England, where Education Secretary Michael Gove is overhauling the school system, including exams.

‘Cult of the average’

Mr Cridland told journalists the CBI was not criticising government policies – or teachers.

“Government reforms are heading in the right direction, but are not sufficient on their own and must go further and faster,” he said.

The report backs England’s academy programme – where schools are encouraged to take on more independence – but is also critical.

It attacks what it calls the “cult of the average”, saying 40% of young people are underachieving while the top 10% are not being stretched enough.

The report says UK schools have had 35 years of “piecemeal reforms” and the result has been a “gentle upswing in performance”, judged by international benchmarks, but also a “long tail of low achievement”.

In England, from 2015, young people will be expected to stay in education or training until they are 18 and the CBI says the focus should be switching more towards exams at 18, with improved vocational A-levels. All children should study English and maths until that age, it recommends, which is in line with Labour proposals.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “The CBI rightly recognises the importance of English and maths, calls for greater rigour in the curriculum and in exams, welcomes the academy programme, wants a new accountability system and backs greater freedom for teachers.

“These are all part of the government’s radical package of reforms that will give England’s education system the thorough overhaul it needs.”

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Rebels in Congo reach door of Goma

GOMA, Congo (AP) — A Rwandan-backed rebel group advanced to within 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) of Goma, a crucial provincial capital in eastern Congo, marking the first time that rebels have come this close since 2008.

Congolese army spokesman Col. Olivier Hamuli said the fighting has been going on since 6 a.m. Sunday and the front line has moved to just a few kilometers (miles) outside the city. After more than nine hours of violent clashes the two sides took a break, with M23 rebels establishing a checkpoint just 100 meters (yards) away from one held by the military in the village of Munigi, exactly 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) outside the Goma city line.

Contacted by telephone on the front line, M23 rebel spokesman Col. Vianney Kazarama said the group will spend the night in Goma.

“We are about to take the town. We will spend the night in Goma tonight,” said Kazarama. “We are confident that we can take Goma and then our next step will be to take Bukavu,” he said mentioning the capital of the next province to the south.

The M23 rebel group is made up of soldiers from a now-defunct rebel army, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, a group made-up primarily of fighters from the Tutsi ethnic group, the ethnicity that was targeted in Rwanda‘s 1994 genocide. In 2008, the CNDP led by Rwandan commando Gen. Laurent Nkunda marched his soldiers to the doorstep of Goma, abruptly stopping just before taking the city.

In the negotiations that followed and which culminated in a March 23, 2009 peace deal, the CNDP agreed to disband and their fighters joined the national army of Congo. They did not pick up their arms again until this spring, when hundreds of ex-CNDP fighters defected from the army in April, claiming that the Congolese government had failed to uphold their end of the 2009 agreement.

Reports, including one by the United Nations Group of Experts, have shown that M23 is actively being backed by Rwanda and the new rebellion is likely linked to the fight to control Congo’s rich mineral wealth.

The latest fighting broke out Thursday and led to the deaths of 151 rebels and two soldiers. On Saturday U.N. attack helicopters targeted M23 positions in eastern Congo.

Also on Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had called Rwandan President Paul Kagame “to request that he use his influence on the M23 to help calm the situation and restrain M23 from continuing their attack,” according to peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous who spoke at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Saturday.

North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Saturday that the Congolese army had earlier retreated from Kibumba, which is 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Goma, after thousands of Rwandans, who he says were backing the rebels, attacked early Saturday.

“Rwandan forces bombarded our positions in Kibumba since early this morning and an estimated 3,500 crossed the border to attack us,” he said Saturday.

In downtown Goma, panicked residents had come out to try to get more information on what was happening. A 45-year-old mother of five said that she has nowhere to go.

“I don’t really know what is happening, I’ve seen soldiers and tanks in the streets and that scares me,” said Imaculee Kahindo. Asked if she planned to leave the city, she said: “What can we do? I will probably hide in my house with my children.”

Hamuli, the spokesman for the Congolese army, denied reports that soldiers were fleeing.

In 2008 as Nkunda’s CNDP rebels amassed at the gates of Goma, reporters inside the city were able to see Congolese soldiers running in the opposite direction, after having abandoned their posts. The Congolese army is notoriously dysfunctional with soldiers paid only small amounts, making it difficult to secure their loyalties during heavy fighting.

“We are fighting 3 kilometers from Goma, just past the airport. And our troops are strong enough to resist the rebels,” said Hamuli. “We won’t let the M23 march into our town,” he said. Asked if his troops were fleeing, he added: “These are false rumors. We are not going anywhere.”

