US Companies Falling Behind As Africa Surges

Chinese workers build a wall at a housing project funded by the Algerian government and built by a state-owned Chinese firm near Algiers, Algeria. U.S. direct investment in Africa has flat-lined while China and Europe have poured money into a region they see as rich with natural resources and economic potential.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Africa's economy rises, American businesses are at risk of being left behind.

"We are missing the boat" was the sour warning former President Bill Clinton issued Tuesday at an otherwise upbeat U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit here. Sub-Saharan Africa has enjoyed nearly 6 percent annual economic growth for the past decade. And the robust expansion is expected to endure through the decade. Ernst & Young calls Africa the world's second-most attractive market for investment behind North America.

Yet as Africa gains momentum, U.S. business activity there has all but stalled. U.S. direct investment in Africa essentially flat-lined between 2010 and 2012, according to United Nations numbers crunched by the Brookings Institution.

Over the same period, China (with investment up 68 percent) and the European Union (up 8 percent) poured money into a region they see as rich with natural resources and economic potential. U.S. corporate profits in Africa fell in 2013 for a second straight year.

"We have some catching up to do," former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday. "We are letting Europe and China go faster than us." Africa specialists complain that many American individuals and companies hold an outdated view of the region as a war-ridden disaster zone.

"It perhaps collects more eyeballs and sells more newspapers to talk about conflicts and war and famine," said Paul Sullivan, director of international business development at Acrow Bridge, a New Jersey firm that builds bridges in Africa. "There's a real perception deficit on the part of Western thinkers, particularly in the United States."

Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues: "Generally, the U.S. private sector has been risk-averse. There's easier territory than Africa."

Chinese companies, by contrast, seem to be everywhere in Africa. The off-shore oil company CNOOC has invested $2 billion in a Ugandan oil field. Chinese operate supermarkets and mines. A Chinese construction company is building Uganda's first expressway with a loan from Chinese bank.

Some African leaders say the Chinese are more attuned than Americans to the region's norms and sensibilities. Critics counter that a more decisive factor is that Chinese companies aren't put off by bribes and kickbacks, while American firms must comply with a U.S. anti-corruption law.

"Chinese companies are thus beating out U.S. firms, contributing to the rapid ascendancy of China on the African continent," says Andy Spalding, who studies corruption at the University of Richmond School of Law. China's growing influence, he says, is "exacerbating Africa's corruption problem."

In what sounded like a dig at China, Vice President Joe Biden noted at the summit that it's hard to compete for business fairly "when others cut corners." U.S. businesses also complain that they don't get much help from Washington when they need advice, contacts and financing to crack the African market. European and Chinese diplomats put a priority on helping their country's businesses gain access to Africa. By contrast, the U.S. Commerce Department has a mere 35 overwhelmed commercial trade officers scattered across Africa.

"The U.S. has not been there in the commercial, economic way China has been there." Cooke says. "We've lost leverage." And commercial officers can make a difference, business executives say. "We don't walk into a room like GE or Boeing and are automatically known; we depend on economic diplomacy," says Acrow's Sullivan. "These are extremely sophisticated public servants who are sensitive to local conditions. They know how to guide U.S. companies."

Sullivan says a commercial officer in Ghana helped Acrow break into the market there. On Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker announced plans to open commercial offices in Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Tanzania and to expand existing offices in Ghana, Kenya, Libya and Morocco.

"The time to do business in Africa is no longer five years away," Pritzker said. "The time to do business there is now."

AP Writer Rodney Muhumuza contributed to this report from Kampala, Uganda.

Obama Announces $33B In Commitments For Africa

President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks at the US Africa Business Forum during the US Africa Leaders Summit, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2014, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington. African heads of state are gathering in Washington for an unprecedented summit to promote business development.

WASHINGTON (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Seeking to strengthen America's financial foothold in Africa, President Barack Obama announced $33 billion in commitments Tuesday aimed at shifting U.S. ties with Africa beyond humanitarian aid and toward more equal economic partnerships.

The bulk of the commitments came from private-sector companies, including Coca-Cola and General Electric, underscoring Africa's growing appeal to businesses. The continent is home to six of the world's fastest-growing economies and a rapidly expanding middle class with increased spending power.

Yet Obama noted that U.S. trade with the entire African continent is about the same as its trade ties with Brazil and that just about one percent of U.S. exports go to sub-Saharan Africa. "We've got to do better, much better," he said during closing remarks at a daylong session that brought together U.S. and African politicians and business leaders. "I want Africans buying more American products and I want Americans buying more African products."

The U.S. is hardly alone in seeing economic potential in Africa, with China, Europe and India moving aggressively to tap into Africa's growing markets. China in particular is hungry for oil, coal and other resources and is eager to develop the roads, bridges and ports needed to pull them out of Africa.

