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Israel Opens Bidding for 77 Settler Homes


Tributes pour in from the music world after British pop superstar George Michael, who rose to fame with the duo Wham! and a string of smash hits including "Last Christmas", died aged 53. Michael died of apparent heart failure on Christmas Day at his home in Goring, a village on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, west of London, after an award-winning career spanning more than three decades.
Tributes pour in from the music world after British pop superstar George Michael, who rose to fame with the duo Wham! and a string of smash hits including "Last Christmas", died aged 53. Michael died of apparent heart failure on Christmas Day at his home in Goring, a village on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, west of London, after an award-winning career spanning more than three decades.

Israel on Monday started to solicit bids to construct 77 new homes in two settlements on occupied land in East Jerusalem, drawing a swift Palestinian condemnation.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said the planned projects were a violation of international law and showed Israel was not interested in peace.

Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors and opposes settlement-building on land Palestinians seek for a state, said only tenders for 18 of the 77 units were new, and the others were reissued after previous offers were not taken up.

The Israel Lands Authority said 41 of the homes are to be built in Pisgat Ze'ev and 36 in Neve Yaakov, where 63,000 Israelis already live.

The two settlements comprise mainly apartment blocks and are defined by Israel as integral neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

Al-Malki told reporters in Ramallah: “Israel's measures aim to hinder the establishment of a viable independent Palestinian state that is geographically connected and to prevent the realization of the two-state solution.”

Most countries consider settlements that Israel has built on territory captured in a 1967 war illegal and obstacles to Palestinian statehood. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed a year ago, partly over the settlement issue.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is trying to form a governing coalition after his March election victory, has pledged to pursue settlement in East Jerusalem and other occupied areas which Israel says it intends to keep in any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, a position that has not won international recognition.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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