U.N. peacekeeping chief Ladsous said that the rebels were very well-equipped, including with night vision equipment allowing them to fight at night.

Reports by United Nations experts have accused Rwanda, as well as Uganda, of supporting the rebels. Both countries strongly deny any involvement and Uganda said if the charges continue it will pull its peacekeeping troops out of Somalia, where they are playing an important role in pushing out the Islamist extremist rebels.

The U.N. Security Council called for an immediate stop to the violence following a two-hour, closed-door emergency meeting. The council said it would add sanctions against M23 rebels and demanded that rebels immediately stop their advance toward the provincial capital of Goma.

“We must stop the M23″ because Goma’s fall “would, inevitably, turn into a humanitarian crisis,” said France‘s U.N. Ambassador, Gerard Araud. He added that U.N. officials would decide in the coming days which M23 leaders to target for additional sanctions.

___

Associated Press writer Maria Sanminiatelli at the United Nations and Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

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14 Black Friday Tech Deals Start Early at Walmart

1. Apple iPad 2 — 16GB

$ 399

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Top 10 Twitter Pics of the Week]

This year Walmart is starting Black Friday on Thursday, so you can get an early start on your holiday tech savings. You’ll need to gobble up your Thanksgiving dinner early and get over to Walmart; the company is kicking off in-store deals at 8 p.m. local time on Thanksgiving, when you can snag a Nintendo Wii Console for $ 89.

The big electronics event begins at 10 p.m. with deals on a Samsung 43-inch plasma TV and a NOOK Color. Don’t worry that they’ll run out of those door-buster deals either. Walmart is offering a one-hour guarantee on select consumer electronics during Thursday’s 10 p.m. event.

[More from Mashable: Stylish HiRise Stand Elevates Laptops to the Ideal Height]

Walmart says customers inside the store and in line between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. local time can purchase an Apple iPad 2 16GB with Wi-Fi for $ 399 and score a $ 75 Walmart gift card, an Emerson 32-inch 720p LCD TV for $ 148 and an LG Blu-ray Player for $ 38. If the store runs out of stock, you’ll receive a Guarantee Card for the item, which you must purchase by midnight and register online.

If shopping online from the comfort of your home is more appealing than elbowing your way through a jam-packed store, Black Friday specials will be posted on Walmart’s website early on Thanksgiving Day. Head to Walmart’s Facebook page or use its mobile app to check out all the deals.

Scroll through the gallery above to see the top 14 tech deals we spotted, and let us know if you’ll be out shopping the specials this Black Friday.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, el neato

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Golf-Obsession drove Aussie Batibasaga to mental institution

MELBOURNE, Nov 18 (Reuters) – The desire to improve can drive professional athletes to distraction, but for Australian golfer Rika Batibasaga it became a dangerous obsession that saw him handcuffed and thrown into a Florida mental institution.

In 2008, Batibasaga, whose father played international rugby for Fiji, was a 21-year-old living in Florida and grafting on the Nationwide Tour when his world spectacularly imploded.

“I was living away from home for the first time and it all got too much for me,” Batibasaga told Reuters at the Australian Masters in Melbourne on Sunday.

“I had a psychotic episode – it’s called psychosis. I lost the plot because of a lack of sleep – just due to stress.

“And I couldn’t control it and basically just flipped it out.”

Like hundreds of other young talents drawn to the United States to chase their dreams, Batibasaga felt hard work would prove the difference after he carried countryman and former house-mate Jason Day’s bag at a local tournament.

Feeling his game was not far off the professionals in that tournament, Batibasaga threw himself into a punishing training regime of 10-hour days hitting hundreds of balls, followed by running and gym sessions.

“It was stupid. It became an obsession. I felt I needed to push it a lot harder because I was almost there,” he recalled.

“But my brain just wouldn’t turn off and I would just get so frustrated and angry.

“When I went two or three days without sleep, I panicked and that it made it even worse. It just sort of snowballed.”

Into his sixth consecutive day without sleep, Batibasaga snapped.

Wearing just a pair of underwear, he jumped into a car belonging to the owner of the Orlando house he was living in and crashed it in the garage.

He jumped into another car, this one his house mate’s, and was arrested by police in front of Universal Studios.

“They both had their guns out. I guess it’s just America and they love pulling a gun on someone,” Batibasaga, an affable 25-year-old with a wispy beard, laughed.

“I was just driving around, I had no idea where I was going. I was in no state to drive.

“They put me in an ambulance, they obviously thought I was on drugs. They knocked me out at the hospital and I woke up feeling fine.”

With no phone or identification cards, Batibasaga was taken to a mental hospital where he spent “probably the scariest two days” of his life before being checked out.

