Out of cash, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main U.N. body in the impoverished enclave of 1.8 million Palestinians, says it can barely handle the humanitarian crisis unleashed by more than three weeks of fighting between militants and Israel.

Asked to explain the scale of the civilian suffering to an Arab news station, an UNRWA spokesman simply burst into tears.

"There are times when tears speak more eloquently than words. Mine pale into insignificance compared with Gaza's," Chris Gunness said.

"UNRWA is overwhelmed in Gaza. We have reached breaking point; our staff are being killed, our shelters overflowing. Where will it end ... UNRWA now has 225,178 displaced in 86 shelters. But Gaza is being destroyed. So when the war is over, where will these people go?" Gunness said.

At dawn on Wednesday, Israeli forces shelled a girls' school doubling as a refuge for more than 3,000 people, killing at least 15, including four children, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

Eight U.N. employees have been killed since Israel launched its offensive on July 8 after rocket fire from Gaza intensified. U.N. shelters have been bombed by Israel on six separate occasions, including in another shelling of a U.N. shelter last week that killed 15 people.

Israel said its forces had come under fire from the vicinity of the school on Wednesday and responded. It denies targeting civilians and says militants use innocents as human shields and their neighborhoods as firing positions.

Gaza officials say more than 1,370 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in the battered enclave. Israel says 56 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed.

Even in peacetime, the U.N. was under strain to provide food aid to a million Gaza residents, over half the total population.

UNRWA made an urgent appeal for $187 million on Thursday to buy beds and basic supplies for those who fled and to stem the rise of diseases in shelters.

Insecticide and medicine were urgently needed for refugees in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, the U.N.'s humanitarian affairs department said, "to treat epidemics such as lice and scabies, which started to spread in shelters".

The breaches were first publicised by security blogger Brian Krebs on Monday.

The companies denied their classified networks had been infiltrated.

However, the team that discovered the incidents has given the BBC access to an intelligence report, which indicates hundreds of files were indeed copied.

The documents, which were stolen over a period of many months, relate to:

Arrow III missiles unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones ballistic rockets

Cyber Engineering Services (CyberESI) tracked the activities of the hackers over eight months between 2011 and 2012.

It said the data taken by the hackers suggested they had been after intelligence relating to Iron Dome.

Iron Dome is a complex anti-missile defence system, which can intercept and destroy rockets and shells.

The technology has been widely credited with preventing the deaths of many Israeli civilians during the ongoing conflict with militants from Gaza.

CyberESI's report, compiled in 2013, also indicates the attacks were made using highly sophisticated tools resembling those used by Chinese hackers to infiltrate US defence firms - an attack in which the Chinese government denies any involvement.

"The data collected makes strong indications that the actors behind this attack originated from China," it says.

"This assertion is based on the activity during the past year that Cyber Engineering Services has observed on compromised networks, as well as the geo-location of the IP [internet protocol] addresses retrieving the exfiltrated data."

"The nature of exfiltrated data and the industry that these companies are involved in suggests that the Chinese hackers were after information related to Israel's all-weather air defence system called Iron Dome." Gigabytes stolen

CyberESI, which operates out of Maryland in the US, monitored data being stolen from two leading Israeli defence contractors:

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), a government-owned company that develops missiles and aircraft

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, a government-owned company established in 1948, which develops surface-to-air missiles

A spokeswoman for IAI initially confirmed to Mr Krebs the attack had taken place and been "reported to the appropriate authorities".

Microsoft and other U.S. companies had challenged the warrant, arguing it improperly extended the authority of federal prosecutors to seize customer information held in foreign countries.

Following a two-hour court hearing in New York, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska said a search warrant approved by a federal magistrate judge required the company to hand over any data it controlled, regardless of where it was stored.

"It is a question of control, not a question of the location of that information," Preska said.