"We also realize we have some catching up to do," said Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor and billionaire businessman who opened the summit Tuesday. "We are letting Europe and China go faster than the U.S."

Obama has sought to cast the U.S. as a better partner for African nations than China, arguing that his administration has a long-term interest in the continent's success and is not simply seeking to extract resources for its own purposes.

"The United States is determined to be a partner in Africa's success," he said. "We don't look to Africa simply for its natural resources. We recognize Africa for its greatest resource, which is its people, their talents and their potential."

The business forum is part of an unprecedented three-day summit underway in Washington, with nearly 50 African heads of state in attendance. Obama was hosting the leaders at a White House dinner Tuesday night.

About 100 U.S. companies were represented at Tuesday's conference. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry also addressed the attendees, as did former President Bill Clinton, who declared that the U.S. has "only barely scratched the surface" of Africa's economic potential.

In conjunction with the meeting, U.S. companies announced $14 billion in investments for Africa. Among them: a $5 billion investment from Coca-Cola to fund manufacturing lines and production equipment; $2 billion investment from GE by 2018; $200 million in investments across Africa by Marriott, and a $66 million commitment by IBM to provide technology services to Ghana's Fidelity Bank.

The White House also touted another $12 billion in new commitments for Obama's Power Africa initiative from the private sector, World Bank and the government of Sweden. Obama announced the Power Africa initiative last summer, setting a goal of expanding electricity access to at least 20 million new households and commercial entities.

The president said that with the new financial commitments, he was boosting that goal to 60 million homes and businesses. Obama also announced $7 billion in new government financing to promote U.S. exports to and investments in Africa. That includes $3 billion in financing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank aimed at supporting American exports to Africa over the next two years.

The Ex-Im Bank is at the center of a political controversy in Washington, with some Republicans seeking to shutter the bank and threatening to block its reauthorization when Congress returns from recess this fall. The GOP lawmakers seeking to shut down the bank argue that its spending is politically motivated and unnecessary.

GE CEO Jeff Immelt, who was among the business leaders participating in Tuesday's summit, appealed to Congress to renew the bank's charter, saying its existence signals to other countries that the U.S. government believes in investing overseas.

"The fact that we have to sit here and argue for it is just wrong," Immelt said. Obama also signed an executive order Tuesday creating an advisory committee comprised of private sector representatives who will advise the White House on ways to boost economies ties with Africa.

AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman and Associated Press writer Stacy A. Anderson contributed to this report.

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

A Guide For Fliers Worried About Ebola Outbreak

A South Korean quarantine officer, right, checks the body temperature of a passenger against the possible infection of Ebola virus at Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea. South Korea has been stepping up monitoring of its citizens returning from trips to West Africa and other areas affected by the deadly Ebola virus.

NEW YORK (AP) — As the Ebola outbreak in West Africa grows, airlines around the globe are closely monitoring the situation but have yet to make any drastic changes. Below are some key questions about the disease, what airlines are doing and how safe it is to fly.

Q: Why are airlines concerned? A: Airlines quickly take passengers from one part of the globe to another. With some germs, one sick passenger on a plane could theoretically infect hundreds of people who are connecting to flights to dozens of other countries. Health and airline officials note, however, that Ebola only spreads through direct contact. Outbreaks of diseases that can spread through the air, such as the flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, are more problematic for airlines.

Q: Should people travel to West Africa? A: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday issued a warning for Americans to avoid nonessential travel to the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Q: Is Ebola deadly? A: Very much so. If contracted, there is no vaccine and no specific treatment. The World Health Organization estimated Monday that there have been 887 deaths from the current Ebola outbreak. That translates to a fatality rate of about 60 percent.

Q: How is Ebola transmitted? A: The virus only spreads through direct contact with the blood or fluids of an infected person, according to the CDC. It can also be spread through objects, such as needles, that have been contaminated with infected fluids. No airborne transmission has been documented.

Q: Do U.S. airlines fly to West Africa? A: Delta Air Lines flies to Dakar, Senegal; Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria. The airline also flies to Monrovia, Liberia, but for unrelated business reasons previously announced it will cancel that service at the end of September. Delta is letting passengers with flights to the region in the next two weeks push back travel until the end of the month. United Airlines also flies to Lagos, but has not issued any travel waiver. American Airlines does not fly to Africa.

Q: What are U.S. airlines saying about it? A: There have been no flight cancelations. All three airlines said they are in regular communication with government agencies and health officials and will follow their recommendations.

Q: What about airlines from other countries? A: European carriers such as Air France-KLM, British Airways and Lufthansa all fly to Western Africa from their hubs in Paris, Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt.

British Airways announced Tuesday that it is suspending flights to and from Liberia and Sierra Leone until Aug. 31 "due to the deteriorating public health situation in both countries." Passengers with tickets can request a full refund or a flight at a later date.

