10 things you need to know today: July 25, 2014

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1. Protests rock the West Bank ahead of a "day of rage"
2. Obama urges Congress to close overseas tax loopholes for businesses
3. Ukraine's prime minister submits his resignation
4. Air Algerie wreck blamed on weather
5. Amazon losses climb due to big investments to woo customers
6. One killed, two wounded in Pennsylvania psychiatric hospital shooting
7. Arizona officials defend controversial execution
8. U.S. considers screening refugees in Honduras to discourage illegal immigration
9. Pope meets with Sudanese Christian sentenced to death for her faith
10. Fifty Shades of Grey trailer debuts

last updated 13 January 2015

1. Protests rock the West Bank ahead of a "day of rage"

Israel deployed thousands of security forces around Jerusalem after Palestinian leaders called for a "day of rage" on Friday following massive overnight protests in the West Bank. Israeli tank shells reportedly hit a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least 15 people. Dozens of Palestinians had sought shelter there from fighting between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian faction that runs Gaza. Israel said it did not target the school.

President Obama on Thursday called on Congress to close loopholes allowing businesses to use foreign partnerships to avoid taxes at home, even when their headquarters and main operations remain in the U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who is the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said he was all for asking companies to pay their fair share, but that Obama administration policies were "punitive and restrictive to businesses."

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The wreckage of a chartered Air Algerie jetliner was found Thursday in Mali. The plane was carrying 110 passengers and six crew members when it left Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, for Algiers early Thursday. There did not appear to be any survivors. Burkina Faso's top military leader, Gen. Gilbert Diendere, said fierce thunderstorms that were pounding the Sahara as the plane flew over probably played a role in the crash.

Amazon.com reported its biggest quarterly loss since 2012 on Thursday. The world's largest online retailer lost $126 million, far higher than the average analyst's forecast of $66.7 million. Amazon's sales climbed by 23 percent to $19.3 billion, but CEO Jeff Bezos' strategy of investing heavily in services and gadgets to inspire customer loyalty hurt profits. Amazon stock fell by more than 11 percent on the news.

A gunman killed one person and wounded two others during a Thursday shooting at the psychiatric unit of Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in the Philadelphia suburb of Darby, Pennsylvania. The suspect — a patient — entered Dr. Lee Silverman's office with a female caseworker and allegedly opened fire. Silverman, who was wounded, pulled his own gun and wounded the assailant after the caseworker was killed.

Arizona prison officials denied Thursday that the two-hour execution of double-murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood had been "botched." State officials said that Wood was brain-dead during 90 minutes of gulping and snorting before he was declared dead. Wood's attorneys unsuccessfully asked a judge to stop the procedure as Wood got a second round of lethal-injection drugs. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called the process "torture."

The Obama administration is considering screening thousands of young people in Honduras to see if they should be allowed to enter the U.S. as refugees or on emergency humanitarian grounds. It would be the first such move involving a country linked by land to the U.S. The White House is seeking ways to discourage young Hondurans from joining the wave of undocumented child immigrants streaming over the U.S.-Mexico border.

Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, a Sudanese Christian woman sentenced to death by an Islamist judge for refusing to renounce her faith, met Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday. Ibrahim was convicted for apostasy for allegedly converting from Islam to Christianity. She insisted she had been raised Christian, and was released last month under international pressure. The pope thanked her for staying true to her faith, a Vatican spokesman said.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.