The judge said she would temporarily suspend her order from taking effect to allow Microsoft to appeal her decision to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The case appears to be the first in which a corporation has challenged a U.S. search warrant seeking data held abroad.

A number of technology companies filed court briefs in support of Microsoft's position, including AT&T Inc, Apple Inc, Cisco Systems Inc and Verizon Communications Inc.

The companies are worried that they could lose billions of dollars in revenue to foreign competitors if customers fear their data is subject to seizure by U.S. investigators anywhere in the world.

Thursday ruling concerns a search warrant served on Microsoft by prosecutors for a customer whose emails are stored in a data center in Dublin, Ireland.

It is unclear which agency issued the warrant because the warrant and all related documents are sealed.

After at least two years of study, Amazon is ramping up efforts to offer repair, installation and other services online, tackling a fragmented but potentially rich U.S. market that may be worth an estimated $400 billion.

Amazon's experiment with services goes back to at least mid-2012 in its hometown of Seattle. It's now expanded the tests to New York and Los Angeles, six service providers who worked and talked with the company told Reuters.

More locations and services are coming soon. As soon as mid-August, Amazon will take as much as a 20-percent cut from services booked through its website, though timing and figures may change, according to providers and several hard-to-find pages on Amazon's website devoted to local services. (here)

Providing services would be a new frontier for Amazon, which hopes to enter one of the few remaining consumer sectors yet to succumb to Internet commerce. Its foray into the area comes as investors worry about Amazon's growing spending on initiatives with uncertain pay back. [ID:nL2N0Q0038]

It's unclear how Amazon can create an online exchange for services where others like Angie's List (ANGI.O) have failed to gain traction for years. While services like Yelp (YELP.N) and Craigslist show what's available, getting a job done still often involves an old-fashioned telephone call.

The biggest challenge would be attracting enough small businesses to the site, Wunderlich Securities' Blake Harper said. Angie's List's spending on marketing - almost half its total revenue - to attract customers and retain providers has kept it in the red, analysts said.

"While the company has impressive logistical capabilities, it is lacking the local business information, reviews, and sales force, among other attributes, to begin to compete in the market," Harper said in a June 11 note, of Amazon. "We have a healthy respect for Amazon's ruthless competitive nature, but expect the local market to be much more difficult for them to scale than the ecommerce business."

Amazon has a team of people that deal with local merchants. If its plan works, it may encourage loyalty by helping customers book well-regarded plumbers, auto mechanics and others, and develops a high-margin revenue stream.

Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich said his country was considering opening proceedings at international tribunals in The Hague after it was declared to be in technical default.

The announcement came just hours after last-minute talks in New York with a group of bond-holders failed.

The bond-holders are demanding a full pay-out of $1.3bn (£766m).

Argentina says the bond-holders are "vultures" using the South American country's debt problems to make a big profit.

The investors are US hedge funds that bought debt cheaply after Argentina's economic crisis in 2001-2002.

They are also known as "hold-outs" because they did not sign up to a restructuring of debt which the majority of bond-holders agreed to in 2005 and 2010.

Under that deal, investors agreed to settle for about a third of what they were originally owed.

However, hedge funds NML and Aurelius Capital Management bought up a large chunk of the remaining distressed debt at low prices.

They demand to be paid the full face value of their holding. 'Shameful handling'

Mr Capitanich said Argentina would denounce the "vulture funds" before the International Court of Justice at The Hague and the United Nations General Assembly. At the scene in Buenos Aires: Katy Watson, South America Business Reporter

Not much has changed on the streets of Buenos Aires. Life carries on as usual. The fact is that people here are already facing high inflation - day-to-day life has been getting harder in the past few years.

January saw the peso devalued by 20%. So the feeling here is that it's bad already, it will just continue on a downwards path.

For those who are angry, some of that anger is directed at these so-called vulture funds and they say Argentina needs to fight back.