Lufthansa notes that "there is no risk of getting infected by the Ebola virus via air circulation during flight." Crews on Brussels Airlines flights have access to special thermoscans to check passengers' temperature, if they feel it's necessary. The only other airline, so far, to cancel any flights is the Middle East airline Emirates. It has suspended its service to Conakry, Guinea, until further notice. It is still flying to Dakar.

Q: Are passengers leaving Africa being screened? A: Since the outbreak erupted, the CDC has sent about two dozen staffers in West Africa to help try to track cases, set up emergency response operations and provide other help to control the outbreak. Last week, CDC officials said the agency will send 50 more in the next month. CDC workers in Africa also are helping to screen passengers at airports, according to CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden.

Q: Is the U.S. government doing anything extra for arriving passengers? A: Border patrol agents at Washington's Dulles International Airport and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, in particular, are looking out for travelers who might have been exposed to the virus. They're watching for signs of fever, achiness, sore throat, stomach pain, rash or red eyes. The CDC also has staff at 20 U.S. airports and border crossings evaluating travelers with signs of dangerous infectious diseases and isolating them when necessary.

Q: Has the airline industry dealt with any outbreaks in the past? A: In 2003, there was a global outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. The disease was first reported in Asia but quickly spread to more than two dozen countries in North America, South America and Europe. Unlike Ebola, SARS can spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes. During the 2003 outbreak, 8,098 people worldwide became sick with SARS; 774 of those died. Airports started screening incoming passengers for fever. The disease was devastating for airlines because fearful passengers stayed home.

__ With reports from AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe, New York.  Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott.

African Leaders Summit: Obama Seeks Executive Ways To Limit Tax Inversions

President Barack Obama speaks at the US Africa Business Forum during the US Africa Leaders Summit, in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2014. Aiming to sidestep a logjam in Congress, the Obama administration is looking for steps it could take on its own to prevent American companies from reincorporating overseas to shirk U.S. taxes, officials said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Aiming to sidestep a logjam in Congress, the Obama administration is looking for steps it could take on its own to prevent American companies from reincorporating overseas to shirk U.S. taxes, officials said Tuesday.

President Barack Obama has denounced so-called tax inversions as unpatriotic and has urged Congress to stop them, in an election-year push that Democrats hope will appeal to middle-class voters who feel corporate America isn't paying its fair share. But Republicans and Democrats disagree about the best solution, rendering congressional action this year unlikely.

Tinkering with inversions without going through Congress would open up Obama to charges he's unilaterally rewriting the tax code, just as House Republicans are already suing Obama for allegedly exceeding his authorities. Last month, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the administration had determined it didn't have the authority to address inversions administratively. "If we did, we would be doing more," Lew said.

In a departure from that line of thinking, the Treasury Department said that while only legislation can fully fix the problem, the Obama administration was searching for ways to provide a partial fix, warning that corporate inversions are actively eroding the U.S. tax base.

"Treasury is reviewing a broad range of authorities for possible administrative actions that could limit the ability of companies to engage in inversions, as well as approaches that could meaningfully reduce the tax benefits after inversions take place," the department said in a statement.

In an inversion, a U.S. business merges with or is acquired by a foreign company in a country with a lower tax rate, allowing the company to lower its tax bill. Frequently the companies maintain their U.S. headquarters and operations, and the U.S. entity often maintains control of the company. Obama argues that amounts to companies attempting to choose which tax laws they want to follow — a luxury not granted to individual taxpayers.

"They're basically renouncing their citizenship and declaring that they're based somewhere else, just to avoid paying their fair share," Obama said recently. Both parties generally agree that inversions are problematic, but they disagree on the causes and the solutions. While some Democrats push to make it harder for U.S. firms to reincorporate overseas, Republicans argue that Congress should lower the corporate tax rate so that businesses won't feel the need to leave the U.S.

At 35 percent, the United States has the highest corporate income tax rate in the industrialized world. The U.S. also taxes income that's earned overseas but brought back to the U.S. Obama has said he supports a legislative overhaul that would close loopholes but also lower the corporate tax rate. Congress hasn't been able to agree on such a broad revamp of the tax code. With that reality in mind, Obama has called for lawmakers to move narrowly to close the inversion loophole, but that, too, appears an elusive goal.

Yet it's unclear whether Obama can do much on his own. Administration officials did not offer details about what possibilities were under consideration. But Senate Democrats have pointed to a paper published last week by Stephen Shay, Harvard Law School professor who was a Treasury official earlier in Obama's presidency. Writing in the trade publication Tax Notes, Shay argued that the Treasury could weaken the benefits that entice companies to pursue inversions.

As an example, after a company reincorporates overseas, it typically shifts large amounts of debt from the foreign company to the U.S. subsidiary, which can then deduct that debt when it files taxes. Shay said Lew could use regulations to start treating that debt as equity, which can't be deducted.

