By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing international alarm over a rising civilian death toll in Gaza, said on Thursday he would not accept any ceasefire that stopped Israel completing the destruction of militants' infiltration tunnels. The Israeli military estimated on Wednesday that accomplishing that task would take several more days, extending a four-week-old aerial and ground offensive in the small, densely populated coastal territory. "I wont agree to any proposal that will not enable the Israeli military to finish this important task, for the sake of Israel's security." Leaving open the option of widening its ground campaign in the Islamist Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said it had called up an additional 16,000 reservists. Gaza health officials said 34 Palestinians were killed in Israeli assaults on Thursday that included an air strike on a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, killing 11 members of the same family.

By Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine's parliament rejected Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk's resignation on Thursday and finally passed legislation he said was needed to finance an army offensive against a separatist rebellion in the east and avert a national default on its debts. The assembly's about-turn on laws it refused to back a week earlier offers relief to Kiev's Western backers, who had feared Ukraine was sliding deeper into political chaos and might renege on an international bailout as it heads into an election period. The first is that Argentina has defaulted, and the second is that Ukraine has not defaulted and never will," Yatseniuk told the chamber, making clear he would stay in office. The political battle has been taking place against the backdrop of a military campaign to win back parts of the Donbass region, which borders Russia, from the pro-Moscow rebels.

By Keith Wallis SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Part of a Kurdish oil cargo has been offloaded from a Greek-managed tanker into another tanker in the South China Sea, but mystery surrounds the identity of the buyer and where the two tankers are headed. The United Emblem, which is carrying more than 1 million barrels of oil, is one of three tankers loaded with oil from the autonomous Kurdish region, which is trying to sell oil independently. Iraqi Kurdistan is locked in a bitter legal and diplomatic struggle with Baghdad over international oil sales. The Kurdistan Regional Government filed a letter with the Texas court arguing its sales are allowed under the Iraqi constitution.

By Caroline Valetkevitch NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 posted its worst daily decline since April and first monthly drop since January on Thursday as economic data sparked concern that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates sooner than some have expected. Data showing that U.S. labor costs recorded their biggest gain in more than 5-1/2 years in the second quarter came a day after the Fed upgraded its assessment of the U.S. economy while reiterating it was in no hurry to raise rates.

By Paul Lienert and Bernie Woodall DETROIT (Reuters) - Tesla Motors Inc, the California-based maker of luxury electric cars, said Thursday it lost $61.9 million, or 50 cents a share, in the second quarter, as revenue nearly doubled to $769.3 million. The automaker has been spending heavily to update and expand its Fremont assembly plant, which builds the $70,000-plus Model S sedan, and eliminate production bottlenecks.

Though economists cautioned against reading too much into the rise in the employment cost index, they said a tightening jobs market suggested wage growth would soon accelerate significantly. Most members of the Federal Reserve appear to believe it will be a lot later and not very rapidly but I am not that sure," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania. The Employment Cost Index, the broadest measure of labor costs, rose 0.7 percent. It is one of Fed Chair Janet Yellen's favorite labor market gauges and is being closely watched for clues on the timing of the first interest rate increase from the U.S. central bank.

NEW YORK (AP) — Dick Smith, the Oscar-winning "Godfather of Makeup" who amused, fascinated and terrified moviegoers by devising unforgettable transformations for Marlon Brando in "The Godfather" and Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" among many others, has died. He was 92.

NEW YORK (AP) — Grammy winner Ne-Yo wants $8 million from his ex-manager.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — In 1968, Dionne Warwick had never been to San Jose and didn't think much of the song.

Violet Palmer made her biggest call yet: The NBA referee will marry her partner of 20 years on Friday.

Manu Ginobili walked off the court in June an NBA champion.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Repair crews on Thursday were shoring up a giant hole in the middle of Sunset Boulevard caused by a ruptured pipe, as officials at the water-logged University of California, Los Angeles, continued to assess damage from the 20 million gallons that inundated the campus.

By Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said on Thursday that any unilateral steps by President Barack Obama on immigration would make matters worse and add to a "legacy of lawlessness." "No more unilateral action by the president," Boehner said at a news conference. "He'll be violating the solemn oath he made to the American people on the day of his inauguration." Boehner said the House planned to vote Thursday on legislation that would stop Obama from expanding his 2012 action to suspend deportations of children brought to the United States before mid-2007 by their parents. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said earlier in the day that the president is acting on his own because Boehner has refused to put to a vote an immigration reform bill that passed the Senate. "The question for the president is, are we just going to sort of allow the country to be stuck just because congressional Republicans are blocking everything?" Earnest said in an interview on MSNBC.

By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker John Boehner suffered a political setback on Thursday when he had to cancel a planned vote on legislation that would provide $659 million to help address an immigration crisis on the southwestern border with Mexico. Boehner had labored to garner sufficient support from his fellow Republicans for the spending bill by hastily arranging a vote on a second immigration-related measure later on Thursday. House Republicans arranged a closed-door meeting for later on Thursday to discuss their options. The setback put Republicans in the embarrassing position of having demanded quick action by Obama to address the problem of tens of thousands of children arriving at the U.S. border, mainly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, only to refuse the needed money to implement such action.

By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA conceded on Thursday that it had improperly monitored computers used by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in an investigation of CIA interrogation tactics and secret prisons for terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Central Intelligence Agency spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement that the agency's inspector general had determined that "some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent" with an understanding between the agency and the Senate panel. Boyd said CIA Director John Brennan had informed Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Senate committee's chair, and its senior Republican, Senator Saxby Chambliss, of the finding and apologized.