Ron Bousso

Israel weighed launching an offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Sunday as violence simmered in the impoverished enclave.

Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday sparked an uproar after an apparent slip of the tongue in which he for the first time listed Israel as a nuclear power, but few expected the blunder to alter the Jewish state’s "policy of nuclear ambiguity". Israel, widely considered the Middle East’s sole nuclear power, has for decades refused to admit or deny whether it possesses an atomic bomb.