"It would be an important first step toward treating companies that renounce America the same way we treat people who renounce America — as freeloaders who get cut off from other benefits," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of three Senate Democrats who sent a letter Tuesday to Obama urging him to take immediate executive action on inversions.

But Thomas Lys, who teaches corporate restructuring at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said it wasn't clear that Obama has the legal authority to deter inversions. "It's a stretch of current regulations," he said.

Obama's move to curb inversions comes three months before the midterm elections, in which Democrats are seeking to portray themselves as aggressive advocates for the middle class while Republicans are accusing Obama of presidential overreach.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner urged Obama on Tuesday to work with Congress on adding inversions rather than acting on his own, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that Obama's actions could potentially make the situation worse.

"Congressional Republicans often don't want to be in a position of angering the corporate interests that are so beneficial to their political campaigns," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Tax inversions began attracting attention earlier this year when the drug company Pfizer attempted unsuccessfully to take over AstraZeneca, a British company. Nearly 50 U.S.-based companies have merged with or acquired foreign businesses over the past decade in inversions, the Congressional Research Service said.

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Museum Rediscovers Ancient Skeleton In Storage

Janet Monge, the curator-in-charge of the anthropology section at the The Penn Museum, part of the University of Pennsylvania, and William Hafford, manager of the Ur digitization project open a container of recently rediscovered 6,500-year-old human remains during an interview with The Associated Press Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2014, in Philadelphia. The museum announced Tuesday that it had rediscovered in its own storage rooms a 6,500-year-old human skeleton believed to have been a man at least 50 who stood 5 feet, 9 inches tall. The remains were originally excavated from southern Iraq around 1930.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — An archaeology museum in Philadelphia has made an extraordinary find — in its own storage rooms.

The University of Pennsylvania's Penn Museum announced Tuesday that it had rediscovered a 6,500-year-old human skeleton originally excavated from southern Iraq around 1930. The complete remains, which had been kept in a coffin-like box, were missing documentation until researchers recently began digitizing the museum's collection from an expedition to Ur, an ancient city near modern-day Nasiriyah.

Project manager William Hafford was matching archaeological objects with inventory lists from the Sumerian trek when he came across a description of a full skeleton that he couldn't find. He consulted Janet Monge, chief curator of physical anthropology, who happened to know of an unlabeled, mystery skeleton in the facility's basement storage area.

"So we went, found the crate, opened it up and compared it to the field notes and the field photographs, and we had a match," Hafford said. The body is believed to be that of a well-muscled man at least 50 who stood 5 feet, 9 inches tall, according to Monge. She hopes a skeletal analysis, possibly including a CT scan, will reveal more about his diet, stresses, diseases and ancestral origins.

Complete human skeletons from that era — known as the Ubaid period, from 5500-4000 B.C. — are rare, partly because the region's burial practices and type of land didn't lead to good preservation, Monge said.

The skeleton was cut into deep silt, indicating that the man had lived after an epic flood. That led Penn researchers to nickname their re-discovery "Noah." Scholars from the Ivy League university teamed up with researchers from the British Museum in 1922 for a dig led by Sir Leonard Woolley. Half of the objects found over the next 12 years at Ur were sent to the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, while the other half was split between London and Philadelphia.

Hafford and his counterparts in Britain are now working to digitize their share of the collection. They hope curators in Baghdad will eventually do the same, but coordination with officials in the war-torn nation has been difficult, Hafford said.

Coincidentally, in June, researchers at Bristol University in Britain discovered a box of materials from the same Ur expedition on top of a cupboard. Researchers determined the objects were 4,500 years old, including pottery, seeds, carbonized apple rings and animal bones.

No one knows how the box got to Bristol, which had no connection to the Woolley dig. Monge said it's not uncommon for a research institution like the Penn Museum — which is filled with hundreds of thousands of objects, from the smallest pottery shard to enormous totem poles — to have question marks surrounding the origins of some items.

"I have quite a few specimens that are cold case, orphaned museum collections," Monge said. "So that gives us the fun enterprise of going back and sleuthing through all of the archival material and trying to identify them as best as we can."

Online:

http://www.penn.museum/

US Terrorism Database Doubles In Recent Years

A redacted ledger with names of suspected terrorists. Decades ago, names of suspected terrorists were kept in a rolodex and in notebooks, according to redacted government photographs. The Associated Press has learned that a U.S. government database of known or suspected terrorists doubled in size in recent years. The National Counterterrorism Center says there were 1.1 million people in the database at the end of 2013. Of those, 25,000 are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. There were about 550,000 people in the database in March 2010. The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, called "TIDE," is a huge, classified database of people who are known to be terrorists, are suspected of having ties to terrorism, or in some cases related to or are associates of known or suspected terrorists. It feeds to smaller lists that restrict peoples' abilities to travel on commercial airlines to or within the U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. government database of known or suspected terrorists doubled in size in recent years, according to newly released government figures. The growth is the result of intelligence agencies submitting names more often after a near-miss attack in 2009.

