Gaza balloons again draw fire from Israel
JERUSALEM -- Israel launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip late Thursday for a second time since a shaky cease-fire ended last month's 11-day conflict after activists mobilized by the territory's militant Hamas rulers sent incendiary balloons into Israel for a third-straight day.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the strikes, which were reported by media outlets and could be heard from Gaza City. Israel also carried out airstrikes early Wednesday, targeting what it is said were Hamas facilities, without killing or wounding anyone.
Earlier, Israeli police used stun grenades and a water cannon spraying "skunk" water to disperse Palestinian protesters from the Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem, the epicenter of weeks of protests and clashes with police in the run-up to May's conflict.
In a separate incident, a Palestinian teenager died Thursday after being shot by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank during a protest against a settlement outpost, the fourth demonstrator to be killed since the outpost was established last month.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that a soldier stationed near the outpost in the West Bank saw a group of Palestinians approaching, and that one "hurled a suspicious object at him, which exploded adjacent to the soldier." The military said that the soldier fired in the air, then shot the Palestinian who threw the object.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Thursday that Ahmad Shamsa, 15, died of a gunshot wound suffered a day earlier.
The Israeli military also shot and killed a Palestinian woman on Wednesday, saying she had tried to ram her car into a group of soldiers guarding a West Bank construction site.
The family of Mai Afaneh insisted she had no reason or ability to carry out an attack.
Burnt ship sinks to bottom off Sri Lanka
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- A container ship carrying chemicals sank off Sri Lanka's capital on Thursday, nearly a month after catching fire, raising concerns about a possible environmental disaster.
The ship's operator said the wreck of the Singapore-flagged X-Press Pearl "is now wholly sitting on the seabed at a depth of 70 feet."
A salvage crew was at the site to deal with any debris and report any spill, said the operator, X-Press Feeders.
The head of Sri Lanka's Marine Environment Protection Authority, Darshani Lahandapura, said the ship had sunk, adding that it likely will be unsafe to do much about it for some time because of rough monsoon seas.
"The sea is very violent. In the rough season, we can't do anything," she said.
The monsoon season started last month and usually ends in September.
The fire broke out on the vessel on May 20 when it was anchored about 9.5 nautical miles northwest of Colombo.
Authorities extinguished the fire last week, but the ship then began sinking and attempts to tow it into deeper waters failed.
Attack kills another Mexican journalist
MEXICO CITY -- Prosecutors in southern Mexico said journalist Gustavo Sanchez Cabrera was shot to death Thursday, at least the second such killing so far this year in the country. Two other reporters have disappeared.
The prosecutor's office in the southern state of Oaxaca said Sanchez Cabrera was riding a motorcycle with another person on a rural road when gunmen opened fire on them.
There was no immediate information on the condition of the other person. The attack occurred in Oaxaca's isthmus region.
Media reports and press groups said Sanchez Cabrera had complained of receiving threats and attacks in recent months.
At least two journalists have disappeared this year in the violence-wracked northern border state of Sonora, and in May, online journalist Benjamin Morales Hernandez was abducted and killed in Sonora.
German platoon on NATO duty sent home
BERLIN -- Germany's Defense Ministry sent home a tank platoon from a NATO mission in Lithuania on Thursday after several of its members were suspected of sexually assaulting a fellow soldier and engaging in racist and anti-Semitic harassment.
The 30-member platoon will be disbanded upon its return to Germany and any soldiers found guilty of crimes or misconduct will be severely punished, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Germany's defense minister, said. The members of the platoon were among roughly 600 German soldiers serving in Lithuania, one of the three Baltic countries where, along with Poland, NATO has put troops in response to the Russian annexation of Crimea and incursions into Ukraine.
The incident in Lithuania is the latest humiliation for Germany's military, which has been struggling for years to identify and weed out far-right extremists in their ranks, even as commanders work to maintain an image of a nimble, modern force despite a lack of equipment and recruits. Last year, Germany was forced to disband an elite special forces unit after finding that it had been infiltrated by far-right extremists.
