Hasta La Gadget!

GAZA/JERUSALEM, Aug 1 (Reuters) – A Gaza ceasefire was in jeopardy just hours after it began on Friday, with the Islamist group Hamas saying Israeli tank fire killed four people and Israel accusing militants of violating the truce.

The 72-hour break announced in a joint statement by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was the most ambitious attempt so far to end more than three weeks of fighting, and followed mounting international alarm over a rising Palestinian civilian death toll.

The ceasefire was to be followed by Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Cairo on a longer-term solution.

Israel launched its offensive in Hamas Islamist-dominated Gaza on July 8, unleashing air and naval bombardments in response to a surge of cross-border rocket attacks. Tanks and infantry pushed into the territory of 1.8 million on July 17.

Gaza officials say at least 1,459 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed and 7,000 wounded. Sixty-one Israeli soldiers have been killed and more than 400 wounded. Three civilians have been killed by Palestinian rockets in Israel.

Some two hours after the truce went into effect, a Reuters photographer and the Gaza Interior Ministry said Israeli tanks opened fire in the southern Rafah area, and Hamas media reported four people were killed. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

An official in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Hamas and other armed groups in the Gaza Strip had “flagrantly violated the ceasefire”. But the official did not elaborate.

A local official in an Israeli southern border community said on Israel’s Channel 10 television that sirens warning of rocket attacks had sounded. No casualties or damage were reported.

After the ceasefire began at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT), Gaza’s streets began to fill with Palestinian families. Laden with belongings, they streamed back to homes they fled during fierce fighting that destroyed or damaged thousands of dwellings.

In Israel, sirens that have sent tens of thousands running for shelter daily fell silent.

“We are going back to Beit Lahiya (in the northern Gaza Strip),” said Asharaf Zayed, a 38-year-old father of four. “We hope the truce will be permanent and we won’t have to go back to a U.N. shelter.”

Amid strong public support in Israel for the Gaza campaign, Netanyahu had faced intense pressure from abroad to stand his forces down.

International calls for an end to the bloodshed intensified after shelling on Wednesday that killed 15 people sheltering in a U.N.-run school in Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp.

The truce left Israeli ground forces in place in the Gaza Strip and a military spokeswoman said operations were continuing to destroy a warren of tunnels through which Hamas has menaced Israel’s southern towns and army bases.

“We are doing what needs to be done in order to neutralize them,” she said.

Accomplishing that mission – the military said on Thursday the tunnels hunt could be wrapped up in a few days – could open the way for Israel to declare it has achieved the main goal of the ground assault and withdraw its soldiers from Gaza.

“Our understanding is that the Israelis will make clear to the U.N. where their lines are, roughly, and they will continue to do operations to destroy tunnels that pose a threat to Israeli territory that lead from the Gaza strip into Israel proper as long as those tunnels exist on the Israel side of their lines,” a U.S. State Department official said.

Hamas, isolated in an Arab world concerned about the rise Islamist militancy, is seeking an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. It also wants a hostile Egypt to ease restrictions at its Rafah crossing with the territory imposed after the military toppled Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last July.

Israel has balked at freeing up Gaza’s borders under any de-escalation deal unless Hamas’s disarmament is also guaranteed.

CAIRO NEGOTIATIONS

A senior State Department official traveling with Kerry in India said U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns would arrive in Cairo on Saturday and that Frank Lowenstein, the acting U.S envoy for Middle East peace, and another U.S. official, Jonathan Schwartz, would be there on Friday.

The official said he believed the Palestinians would be in Cairo on Friday, while the Israelis would arrive on Saturday.

The Palestinian delegation will be comprised of Hamas, Western-backed Fatah, the Islamic Jihad militant group and a number of smaller factions, Palestinian officials said.

But U.S. officials said Israel and the United States would not sit across the table from Hamas, which the two countries, along with the European Union, consider a terrorist group.

Just over an hour before the ceasefire was due to take effect militants fired 11 rockets into Israel, one of which was intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system over the center of the country, a military spokeswoman said.

Israeli strikes killed 14 people in Gaza, including eight from one family, hospital officials said. Earlier, Hamas rockets set off sirens in the Tel Aviv area and one was intercepted.

Israel’s military said five of its soldiers were killed late on Thursday by a mortar bomb.

Previous international attempts to broker a humanitarian truce secured only shorter periods of calm, with some collapsing immediately after being announced.

U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman said it took a massive diplomatic push to achieve the ceasefire.

“The Egyptians played an important role, the Qataris played an essential role in helping bring the parties on board, the Turks were in touch with all sides. This was a collective effort,” Feltman told CNN.

Kerry, speaking to reporters in New Delhi, said the parties needed to find a way to address Israel’s security concerns and to ensure the people of Gaza could live in safety and dignity.

“Israel has to be able to live in peace and security, without terror attacks and rockets and tunnels and sirens going off,” Kerry said.

“And Palestinians need to be able to live with the opportunity to educate their children and move freely and share in the rest of the world and lead a life that is different from the one they have long suffered,” he added. (Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch, David Brunnstrom in New Delhi; Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Giles Elgood)

How bad is Congress? On the final day before recess, lawmakers on the Hill were unable to pass any legislation to address the immigration crisis unfolding at the border.