There were 1.1 million people in the database at the end of 2013, according to the National Counterterrorism Center, which maintains the information. About 550,000 people were listed in the database in March 2010

The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, is a huge, classified database of people who are known terrorists, are suspected of having ties to terrorism or in some cases are related to or are associates of known or suspected terrorists. It feeds to smaller lists that restrict people's abilities to travel on commercial airliners to or within the U.S.

The government does not need evidence linking someone to terrorism in order for the person to be included in the database. This is among the reasons the database and subsequent terror watch lists have been criticized by privacy advocates.

An online publication, The Intercept, on Tuesday reported that 40 percent of people on the terrorism watch list — which is a subset of names in the TIDE database — were not affiliated with any recognized terrorist organization.

The publication cited what it said were classified government documents from one year ago it obtained from a source in the intelligence community, raising the possibility that someone other than former NSA analyst Edward Snowden was improperly disclosing classified information. Snowden fled to Russia in June 2013, roughly two months before the date stamp on the newly disclosed documents. The Intercept was founded by journalists with whom Snowden shared classified materials last year.

The growth of the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment is a result of the government's response to a failed attempt to blow up a commercial airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009. The terror operative's name was included in the database before the attack but not on a list that would have prevented him from boarding a U.S.-bound flight. Since then, the government lowered the standards for placing someone on the no-fly list, and intelligence agencies have become more diligent about submitting names to the TIDE database.

Of the 1.1 million people in the TIDE database, 25,000 are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, the National Counterterrorism Center said. The database was created after the September 2001 terror attacks after it became clear that the government's terror watch list was ineffective. The watch list was once maintained in a Rolodex and in paper notebooks, according to edited photographs provided by the National Counterterrorism Center.

Other terror watch lists derived from the TIDE database have also grown. As of November 2013, the Terrorist Screening Database consisted of 700,000 people, according to a government official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive numbers.

Questions about the watch list surfaced in a recent civil lawsuit out of Virginia challenging the constitutionality of the no-fly list. The government disclosed that there were 1.5 million nominations to the watch list over the last five years. Weeks later, a government official explained that a "nomination" meant new names as well as changes or updates to existing names on the list, and the figure in the court document should not have been interpreted to mean that 1.5 million people had been added to the watch list in the last five years, as The Associated Press reported July 18.

In August 2013, there were more than 73,000 people affiliated with al-Qaida in Iraq on the terror watch list, according to a document marked "secret," obtained by The Intercept. That al-Qaida affiliate represented the largest group of people associated with a known terrorist group on the watch list at the time.

Cease-Fire Takes Effect To End Gaza War

Smoke rises over Gaza City, in northern Gaza Strip, after an Israeli strike, minutes before 8 a.m. (0500 GMT), the time agreed for a preliminary 72-hour cease-fire, on Tuesday Aug, 5, 2014. Israel and Hamas on Monday accepted an Egyptian cease-fire proposal meant to halt a bruising month-long war that has claimed nearly 1,900 Palestinian lives, raising hopes that the bloodiest round of fighting between the bitter enemies could finally be coming to an end.

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP (AP) — An Israel-Hamas cease-fire, meant to last three days, went into effect on Tuesday in the Gaza Strip, setting the stage for talks in Cairo aimed at reaching a broader deal on a sustainable truce and the rebuilding of the battered coastal territory.

The temporary truce, agreed to by both sides, started at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) and halted almost a month of fighting. Israeli ground troops withdrew from the strip's border areas, the shelling stopped and in Gaza City, where streets had been deserted during the war, traffic picked up and shops started opening doors.

If the calm holds, Egypt plans to start shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian delegations in Cairo to work out new arrangements for Gaza. The territory has been virtually cut off from the world since a violent Hamas takeover in 2007 prompted a closure of the territory's borders by Egypt and Israel.

But wide gaps remain and previous international attempts to broker a temporary halt in the fighting have failed. The Palestinian delegation, which includes Hamas representatives, demands an end to the closure and calls for rebuilding Gaza with international funds.

However, Israel is reluctant to open Gaza's borders unless the Islamic militants are disarmed. Earlier cease-fire attempts have collapsed and the situation remained volatile on Tuesday. Just minutes ahead of the start of the truce, shelling still echoed across Gaza and Israel said Hamas fired a heavy barrage of rockets at southern and central Israel.

By mid-morning, traumatized residents began returning to the southern Gaza town of Rafah, hard-hit by Israeli shell fire after an attempt at cease-fire broke down last Friday. "I never saw anything like this in my life," Tawfiq Barbakh, a 67-year-old father of 12, said of the Israeli shelling over the weekend as he surveyed his badly damaged home. "I don't know how many shells landed every minute but it felt like 20 or 30."