But there are those frustrated by the way the government has handled the crisis. As one person told me outside the Casa Rosada, the president's office, the vultures live there too. line

"The responsibility lies with a state, that of the United States of America," he said in a news conference at the presidential palace.

Mr Capitanich accused the US of "not acting in an adequate manner".

The Argentine government had expected the dispute to go all the way to the US Supreme Court, which would have bought the country more time.

But in June, the Supreme Court declined to hear Argentina's appeal against the decision of a lower court that made it liable for the money.

The downbeat guidance, as well as Samsung's decision to keep its interim dividend unchanged from last year, put the shares of South Korea's biggest company by market value on track for their worst daily percentage decline in nearly eight months.

Samsung expects July-September handset shipments to pick up by 10 percent from the previous quarter and said it planned to release a new premium smartphone employing a new design and material, underscoring efforts by the world's largest smartphone maker to regroup.

With its flagship Galaxy S5 smartphone outsold by Apple Inc's iPhone 5S in May and its cheaper devices feeling the squeeze from Chinese rivals like Xiaomi, Samsung also vowed to revamp its mid-to-low-tier product lineup with more aggressive pricing and a focus on a smaller set of products.

Those plans were mostly in line with market expectations and Samsung remained downbeat about its third-quarter prospects, with its mobile division expecting a decline in average sales price in the current quarter from the April-June period.

"Considering intensifying competition of price and specifications as well as the release of new competing models, it is difficult to expect earnings to improve from the second quarter," Senior Vice President Kim Hyun-joon said about the mobile business during a conference call with analysts.

PROFIT SLIDE CONTINUES

For April-June, Samsung said operating profit fell 24.6 percent annually to 7.2 trillion won ($7.03 billion), matching its guidance. It was the third straight quarter of profit decline and its weakest result since the second quarter of 2012.

Profit for the mobile division fell to 4.42 trillion won from 6.28 trillion won a year ago, also the lowest in two years.

Samsung warned that business conditions for the second half would remain challenging, deepening investor concerns about its prospects. Samsung shares were down 3.8 percent as of 0432 GMT, underperforming the wider market's 0.5 percent decline.

"There needed to be a positive guidance for third-quarter results but it looks like the company is saying the outlook isn't too bright aside from its semiconductor business," said IBK Asset Management fund manager Kim Hyun-su, adding that he would hold off on buying more Samsung shares until there was a clear turnaround.

"Radical action" is needed to prevent further spread of malaria parasites resistant to key drugs, say scientists.

The spread could undermine recent gains in malaria control, they report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

No evidence was found of resistance in three African sites - Kenya, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The study analysed blood samples from more than 1,000 malaria patients in 10 countries across Asia and Africa. t found the malaria parasite had developed resistance to front-line drugs known as artemisinins, in western and northern Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and eastern Burma, also known as Myanmar.

There were signs of emerging resistance in central Burma, southern Laos and north-eastern Cambodia.

Of particular concern was the corner of Asia on the Cambodia-Thailand border, where resistance to other anti-malarial drugs has emerged in the past.

"Resistance is now present over much of South East Asia," said lead scientist Prof Nicholas White, of the University of Oxford.

"It's worse than we expected.

"We have to act quickly if we are going to do anything."

Prof White said it might be possible to prevent further spread, but conventional malaria-control approaches would not be enough.

"We will need to take more radical action and make this a global public health priority, without delay," he added.

Meanwhile, a separate study, also published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reported early results of an anti-malarial drug in the pipeline.

Commenting on the research, Dr Brian Greenwood, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "The emergence of artemisinin-resistant parasites is a major threat to further advances in malaria control.

Russia has denounced the measures, agreed by the 28 EU member states on Tuesday, as "destructive and short-sighted", while fighting has intensified in eastern Ukraine between Kiev forces and the pro-Russian separatists.

