Good government needs good competititon

July 30, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

An anti-corruption campaign in China shows the shortcomings inherent in a one-party system.

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Israel escalated its military campaign against Hamas on Tuesday, striking symbols of the militant group's control in Gaza and firing tank shells that Palestinian officials said shut down the strip's only power plant in the heaviest bombardment in the war so far. At least 100 Palestinians were killed Tuesday, including 36 who died in airstrikes and tank shelling on five homes, according to Palestinian health officials and the Palestinian Red Crescent. In one strike Tuesday afternoon, 10 members of one family were killed and 50 people were wounded in tank shelling in the northern Gaza town of Jebaliya, the officials said. - AP

Chinese police shot dead dozens of knife-wielding attackers on Monday morning after they staged assaults on two towns in the western region of Xinjiang, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday. A gang armed with knives had first attacked a police station and government offices in the town of Elixku, in Shache county, it said, quoting local police. Some moved on to the nearby town of Huangdi, attacking civilians and smashing and setting fire to six vehicles. - Reuters

A shell fired by warring Libyan militias hit an oil tank Tuesday near the capital's international airport, despite local officials saying they struck a cease-fire to allow firefighters to battle an out-of-control blaze at its oil depot, an official said. The cease-fire agreement, reached late Monday night and mediated by the Tripoli City Council, would mark a rare pause in two weeks of fighting in the capital that's killed nearly 100 people and wounded 400, health officials say. The battle marks a level of violence unseen there since the downfall of longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi in the country's 2011 civil war. - AP

Passengers on a whale watch boat are back on dry land after spending a long night stuck at sea outside Boston. The boat got snagged by a rope on one of its propellers about 15 miles off the Massachusetts coast on Monday. Divers managed to free it early Tuesday, and the vessel docked shortly before 8 a.m. There were no injuries to any of the 157 passengers or six crewmembers. - AP

More travelers are flying than ever before, creating a daunting challenge for airlines: keep passengers safe in an ever more crowded airspace. Each day, 8.3 million people around the globe – roughly the population of New York City – step aboard an airplane. They almost always land safely. Some flights, however, are safer than others. The accident rate in Africa, for instance, is nearly five times that of the worldwide average, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization, part of the United Nations. Such trouble spots also happen to be where air travel is growing the fastest, putting the number of fliers on course to double within the next 15 years. - AP

The NCAA agreed Tuesday to settle a class-action head-injury lawsuit by creating a $70 million fund to diagnose thousands of current and former college athletes to determine if they suffered brain trauma playing football, hockey, soccer and other contact sports. College sports' governing body also agreed to implement a single return-to-play policy spelling out how all teams must treat players who received head blows, according to a filing in US District Court in Chicago. Critics have accused the NCAA of giving too much discretion to individual schools about when athletes can go back into games, putting them at risk. - AP

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's powerful cousin, a close ally of presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani, was killed in a suicide bomb attack on Tuesday, officials said, deepening strains over an election marred by fraud and under a UN-monitored review. Hashmat Karzai was hosting an event for the Eid al-Fitr holiday at his home in the southern province of Kandahar, the cradle of the Taliban insurgency, when a man posing as a guest and described as well-dressed set off explosives, the local governor's office said. No one else was killed in the attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. - Reuters

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

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