The war broke out on July 8 when Israel launched airstrikes it said were in response to weeks of heavy rocket fire out of Hamas-controlled Gaza. It expanded the operation on July 17 by sending in ground forces in what it described as a mission to destroy a network of tunnels used to stage attacks.

The fighting has claimed nearly 1,900 Palestinian lives — most of them civilians. The war has also left 67 dead on the Israeli side, all but three of them soldiers. Talks in Cairo will be crucial in the coming days. Ending the Gaza conflict without a sustainable truce raises the probability of more cross-border fighting in the future.

Ahead of the cease-fire, there were also signs that tensions created by the Gaza fighting were spreading to Jerusalem and the West Bank, with two attacks there. The police said they were carried out by Palestinian militants.

As part of the cease-fire, the Israeli military said it was withdrawing all ground troops from Gaza. Military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said the withdrawal was going forward after Israel neutralized cross-border tunnels that were built for Islamic militant attacks inside Israel.

"Overnight, we completed the destruction of 32 tunnels in the Gaza Strip," Lerner said. "They were part of a strategic Hamas plan to carry out attacks against southern Israel." In a conference call with journalists, Lerner said about 900 Palestinian militants had been killed by Israeli forces during the war. In a conversation with The Associated Press on Sunday, another military official had said at least 300 militants had been killed. Asked about the sharp jump in figures over just two days, Lerner said the figure of 900 militants killed was an approximation, based on reporting from individual Israeli units.

Rocket fire from Gaza continued throughout the war, and by the time Tuesday's cease-fire went into effect, some 3,300 rockets had been fired at Israel, Lerner said. He estimated that Israeli forces destroyed another 3,000 rockets on the ground — but that Hamas has an equal number left for future use.

Lerner declined to say how many ground forces had been involved in the Israeli operation, though the military acknowledged calling up 86,000 reservists, including rotations, during the course of its Gaza operation.

Enav reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Karin Laub in Gaza City and Hamza Hendawi in Rafah contributed to this report.

Nixon Tapes Released On Resignation's Anniversary

And made available by Raiford Communications, Inc., former president Richard Nixon talks about his 1974 resignation in a series of interviews conducted by former White House aide Frank Gannon in New York City. The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and the privately held Nixon Foundation are co-releasing a trove of videotaped interviews with the former president to mark the 40th anniversary of his resignation following the Watergate scandal. The 28 minutes of tape, detailing Nixon's personal turmoil in his final week in office, were culled from more than 30 hours of tape recorded in 1983.

YORBA LINDA, CALIF. (AP) — Almost a decade after Richard Nixon resigned, the disgraced former president sat down with his one-time aide and told the tale of his fall from grace in his own words.

For three decades, that version of one of the nation's largest and most-dissected political scandals largely gathered dust — until this week. Starting Tuesday, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Nixon's resignation, portions of the tapes will be published each day by the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum and the private Richard Nixon Foundation. The postings begin with Nixon recalling the day he decided to resign and end Saturday — his last day in office — with the 37th president discussing his final day at the White House, when he signed the resignation agreement, gave a short speech and boarded a helicopter for San Clemente, California.

The segments were culled from more than 30 hours of interviews that Nixon did with former aide Frank Gannon in 1983. The sections on Watergate aired publicly once, on CBS News, before gathering dust at the University of Georgia for more than 30 years.

"This is as close to what anybody is going to experience sitting down and having a beer with Nixon, sitting down with him in his living room," said Gannon, now a writer and historian in Washington, D.C.

"Like him or not, whether you think that his resignation was a tragedy for the nation or that he got out of town one step ahead of the sheriff, he was a human being," he said. Nixon, who died in 1994, had hoped that providing his own narrative would help temper America's final judgment of him.

Perhaps with that in mind, he didn't shy away from the tough questions, commenting on everything from the threat of impeachment to the so-called "smoking gun" conversation that included evidence he participated in a Watergate cover-up.

"This was the final blow, the final nail in the coffin. Although you don't need another nail if you're already in the coffin — which we were," Nixon said in a segment about the June 23, 1972 tape. Nixon said when he decided to resign, he faced such strong resistance from his wife that he brought a transcript of the "smoking gun" tape to a family meeting to show her how bad it was.

"I'm a fighter, I just didn't want to quit. Also I thought it would be an admission of guilt, which of course it was," he said. "And, also, I felt it would set a terribly bad precedent for the future."

The tone of the tapes contrasts with the sometimes adversarial tone of the well-known series of Nixon interviews done in 1977 by British journalist David Frost. Nixon appears relaxed in the tapes. He smiles occasionally, speaks fondly about his two daughters and wife and seems emotional while recalling the final days of his fraught administration, as pressure mounted for his impeachment over a 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters by burglars tied to the president's re-election committee who were trying to get dirt on his political adversaries.

