Photo Collection : Israeli Air Strike - Half of Gaza's dead 'are women and children'

The Israeli army said it launched 700 attacks on more than 300 targets Hamas movement since last night.

A spokesman for the emergency team, Ashraf Al-Qudra said the attack early this morning on a coffee shop in the city of Khan Yunis and caused eight people were killed and 15 others were injured,

"The second attack hit a house in Nusseirat refugee camp, central Gaza, causing a number of deaths and wounded?? Said.


An attack on a car in western Gaza City after morning resulted in three people were killed and four others wounded.

Gaza health ministry says most of at least 81 killed in Israeli air strikes are non-combatants, as missile kills nine watching World Cup semi-final at café. Deaths rise in Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

The Al Haj family never heard it coming: An Israeli missile smashed into their home in the middle of the night, destroying the structure and killing eight relatives in a matter of seconds. A survivor said all the dead were civilians.

Inside the Fun Time Beach café on Gaza's Mediterranean shore, nine friends and siblings gathered around a portable television powered by a generator to watch Argentina take on Holland in the semi finals of the World Cup.

Remains of the Fun Time Beach bar at Khan Younis beach where nine friends were watching the World Cup when they were struck by a fatal Israeli strike

At 11.30pm, half an hour into the match, an Israeli missile blasted through the flimsy roof of the tumbledown structure to scatter the social gathering in bloody mayhem.

The strike killed Mohammed Fawana along with three sets of brothers – Ahmed and Suleiman Astal, 18 and 16, their cousin Musa, also 16, Mohammed and Ibrahim Ganan, 24, and 25, and Hamdi and Ibrahim Sawaleh, 20 and 28.

A third Sawaleh brother, Salim, 23, was still missing on Thursday, with giant earth moving machines upturning huge quantities of sand in a search for his body.


"They had simply come here to watch the match," said Wael Sobih, standing beside a wrecked beach-scape of broken plastic chairs and upturned palm trees. "This is a play area, not a military camp. It was a normal social occasion." Others said the nine often watched football and had been rooting for Argentina. There was no comment on whether any of them belonged to Hamas or other Palestinian militant factions.

The fans' deaths was just one of several graphic examples of the soaring human toll being exacted by Israel's Operation Protective Edge offensive, launched on Monday with the stated goal of stopping rockets being fired into Israeli territory from Gaza, a coastal enclave where 1.8 million mostly impoverished Palestinians live.

Just a few miles down the road, in Magazi, an Israeli missile shorn the Nawasrah family's two-storey home in half on Wednesday afternoon – reducing one side to rubble while leaving the other side neatly intact, its undamaged furnishings and decor exposed to full view.

Mona Halibi,43, who poses with one of the few things to have survived the massive blast that blew her home apart

The strike killed Salah Nawasrah, 23, his four-months-pregnant wife, Aisha, and his two nephews, Nidal, 4, and two-year-old Mohammed, with whom he had been playing at the time.
Zeinab Nasser, 57, an eyewitness and family relative, said the younger child's head was blown off and later found in the garden.


Mr Nawasrah's sister, Somud, vehemently denied that he had affiliations with Hamas or other groups, describing him as an electrician.
In Khan Younis – a town where several Israeli strikes on civilian homes have occurred – eight members of the same family were killed when two Israeli missiles struck a house at around 1.25am on Thursday, killing Yasir al-Hajj, 27, a Hamas member.

Book Review : The Garden of Evening Mists

Synopsis 

Who is Aritomo and how did he come to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

The Garden of Evening Mists is the second novel by Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng, published in January 2012. The protagonist of the novel is the judge Yun Ling Teoh, who was a Japanese prisoner during World War II, and later served as an apprentice of a Japanese gardener. As the story begins, she is trying to make sense of her life and experiences. The novel takes place during three different time periods: the late 1980s, when the main character writes down her story, the early 1950s, when the main action takes place, and World War II, which provides the backdrop for the story.

Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then she can design a garden for herself.

Video about Tan Twan Eng on The Garden of Evening Mists
The Garden of Evening Mists

As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of Evening Mists remains a place of mystery.



Editorial Reviews

The Independent
“The Garden of Evening Mists offers action-packed, end-of-empire storytelling in the vein of Tan’s compatriot Tash Aw. His fictional garden cultivates formal harmony –but also undermines it. It unmasks sophisticated artistry as a partner of pain and lies. This duality invests the novel with a climate of doubt; a mood – as with Aritomo’s creation – of “tension and possibility”. Its beauty never comes to rest.”

Boyd Tonkin, The Independent (UK)
“A rising star from Malaysia . . . Tan writes with breath-catching poise and grace. [The Garden of Evening Mists is a novel of] linguistic refinement and searching intelligence. . . . But for all its mission to ‘capture stillness on paper’. . . The Garden of Evening Mists also offers action-packed, end-of-empire storytelling.”

Dominique Browning, The New York Times Book Review
“[A] strong quiet novel [of] eloquent mystery.”

Booklist
“The unexpected relationship between a war-scarred woman and an exiled gardener leads to a journey through remorse to a kind of peace. After a notable debut, Eng (The Gift of Rain, 2008) returns to the landscape of his origins with a poetic, compassionate, sorrowful novel set in the aftermath of World War II in Malaya…Grace and empathy infuse this melancholy landscape of complex loyalties enfolded by brutal history, creating a novel of peculiar, mysterious, tragic beauty.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“As intricately designed as a Japanese garden, this deceptively quiet novel resonates with the power to inspire a variety of passionate emotions…A haunting novel certain to stay with the reader long after the book is closed.”

Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“Like his debut, The Gift of Rain (2007), Tan’s second novel is exquisite…Tan triumphs again, entwining the redemptive power of storytelling with the elusive search for truth, all the while juxtaposing Japan’s inhumane war history with glorious moments of Japanese art and philosophy. All readers in search of spectacular writing will not be disappointed.”

Philadelphia Inquirer
"Beautifully written...Eng is quite simply one of the best novelists writing today."

Starred Kirkus
"Grace and empathy infuse this melancholy lanscape of complex loyalties enfolded by brutal history, creating a novel of peculiar, mysterious, tragic beauty."

New York Times
"A strong quiet novel [of] eloquent mystery."
Philadelphia Inquirer
"“Beautifully written…Eng is quite simply one of the best novelists writing today."

About the Author
Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang but lived in various places in Malaysia as a child. He studied law through the University of London and later worked as lawyer in one of Kuala Lumpur's most reputable law firms. He also has a first-dan ranking in aikido and is a strong proponent for the conservation of heritage buildings. His debut novel, The Gift of Rain was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Tan Twan Eng lives in Cape Town where he is working on his third novel. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Argentina reaches World Cup final after penalties

Goalkeeper Sergio Romero rescued  two penalties Wednesday to send Argentina into the FIFA World Cup  last that has a 4-2 shootout enlighten the Netherlands as soon as the activity done within a 0-0 stalemate.

A day after Germany  lighted in the World Cup using its professional clinical 7-1 destruction regarding host Brazil, the Netherlands along with Argentina could hardly manage an ambition between them with 120 a few minutes prior to the shootout.




Romero — regarded as a new fragile hyperlink within this Argentine team but not a nice intended for the Monaco club the majority of final year — impeded fines by means of Ron Vlaar along with Wesley Sneijder. With regard to Argentina, Lionel Messi, Ezequiel Garay, Sergio Aguero along with Maxi Rodriguez all converted their spot kicks.

"It's luck, that's the truth. You can dive (the right way) and not make it, like happened to their goalkeeper," Romero said. "I had confidence, thank God things turned out well."
In a matchup of two of football's powerhouse nations, two-time champion Argentina will play three-time winner Germany in Sunday's final at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.

That means an extra bitter end to the tournament for Brazilians, who will have to watch their fiercest rivals play for the world title in their most hallowed stadium against a team that humiliated their nation in the semifinals.
It was the second straight penalty shootout following a 0-0 draw for the Dutch. Against Costa Rica in the quarterfinals, coach Louis van Gaal brought on substitute goalkeeper Tim Krul in the last seconds of extra time to replace Jasper Cillessen and Krul saved two spot kicks.

This time, Van Gaal had used up all three substitutions by the end of extra time and Cillessen had to face the shootout. Van Gaal said he would have made the same keeper swap if he'd had a substitution left.
The young Ajax goalkeeper got a hand to Rodriguez's decisive powerful shot, but could only deflect it into the roof of the net, and then collapsed onto his knees and sank onto his back. Krul walked across the pitch to console him.
Van Gaal said he even had a hand in Romero's heroics, having trained him at AZ Alkmaar in the Dutch league.
"Penalties are always a matter of luck," he said. "And I taught Romero how to stop penalties so that hurts."

Many of Argentina's players stripped off their shirts in the rain at the Itaquerao Stadium and danced in front of their fans.
Argentina reached its fifth final, and its first in 24 years. It won the title in 1978 — beating the Dutch — and in 1986. It lost the championship matches in 1930 and 1990. It played West Germany in both the '86 and '90 finals.
The Netherlands, which has never won the World Cup, was seeking to reach its fourth final.

The tournament's second semifinal had been billed as a showdown between Messi and Arjen Robben, but both star dribblers were subdued. Instead it was midfield controllers Nigel de Jong and Javier Mascherano who stood out as both sides' defenses marked two of the World Cup's biggest stars out of the game.

When Robben finally broke free in stoppage time, Mascherano's perfectly timed sliding tackle blocked his shot at the near post.
De Jong, who recovered from a groin injury to start, lasted just over an hour before being replaced by Feyenoord midfielder Jordy Clasie, who made his World Cup debut.



After scoring 10 goals in three group matches, the Dutch scoring dried up in the knockout rounds. The team managed two late strikes against Mexico but failed to find the net before eliminating Costa Rica in the quarterfinal shootout.
"The issue in a championship like this one is that you score one more goal than your opponent, which we didn't do," Van Gaal said, "We didn't create very much."

Argentina also has found goals hard to come by in Brazil, not winning any of its matches by more than a one-goal margin and recording back-to-back 1-0 wins over Switzerland and Belgium in the knockout stages.

The two sides' attacking impotence was highlighted by a 73rd-minute free kick by Messi from the right corner that sailed over everybody and out of play. Dirk Kuyt followed suit a minute later by sending a long ball off the other end of the pitch.
Argentina tried to finish the match in the second half of extra time, but when the chances came Rodrigo Palacio headed tamely at Cillessen and Maxi Rodriguez mishit a volley.

"Argentina didn't create very many opportunities, if any," Van Gaal said. "So there was a balance in the match."