Israel Security Cabinet has approved a 24-hour extension of the 12-hour humanitarian cease-fire today. This new one will last until midnight, Sunday, local time. 

In a statement a Hamas spokesman says that any humanitarian cease-fire that doesn't include a withdraw of Israeli soldiers from inside Gaza is unacceptable. Israel Security Cabinet made the decision of the request of the UN and the Cabinet meets tomorrow to discuss a sustained cease-fire.

Meanwhile in Gaza, health official says that the Palestinian death toll now stands at 1047, and 40 Israeli soldiers and 3 civilians have been killed.

 

And in Paris today, thousands of marchers defied an order by France officials banning rallies against Israel's offensive in the Gaza strip. Officials warn protester they face prosecution for ignoring the ban. After about two hours, the protesters left and police say they made around 50 arrests.

 

The Deputy Director of the National Security Agency says a number of US intelligence agencies are working together to figure out who was behind the downing of Malaysian Airlines' Flight 17. As NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports, he provided a blueprint for how these investigations are wrong.

NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett told the audience at the Aspan Security Forum that when there's an event like that of the downing of the Flight 17, the NSA begins looking for communications and some sort of clue left from weapon systems, then working with a national geo-spacial intelligence agency and a defense intelligence agency, they add images and human intelligence to the effort. Ledgett said the results then go to the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence for an assessment. Typically, signal intelligence is secret, but in the case of Flight 17, the decision was made to make some of it public. Dina Temple-Raston, at NPR news, Aspan, Colorado.

 

Dutch officials in Eastern Ukraine are still working in a recovery mode even though all of the bodies from Dutch victims from the Malaysian Airlines' crash arrived back in the Netherlands. The BBC's Tome Barriage has more from Ukraine.

There are forty unarmed Dutch military police officers currently in the city of Kharkiv, but hundreds more police and personnel from the Netherlands and other countries are expected to arrive here over the coming days. For now this international operation is only making preparations for the next phase of their nation. And they will not move in large numbers to the crash site in rebel-controlled territory for several days. First they will need approval of the Ukraine's Parliament, which they say will vote on the matter on Thursday. If they get the green light, Dutch police say they will then focus only on recovering any other remains or belongings of the victims on board Flight MH17. The BBC's Tom Barriage.

 

President Obama is blasting companies who use a loophole to dodge US taxes by moving their headquarters overseas. Seeing it unpatriotic, in his weekly address, he says those companies are essentially renouncing citizenship. 

 

This is NPR.

Cellphone users may soon be able to unlock their phones when switching service providers. That means you can change your provider, but you won't have to buy a new phone. The bill passed by Congress and is now on the way to, for the President's desk. It reverses a 2012 library of congress ruling, making it a copyright violation to unlock a phone without permission. But the Library does plan to revisit the law next year.

 

Lawyers will argue that constitutionality of gay marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana next month. As Marti Mikkelson reports from member station WUWM, a Federal Appeals Court set a date Friday. The seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals announced it has rescheduled oral arguments for both states' appeals for August 26. Federal judges in Wisconsin and Indiana overturned each state's gay marriage ban in separate rulings. When both states appealed, the court combined the cases. The 7th Circuit also denied requests that the states' appeals be heard before the four 10-member court instead of a 3-judge panel as its customary. Hundreds of same sex couples were married in Wisconsin and Indiana after the bans were overturned and before stays were issued. For NPR news, I am Marti Mikkelson, in Milwaukee.

 

In Chicago fast food workers from across the country met in their first convention this weekend. They are calling for more civil disobedience to escalate their push for higher minimum wages and union representation. They are looking for 15 dollars an hour. Already they have staged one-day strikes and they protested outside this year's McDonald's shareholder's meeting. But industry officials say a $15 wage would hurt job creation.