Associated Press

A member of Britain’s House of Lords said Saturday that Israeli soldiers shot at her and two other lawmakers during a fact-finding visit to Gaza the day before. Baroness Northover, the Liberal Democrat party’s spokeswoman on international development issues, said the group was traveling under U.N. supervision near the Rafah refugee camp Friday when soldiers in an Israeli observation post fired machine guns over their heads. A large number of children were nearby, she said. The group then moved closer to marked U.N. vehicles and another shot hit a building next to them, chipping off pieces of masonry near Northover, she said in a statement.

More than 1,800 family, friends and faculty attended the memorial for Rachel Corrie at The Evergreen State College. At a news conference, Rachel’s parents displayed photos they described as 286 children who have died in Israel and the disputed occupied territory in the past two years. “They deserve as much notice as Corrie on the morning news,” Cindy Corrie said. David Ammon reports from Olympia for The Associated Press.

Israel today shut down two West Bank universities as two Palestinians were killed in clashes and Israeli troops sealed the homes of four Jerusalem Arabs responsible for killing 35 people, including five Americans, in bombings. In Hebron, the army closed the Islamic University and Polytechnic Institution as part of its response to the Tel Aviv bombing earlier this month in which 22 people were killed. Jamie Tarabay reports for the Associated Press.

Palestinians increasingly want the Marlboro man out of town. Many smokers, especially young trendsetters, have switched to French-made Gauloises, which they say are similar in taste and a dollar a pack cheaper.

Three men, one dressed as an Israeli soldier and two wearing masks, entered the home of an Associated Press photographer at about 3 a.m. Sunday, rummaging through cabinets, desks and closets and emptying a jewelry box before leaving after about 30 minutes, the family said.

About 200 people gathered at the University of California, Berkeley to protest Barak’s speech Tuesday night, although a strong police presence kept them well away from the campus theater where the event took place.

Stung by accusations of anti-Semitism, New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka struck back at critics from the stage of a downtown poetry cafe, saying he wanted to know “why the Anti-Defamation League is not registered as an agent of a foreign power.”

Israel’s cable TV companies announced Thursday that they would quit carrying CNN news broadcasts in November, saying they could not longer afford it.