The decision to release these friendly interviews now, years after the fact, might not be a coincidence, said Luke Nichter, a Nixon expert and professor at Texas A&M University. With the passage of time, he said, every former president sees their legacy re-examined and recast, and Nixon may be no different.

"Watergate's never going to go away," Nichter said. "Nixon's role in that and the cover-up is so well-documented. But I think what we're trying to say here, 40 years later, is Nixon doesn't have to be all bad or all good. He can be a combination of the good, bad and ugly."

Nixon denied knowing about plans for the break-in beforehand, but an 18 1/2 minute gap in a recording of a post-Watergate White House meeting led many to suspect a cover-up. Faced with impeachment and a possible criminal indictment, Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, and retreated to his native California. The following month he was granted a pardon by President Gerald Ford.

In the final segment to be released Saturday, Nixon recalls his last day at the White House. After a fitful night, he awoke at 4 a.m. and went to the kitchen where he was surprised to find a kitchen staffer already there.

The staffer told Nixon it was 6 a.m., not two hours earlier — the president's watch had stopped overnight. "The battery had run out, wore out at 4 o'clock the last day I was in office," Nixon said ruefully. "By that day, I was worn out too."

A Summit Of African Leaders In Washington Tries To Move Beyond 'Speed Dating'

Representatives from various African nations gather at the opening session at the AGOA Forum during the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington August 4, 2014.

Nearly 50 African heads of state are in Washington this week for the US-Africa Leaders Summit, the first-ever event of its kind.

President Barack Obama says the summit is a chance to focus on economic ties and build links of "mutual responsibility and mutual respect" with a continent that's often on the backburner of American foreign policy. That's in comparison to China, which has poured money, people and attenion into Africa in recent years.

“I do not see the countries and peoples of Africa as a world apart," he said on Monday. "I see Africa as a fundamental part of our interconnected world, partners with America on behalf of the future we want for all of our children."

But it's not clear how much can actually be achieved given the sheer number of leaders who've come to Washington — nearly 50 from across Africa — and the dizzying number of important issues to be addressed, from trade to security to wildlife trafficking.

"African leaders have come with a hugely disparate list of items they'd like to talk about," points out Chris McGreal, who's covering the summit for the Guardian. "There are countries where security is very high up the agenda, including Kenya and Nigeria. There are other countries principally concerned about opening up ... greater trade opportunities with the US, particularly bits of southern Africa and West Africa." 

Health issues are also likely to come up, because of the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the drawdown of the assistance given by the US to fight the spread of AIDS. Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma both stayed home to deal with the Ebola crisis, but the challenge of the disease has broader implications for those at the summit. "The spread of Ebola is a warning of the dangers of poor health systems in parts of the continent and emphasizes why they need to be addressed," McGreal says.

The issue of human rights, however, is curiously absent from the list of topics that African leaders will tackle. "There are sessions on wildlife trafficking but nothing on human rights," McGreal says. "So I think there's a deliberate attempt to underplay it."

But McGreal also expects human rights to come up during other discussions. In Nigeria, for example, "the US can't be seen to be too close to the Nigerian government in combatting Boko Haram because the Nigerian military has plenty of blood on its hands. It's been killing civilians and destroying property and has shown very little respect for human rights in its efforts to go after Boko Haram and the same goes for actions taken by the military police in Kenya."

Samantha Power, the American ambassador to the UN, has likened the whirlwind couple of days to a kind of "speed dating" among the African leaders, and the metaphor might be apt. McGreal says by the end of this week's summit, he expects a sense "that at least the US is paying a degree of attention that it hasn't paid in the past." But according to the White House, the president will not have the time to hold any extended one-on-one meetings with the visiting African leaders.

------- PRI The World

East Ukraine City Dying Under Siege

A woman walks past a poster calling for military recruits to the separatist forces in the city of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine Monday, Aug. 4, 2014. The Interfax news agency reported Monday that Russia’s air force began week-long military drills in the central and western regions of Russia, a move that could spark further fears that Moscow is ready to flex its military muscle in Ukraine.

DONETSK, UKRAINE (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Residents say the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk is dying. The power grid was completely down Monday, the city government said, and fuel is running dry.

Store shelves are emptying fast, and those who haven't managed to flee must drink untreated tap water. With little medicine left, doctors are sending patients home. As Ukrainian government forces slowly tighten their ring around the city — one of two major pro-Russian rebel strongholds — traveling in and out has become a perilous undertaking.

In an impassioned statement released over the weekend, mayor Sergei Kravchenko described a situation that is becoming more unsustainable by the day. "As a result of the blockade and ceaseless rocket attacks, the city is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe," Kravchenko said. "Citizens are dying on the streets, in their courtyard and in their homes. Every new day brings only death and destruction."

Luhansk, a city of more than 400,000 people at peacetime, now has seen its population dwindle as citizens flee violence and deprivation. Located about an hour's drive from Russia, which Ukraine insists is supplying rebels with weapons and manpower, Luhansk is being fiercely fought over by all sides of the conflict.

