At Cairo press conference, Egyptian FM and US secretary of state announce Hamas-Israel ceasefire, set to go into effect this evening. - Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas at a press conference in Cairo held Wednesday at 7:30pm (Cairo time). The ceasefire is set to come into effect at 9pm. Israel destroyed tens of buildings, attacked media centres, in addition to killing more than 140 Palestinians in non-stop air strikes on heavily populated areas over the course of the past week. 5 Israelis died as a result of rockets fired by Hamas fighters into israel. At the press conference, Amr commended the efforts of all parties involved in mediating the ceasefire agreement, including the Arab League and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

CBS News: Israel and Hamas agree to Gaza cease-fire

There has been an explosion on a bus in Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv, police say, amid continuing exchanges between Israel and militants in Gaza. - There are at least 10 injuries in what police called a "terrorist attack". The incident comes as Israel continued its strikes on Gaza, including a key compound of the Hamas government, and militants fired more rockets at Israel. International efforts to broker a truce are continuing with talks in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Cairo. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the UN secretary general are in the region to discuss a ceasefire.

Fighting raged on both sides of Gaza's borders Wednesday despite intensified efforts across the region to thrash out a truce to end a week of violence that has cost 136 Palestinian and five Israeli lives.

Diplomatic efforts have involved US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi but a deal to end Israel's offensive on rocket-firing militants in the Gaza Strip remains elusive. The Israeli military said that during the night it had targeted more than 100 sites across the Gaza Strip, about half of them underground rocket launchers, as well as the internal security ministry and a police compound. [...] Clinton, who flew in Tuesday night for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Clinton, said that Washington's commitment to Israeli security was "rock solid and unwavering." But she also stressed that this "is why we believe it is essential to de-escalate the situation" in the Palestinian territory.

PressTV: Israel military: Keep up attacks as if there were no talks
The Guardian: Ceasefire fails to materialise overnight
Boston Globe: US joins mounting effort for "Israel-Hamas" truce
Russia Today: US blocks "unbalanced" UN Security Council statement calling for Gaza ceasefire

Finian Cunningham: World Has Put Up With Zionist Apartheid For Too Long - For months, the US and its Western allies have been denouncing Russia and China for blocking a UN Security Council resolution to sanction the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. Moscow and China have been lambasted for turning a blind eye to violations in Syria - even though much of the violations in that country have been committed by Western-backed mercenaries. All the while, the Western governments have been trumpeting their concern for human rights and international law. Yet when a clear case of mass murder and human rights violations is now being witnessed in the concentration camp that is Gaza, those same Western governments are silent on the atrocities and the victims. Indeed, they show themselves as the vocal apologists and material supporters of the killers - consistent with what they are actually doing in Syria, despite their fraudulent claims.

The Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube accounts of Israeli Deputy Premier Silvan Shalom have been hacked and filled with pro-Palestine status updates. ZCompanyHackingCrew claimed responsibility for this latest act of cyber war against Israel. The group also claims to have hacked Shalom’s email and extracted personal mail, contacts and documents. The hackers announced plans to release the documents shortly. In Shalom's hijacked Twitter feed, the hacker group posted calls for protest against "unjust war and occupation," and asked,

"Who can bare to see the horror, the deaths of children and innocent people trying to protect their occupied land?"

The full-scale cyber attack on the top Israeli official comes just days after prominent hacker group Anonymous leaked the personal information of 5,000 Israeli officials.

Demonstrations have been held in several countries to condemn the deadly airstrikes by the Tel Aviv regime on the Gaza Strip. - The protests were held in Chile and Bosnia-Herzegovina, among other countries, as well as in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Angry protesters in Kashmir’s city of Muzaffarabad chanted slogans against Israel, expressing solidarity with the families of the Palestinian victims on Tuesday. Burning flags of the Israeli regime, the demonstrators also condemned US President Barack Obama’s support for Tel Aviv’s aggression against Gaza. Over 135 Gazans, including women and children, have been killed in more than 1,450 Israeli attacks on the besieged Palestinian territory since November 14.

Two Israeli strikes have left three Palestinian journalists dead, with media buildings targeted by the IDF two days in a row. The AFP building was hit in another attack later on, with no casualties reported. - Mahmoud al-Koumi and Husam Salameh, cameramen for the local al-Aqsa TV station, were killed in a car marked with a press sign near the al-Wihda towers in Gaza. Both journalists were 30 years old and fathers of four children. Two other al-Aqsa employees were wounded in the first strike. The second attack killed the director of al-Quds Educational Radio, Muhammad Abu Aisha, in his car. Then, the AFP building in Gaza was hit, with no casualties reported so far. A series of massive explosions, followed by a massive blackout, were also reported near the Al Shorook building in Gaza, which houses several media outlets.

PressTV: Press TV reporter injured in Israeli airstrike on Gaza
Your Middle East: Is Israel waging a war against journalists?

India has hanged Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, the only militant to have survived the 2008 attacks on the financial centre Mumbai, the country's home ministry has said. - In August, India's supreme court upheld Kasab's death sentence over the attack on a string of targets in Mumbai that killed 166 people. "Ajmal Kasab was executed at 7.30 this morning [Wednesday]," said KS Dhatwalia, a home ministry spokesman. The execution at Yerawada prison in Pune, near Mumbai, came a few hours after the president, Pranab Mukherjee, rejected a mercy plea by Kasab, a Pakistani national who had said he belonged to the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is the first time a capital sentence has been carried out in India since 2004.

The News (Pakistan): India hangs Mumbai gunman Ajmal Kasab
The Hindustan Times: "I swear by God, won't do it again", were Kasab's last words

The National Security Agency has responded to a Freedom of Information Act Request from EPIC, seeking the public release of Presidential Policy Directive 20. The Directive, first reported by the Washington Post, is believed to expand the NSA's cybersecurity authority. In response to EPIC, the NSA argued that the Agency does not have to release the document because it is a confidential presidential communication and it is classified by the NSA. EPIC is litigating similar claims against the NSA, including the release of NSPD 54, a 2008 presidential directive setting out the NSA’s cybersecurity authority. In an official statement to Congress earlier this year, EPIC explained that the NSA was a “black hole for public information about cybersecurity.” EPIC plans to appeal the NSA's determination.