EU officials say the sanctions aim to inflict maximum pain on Russia and minimum pain on the EU. "We will for sure have an effect and a very substantial and concrete effect on Russia," one EU official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The toughest measures aim to prevent Russian banks from raising money on Western capital markets, while others limit defence sales and the export of hi-tech equipment for the oil sector.

Published on Thursday in the Official Journal of the European Union, the law takes effect from Friday, Aug. 1.

Marking a fundamental shift in how Europe deals with Russia, the sanctions will mean EU nationals and companies can no longer buy or sell new bonds, equity or other financial instruments with a maturity of more than 90 days issued by major state-owned Russian banks or those acting on their behalf.

The law lists five targeted banks - Russia's largest lender Sberbank, VTB Bank, Gazprombank, Vnesheconombank (VEB) and Russian Agriculture Bank (Rosselkhozbank).

In addition, there is a ban on any future imports and exports of arms from Russia, and authorisation will be required for member states that want to export energy-related equipment.

Export licences will be denied if products are destined for deepwater oil exploration and production, Arctic oil exploration or production and shale oil projects in Russia.

Europe, which has deep trade links with Russia, was far more reluctant to act than the United States over Moscow's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March and its support for the rebels.

However, the mood shifted radically after the downing over eastern Ukraine of a civilian flight from the Netherlands to Malaysia earlier this month. Western countries say a Russian-supplied missile fired from rebel-held territory caused the disaster. Moscow blames the Ukrainian military for the crash, in which 298 people were killed.

DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

Some EU member states remain nervous about the impact on their own fragile economies. The sanctions deal was agreed only after initial proposals were narrowed.

EU subsidiaries of the targeted Russian banks are excluded from the ban, though they are prohibited from raising funds for their parent companies.

Twitter reported on Tuesday that its active users jumped 24 percent to 271 million in the second quarter. That pales when compared with Facebook's 1.3 billion.

Even so, Twitter's shares were trading at about 200 times forward earnings on Wednesday, against Facebook's 39.4 times, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine.

If Facebook was trading at Twitter's valuation, it would be worth nearly $1 trillion. Twitter's shares rose almost 25 percent to $48 in morning trading, giving the company a market value of about $28.3 billion.

Active users of Twitter increased more than expected in the quarter as the micro-messaging service introduced product tweaks and services, many built around the soccer World Cup.

Advertising revenue more than doubled to $277 million in the three months ended June 30.

The results were good, Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Weiser wrote in a research report, but they didn't warrant a nearly 30 percent rise in the stock price.

Weiser joined the few analysts who have a "sell" rating on the stock, cutting his recommendation from "hold".

At least five brokerages raised their ratings on the stock, while at least 21 raised price targets, by as much as $18 to a high of $65.

StarMine data on Wednesday showed that of 34 analysts covering the stock, 13 have a "buy" or a higher rating, 16 have a "hold" and five have a "sell" or equivalent rating.

"SUPER PREMIUM"

Analysts at RBC Capital Markets were among those saying that Twitter deserved its high valuation.

"On valuation, yes, (Twitter) is the highest multiple stock we cover," the analysts wrote. "But it also has the highest growth rates, too. So we view (the) super-premium multiples as well-warranted."

Goldman Sachs and others cited Twitter's potential to make more money from its platform and extend its real-time information edge into traditional media.

"We continue to believe we are in the early stages of a very long growth cycle for Twitter as it leverages cultural ubiquity, invests in product and technology, and grows the platform," Goldman Sachs analysts wrote.

Goldman maintained its "buy" rating and raised its price target to $63 from $52.

Twitter's user growth stagnated after it went public to much fanfare in November, leading to a management shake-up that resulted in the departure of Chief Operating Officer Ali Rowghani.

Two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said that with a new antitrust chief taking over in November, European regulators are laying the groundwork for a case centered on whether Google abuses the 80 percent market share of its Android mobile operating system to promote services from maps to search.

The Commission has stepped up inquiries just in recent weeks, sending companies questionnaires that seek far more details than previous queries on the matter in 2011 and 2013.