Shelling is a daily occurrence and the targets apparently quite random. On Saturday, eight buildings were damaged by rockets. These included a school, a supermarket and several multistory apartment blocks, Luhansk city government said.

Last week, a crucial electrical transformer in Luhansk was hit by a shell, leading to an 80 percent drop in power supplies, according to a report issued Monday by an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitoring mission.

Rebels accuse the army of waging a vicious bombing campaign against the civilian population. Authorities deny they have used artillery against residential neighborhoods and in turn accuse rebels of shelling civilians as a way of discrediting the army. This claim is faithfully repeated by almost all Ukrainian media, although it has been questioned by Human Rights Watch and others.

With gas reserves all but exhausted, even those willing to brave a drive out of the city for supplies struggle to refill their cars. A little is getting through all the same, mainly from Russia. Pro-rebel online television station Luhansk-24 on Sunday carried a report about a consignment of medicinal supplies reaching the city from the southern Russian city of Saratov.

This was a visible reminder that supply lines to Russia remain intact. With clashes taking place at several spots surrounding the city, however, maintaining a steady convoy of goods is complicated. The fight for control over the frontier has been bitter.

Authorities concede that more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) of the Russian-Ukrainian border remains in rebel hands. The government says that Russia has been flagrantly smuggling large amounts of heavy weaponry and manpower to aid the separatist cause.

Sandwiched between the border and rebel fighters, government forces have succumbed to routine defeats and humiliations, even as they appear to slowly gain the upper hand in the fight to regain control of the last rebel strongholds.

On Monday, a Russian border security official said more than 400 Ukrainian soldiers crossed into Russia. The Russian official said the soldiers deserted the Kiev government and that the Russian side had opened a safe corridor. A Ukrainian military official, who did not give a number for the soldiers involved, said the troops were forced into Russian territory by rebel fire after running out of ammunition.

Border control official Vasily Malayev later said 180 of the soldiers were being returned to Ukraine at their own request. One of the soldiers, medic Anton Shingera, said he was uncertain how Ukraine would treat them upon their return, but "no matter what, the main thing is that I am alive." Other soldiers, who declined to give their names, said they had fled because they had run out of ammunition.

Ukraine's government accuses the separatists of entrapping the civilian population in besieged cities like Luhansk and has pushed for the creation of humanitarian corridors. Their priority appears to persuade as many people to evacuate cities in advance of attempting full incursions.

"We urge the peaceful population to abandon territory seized by terrorists," Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the government's military operation in the east, said Monday. Those choosing to stay behind and assist people in need are facing a desperate plight.

"Doctors can do nothing but cry. Every day, wounded people come in and we can't help them. We lack even basic medicines," said Fyodor Solyanik, a doctor in the Luhansk regional hospital. Speaking briefly over a crackling landline connection, Solyanik said patients who were due for long-planned operations are being sent home.

"This is a nightmare situation," he said. "It's not just medicine we don't have. We don't even have food and water." With prices for basic staples rising fast, the elderly deprived of their now-suspended pension payments are hit especially hard.

Local authorities are inundated with pleas for help that they are helpless to address. In just one day last week, a recently created crisis center received 1,800 appeals for assistance. According to official figures, around 100 people have been killed since fighting began in Luhansk. With public services in total disarray, the reliability of such figures is questionable.

While the local government that existed before the current conflict began is attempting to provide basic services, real authority lies with the gunmen leading the separatist government that dubs itself the Luhansk People's Republic

Yelena Gaida, 46, is one of the many thousands who have managed to get out of Luhansk. Speaking in Donetsk, another rebel-controlled city 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Luhansk, Gaida said she is abandoning her three-room apartment and plans to head for Russia

"Almost half the city has fled already," Gaida said. "Every day they bomb, shoot and kill." Gaida was dismissive of the separatist cause. "Yes, we have our Luhansk People's Republic. But life there is impossible," Gaida said. "Who needs it anymore?"

Laura Mills in Moscow and Alexander Zemlianichenko in Gukovo, Russia, contributed to this report.

Obama Signs Funding Package For Israel's Iron Dome

President Barack Obama signs "H.J. Res. 76," a bill that provides an additional $225 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Aug. 4, 2014, in Washington.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama signed a bill Monday granting an additional $225 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system.

The defense system has been highly effective in the current round of violence between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. It allows Israel's military to shoot down incoming rockets or mortars headed toward major population centers in Israel. Israeli officials say it has a success rate as high as 90 percent.

The U.S. has provided hundreds of millions of dollars for Iron Dome in the past. The new package is intended to replenish Israel's capabilities. Congress approved the money last week before lawmakers left for their annual summer break. Obama signed the bill in the late afternoon in the Oval Office with a handful of photographers present.