The same problems came back to haunt him later, though, and he returned home for further treatment and a course of prescription drugs at a Brisbane hospital where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Batibasaga, who made the cut in his debut Australian Masters, has not suffered any further mental illness, and has learnt to take a more measured approach to success and failure.

He continues to grind on the minor tours but has shown signs of his promise, winning A$ 18,459 ($ 19,000) at the European Tour co-sanctioned Perth International last month for finishing joint 25th.

Batibasaga still has the green uniform from the Lakeside mental institution in Florida as a souvenir and wore it out to a New Year’s Eve party.

He says dozens of young golfers struggling to make the step up to the A-grade suffer from anxiety and depression that borders and often crosses over into mental illness.

“It’s rife. Because you’re always by yourself and if you’re not playing well, you go back to your hotel alone,” he said.

“When things aren’t going well, that’s when it’s tough.” ($ 1 = 0.9702 Australian dollars) (Editing by Nick Mulvenney)

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Europe’s Economy: Look Out Below, Again

It’s official: Europe has double-dipped. The 17-country euro zone has fallen into its second recession since 2008, as figures released on Nov. 15 showed gross domestic product declining 0.1 percent during the third quarter. That followed a 0.2 percent contraction during the previous three months, according to the European Union’s statistics office.

There were some unexpected bright spots. Germany and France posted 0.2 percent quarter-on-quarter growth, ahead of expectations. Even some of the region’s most troubled economies suffered relatively modest contractions, including 0.3 percent in Spain and 0.2 percent in Italy.

Overall, though, “Europe’s economic downturn has not only deepened; it’s broadened with a vengeance,” says Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London. Usually solid economies in such countries as Austria and the Netherlands were among those posting quarterly declines.

In some countries, even worse times could lie ahead. “Whereas austerity is starting to ease in Italy, Spain is heading for the point of maximum pain,” economist Holger Schmieding of Berenberg Bank in London wrote in a research note. Recent austerity measures in Spain “will likely lead to a more pronounced recession” during the current quarter and in early 2013, Schmieding says.

France’s 0.2 percent expansion, which followed three quarters of flat growth, “is probably the result of a temporary rebound at the European level,” says Michel Martinez, an economist at Société Générale in Paris. France “is heading to a moderate recession or at best remaining flat.”

The picture isn’t likely to improve soon, Spiro says. “We’re looking at a period of extreme weakness. This is all because of the repeated failures on the part of politicians to shore up confidence in the single currency area.”

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Israel hits Hamas buildings, shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the “Iron Dome” defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh – where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister – and struck a police headquarters.

Along the Tel Aviv beachfront, volleyball games came to an abrupt halt and people crouched as sirens sounded. Two interceptor rockets streaked into the sky. A flash and an explosion followed as Iron Dome, deployed only hours earlier near the city, destroyed the incoming projectile in mid-air.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia’s foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh’s office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister’s office and pledged: “We will declare victory from here.”

Hamas‘s armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday’s rocket attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

“Well that wasn’t such a big deal,” said one woman, who had watched the interception while clinging for protection to the trunk of a baby palm tree on a traffic island.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Among those killed in airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding on motorcycles.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, along with appeals to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

RESERVIST CALL-UP

At a late night session on Friday, Israeli cabinet ministers decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said, in a signal Israel was edging closer to an invasion.

Around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”

“We have a plan … it will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favorite to win a January national election.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

“Israel should understand that many things have changed and that lots of water has run in the Arab river,” Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem said as he surveyed the wreckage from a bomb-blast site in central Gaza.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s manoeuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

“DE-ESCALATION”

Netanyahu spoke late on Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama for the second time since the offensive began, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

“(Netanyahu) expressed his deep appreciation for the U.S. position that Israel has a right to defend itself and thanked him for American aid in purchasing Iron Dome batteries,” the statement added.

The two leaders have had a testy relationship and have been at odds over how to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

A White House official said on Saturday Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to discuss how the two countries could help bring an end to the Gaza conflict.

Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters that Washington “wants the same thing as the Israelis want”, an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. He said the United States is emphasizing diplomacy and “de-escalation”.

In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had spoken to Netanyahu and Egypt’s Mursi, stressing to the Israeli leader that Israel had a right to self-defense and that a ceasefire must be agreed as soon as possible to avoid more bloodshed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt next week to push for an end to the fighting in Gaza, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

The Israeli military said 492 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since the operation began. Iron Dome intercepted another 245.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

Some families in Gaza have abandoned their homes – some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets – and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv, Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Jeff Mason aboard Air Force One, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Crispian Balmer)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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