One senator called it a failure — but on Thursday night’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart had a better description for it.

“When you guys suck, it is not failure. It is just you living up to our extremely low expectations,” said Stewart. “Congress is the ‘Sharknado 2’ of government: Of course it sucked. It was supposed to suck.”

But the House did manage to take action on one issue. Check out the clip above to find out what it is as well as Stewart’s take on it.

If you hear that there’s a biopic coming out about an influential African-American icon, the six words you don’t want to hear connected to it are “From the director of The Help“. That’s because despite The Help‘s box office and critical success, a lot of progressive-minded people (including myself) were upset that not only was The Help essentially another movie about a white savior inspiring and rescuing brown people, but that a movie supposedly addressing the struggles of black maids in the South before the Civil Rights Act could fail so grandly in addressing the realities of racism in Mississippi. Instead, the film portrays racism not as a longstanding institution baked into a region’s identity, but as simply the crummy behavior of individual jerks, while the film opts for an oddly comedic tone with a plot that hinges on eating a pie full of poo.

So when I heard that The Help director Tate Taylor would be directing the James Brown biopic Get On Up, I began warming up my voice for some full-throated groans. But despite a lot of flaws, I enjoyed Get On Up more than I thought I would for two reasons: the music of James Brown and the Oscarworthy performance of Chadwick Boseman as the Godfather of Soul. Watch the trailer for Get On Up below.

Biopics are a tricky genre — a narrow focus may leave fans bemoaning the aspects of the subject’s life that are missing, but trying to cover the scope of an entire life risks the lack of depth that comes with condensing a life to a list of greatest hits. Taylor and screenwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth chose the latter approach with an ambitious structure that jumps back and forth through the timeline of Brown’s life, sometimes with the young Brown who grew up a virtual orphan in a Georgia brothel appearing in the place of the adult Brown as he becomes one of music’s biggest and most influential sensations before fading into drugs and run-ins with the law. It’s a risky decision — along with several moments where Brown speaks directly to the camera — that largely works even in a movie 138 minutes long, helping connect events in Brown’s childhood to the talented but increasingly difficult adult he would become.

While Brown’s surviving relatives have given their stamp of approval to the film, Get On Up is no hagiography, depicting Brown as a megalomaniac who seemed to mistreat nearly everyone in his life with his increasing demands on both his band members and the women in his life for complete control and unwavering loyalty, even in the face of disrespect, missing paychecks, and domestic violence.

While some may rightfully feel that Brown’s history of domestic abuse sullies his entire career, no one can deny that Brown was an extraordinary one-of-a-kind talent who changed music forever. And that talent is more than represented in the stunning performance of Chadwick Boseman, who plays Brown from his teen years into his sixties, perfectly nailing Brown’s sometimes incomprehensible voice and his scintillating live performances that, with the aid of Brown’s original vocals, sometimes gives Get On Up the feeling of a boisterous live concert film. Boseman is able to embody the raw charisma and talent that earned the young Brown the attention of both musicians and the music industry while also justifying his increasingly confident and grandiose vision of himself.

It’s a performance so terrific and Oscarworthy that it makes you forget — or, more accurately, forgive — the fact that Get On Up is from the director of The Help and shares many of that film’s flaws. Get On Up‘s overly glossy cinematography often gives the film a feeling of idealized unreality that seems more suited to a theme park. Characters are poorly developed and deliver the kind of annoyingly on-the-nose, subtext-free dialogue where everyone says exactly what they’re thinking at all times. Racism is only lightly touched on while white people who don’t “get” Brown and his music are often portrayed as clueless buffoons.

But like The Help, Get On Up is also carried by a singular performance. In The Help it was Viola Davis (who also plays Brown’s mother) and in Get On Up it’s Boseman, putting the film’s most dynamic presence in all but a handful of scenes, repeatedly and insistently reminding you why Brown was indeed Soul Brother No. 1, the Godfather of Soul, and the Hardest Working Man In Show Business.

Watch video of James Brown’s 1968 Boston Garden concert after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.

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“Sin City 2” won’t hit theaters until August 22, but it is already making headlines for its racy promo content.

In May, Eva Green’s character poster for the sequel, “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” was deemed too risqué for public audience by the Motion Picture Association of America. Now, Page Six exclusively reports that ABC has rejected the movie trailer for the same reason.

According to Page Six, the network said the sheer white robe Green wears in the below trailer makes her “appear to be naked.” Distributor Dimension Films is reportedly appealing the decision.

Following the poster controversy in May, Green, 34, told Vanity Fair she doesn’t understand the uproar and pointed out she isn’t, in fact, naked. “I find the poster really sexy, actually,” the French-born actress said. “It’s kind of beautiful. But if it shocks people, I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t want to upset anybody.”

Huffington Post has reached out to ABC for comment and will update this post once one comes through.

Auto-correct fails can be pretty hilarious, but if you’d rather avoid them altogether (boo!) maybe a litigious phone case’s second coming is up your alley. See, earlier this year Ryan Seacrest’s iPhone accessory company, Typo, found itself on the…