In one questionnaire seen by Reuters, respondents were asked whether there was a requirement set by Google, written or unwritten, that they not pre-install apps, products or services on mobile devices that compete with Google software like its search engine, app store and maps.

Companies must provide emails, faxes, letters, notes from phone calls and meetings, and presentations stretching as far back as 2007 related to such deals with Google, suggesting the European Commission wants to know if Google’s behavior has been long-term. Respondents have been given until early September to reply to more than 40 questions.

While any company is free to use the open-source Android as they choose, mobile handset makers that want to use the newest version must sign a contract that stipulates a minimum number of Google services be pre-installed on devices, according to a third source, a former Google executive with knowledge of the matter.

The impending Android inquiry adds to a growing list of regulatory challenges that complicate the Internet company's ambitions in a vital market. Europe accounted for more than $30 billion in digital advertising spending in 2013.

The European Commission is likely to start a formal probe into Android once it wraps up an investigation into whether Google ranks its own services higher than those of its rivals in search results, according to the two people with knowledge of the matter.

One of the sources said going after Android would help stem a growing chorus of complaints.

Some communities would be placed under quarantine as well, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said.

Non-essential government workers will be sent home for 20 days and the army deployed to enforce the measures.

The number of people killed by the virus in West Africa has now reached 672, according to new UN figures.

The BBC's West Africa correspondent Thomas Fessy says treatment facilities have reportedly been overwhelmed in the Liberian capital Monrovia.

Some wards have already filled up, forcing health workers to treat some patients at their homes.

President Sirleaf said that Friday 1 August would be a non-working day in Liberia to allow for the disinfection of all public facilities.

"All non-essential staff - to be determined by the heads of ministries and agencies - are to be placed on 30 days' compulsory leave" she added. Rapid spread

The US humanitarian organisation Peace Corps said it was withdrawing 340 volunteers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea because of the spread of the virus.

Ebola kills up to 90% of those infected, but patients have a better chance of survival if they receive early treatment.

It spreads through contact with an infected person's bodily fluids.

The outbreak - the world's deadliest to date - was first reported in Guinea in February. It then spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Israel's security cabinet decided to continue its offensive in the enclave and there was no sign of a halt to a 23-day conflict in which 1,346 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died. On the Israeli side, 56 soldiers and three civilians have been killed.

Some 3,300 Palestinians, including many women and children, were taking refuge in the school in Jabalya refugee camp when it came under fire around dawn, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said.

"Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school," UNRWA chief Pierre Krahenbuhl said in a statement after agency representatives visited the scene and examined fragments, craters and other damage.

Blood splattered floors and mattresses inside classrooms at the Jabalya Girls Elementary School and survivors picked through shattered glass and debris for flesh and body parts to bury.

"I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage," Krahenbuhl said.

The Gaza Health Ministry put the number of dead in the school attack at 15, with more than 100 wounded. The United Nations said 16 people were killed.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said militants had fired mortar bombs from the vicinity of the school and troops shot back in response. The incident was still being reviewed.

The army said three Israeli soldiers were killed on Wednesday when a booby-trap bomb exploded in a tunnel shaft they had uncovered in a residence in the southern Gaza Strip.

UNRWA said on Tuesday it had found a cache of rockets concealed at another Gaza school - the third such discovery since the conflict began. It condemned unnamed militant groups for putting civilians at risk.

Krahenbuhl said the Jabalya school's precise location and the fact that it was sheltering thousands of displaced people had been communicated to the Israeli military 17 times, with the last notification just hours before the fatal shelling.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking in Costa Rica, condemned the killing. "It is outrageous. It is unjustifiable. And it demands accountability and justice," he said.

At the White House, National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said: "We are extremely concerned that thousands of internally displaced Palestinians who have been called on by the Israeli military to evacuate their homes are not safe in U.N.-designated shelters in Gaza.