Palestinian Cabinet member dead after Israel clash ADVERTISING Palestinian Cabinet member dead after Israel clash RAMALLAH, West Bank — A Palestinian Cabinet member died Wednesday after a scuffle with Israeli troops during a West Bank protest, and images of an
Palestinian Cabinet member dead after Israel clash
RAMALLAH, West Bank — A Palestinian Cabinet member died Wednesday after a scuffle with Israeli troops during a West Bank protest, and images of an Israeli officer grabbing the 55-year-old by the throat before he collapsed quickly stirred Palestinian anger at a time of badly strained relations with Israel.
An autopsy has yet to determine what killed Ziad Abu Ain, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called him the victim of a “clear crime” and a “barbaric act.” He decreed three days of mourning for the minister, whose portfolio included organizing protests against Israeli settlements and the West Bank separation barrier.
The incident threatened to further inflame tensions between Israel and the Palestinians. Calls grew for Abbas to suspend security coordination with Israel — a policy that has become the cornerstone of relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the absence of peace talks.
Abbas met with officials from his Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization late Wednesday to consider a response and said all options were open.
In the session, Abbas held up a photo of the Israeli officer grabbing Abu Ain’s throat. Palestinians circulated the photo on social media under the hashtag #ICantBreathe — drawing a link to the death of an unarmed black man after being placed into a chokehold by a white police officer in New York.
Earth’s water probably didn’t
come from comets
WASHINGTON — The mystery of where Earth’s water came from got murkier Wednesday when some astronomers essentially eliminated one of the chief suspects: comets.
Over the past few months, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta space probe closely examined the type of comet that some scientists theorized could have brought water to our planet 4 billion years ago. It found water, but the wrong kind.
It was too heavy. One of the first scientific studies from the Rosetta mission found that the comet’s water contains more of a hydrogen isotope called deuterium than water on Earth does.
“The question is who brought this water: Was it comets or was it something else?” said Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern in Switzerland, lead author of the study.
Something else, probably asteroids, Altwegg concluded. But others disagree.
By wire sources
