Iran Ends Cooperation with IAEA Probe
Iran on Thursday signaled it would no longer cooperate with International Atomic Energy Agency experts investigating for signs of nuclear weapons programs, confirming that the probe - launched a year ago with great expectations - was at a dead end.

NATO: Won't Hunt Taliban in Pakistan
NATO will not enter Pakistan to hunt Taliban insurgents, but reserves the right to hit the militants there should they attack alliance troops across the border in Afghanistan.

747 Terror Could Have Been Bomb
The hole blown in the side of the Boeing 747 on flight from London to Melbourne, could have been caused by an explosive device or a damaged fuselage, according to aviation experts.

Russian Nuclear Bomber Base in Cuba?
The Russian military, furious at American plans to install a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, is talking up the prospect of turning Cuba into a base for its long-range nuclear bombers.

Hamas-Ruled Gaza Hit by Twin Blasts
Bomb blasts rocked a cafe and a Hamas politician's home in the Gaza Strip on Friday in a rare renewal of internal violence in the enclave seized by Islamists a year ago.

Weapon-Wielding Gang Attacks Refugees
Twenty-three people were wounded when a gang of 40-50 men armed with steel bars and machetes attacked residents at a refugee centre in Norway late yesterday.

Eight Bombs in 'World's Back Office'
Eight small bombs exploded in quick succession across the south Indian IT city of Bangalore on Friday, killing a woman and wounding at least 15 people, police said.

Obama Snubs Troops Over Politics
The Pentagon confirmed that only after being cautioned about rules against campaigning at military installations did Barack Obama's campaign cancel his visit to wounded troops in Germany.

McCain Gains in Key Battleground States
John McCain has quickly closed the gap between himself and rival Barack Obama in several key battleground states even as he struggles to break through the wall-to-wall coverage of Obama's trip.

House Rejects Raiding Federal Oil Stockpile
The House rejected a bill that would have released about 70 million barrels of light, sweet crude from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Energy Speculation Bill Fails to Advance
The Senate failed to advance legislation targeting oil speculators after Republicans and Democrats remained at an impasse on adding an expansion of offshore drilling to the bill.

UK Teen Saved from Arranged Marriage
A British teenager has been rescued from a forced marriage to her Bangladeshi cousin after begging diplomats to help her.

San Francisco Sanctuary Law Under Fire
Edwin Ramos recently unloaded an AK-47 assault weapon on a man and his two sons, killing them. The deaths immediately drew public outrage when authorities revealed that Ramos is an illegal.

Lecturing Europe While Accepting the Social Structure of Brutality
Frank Salvato Managing Editor
New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote, “The reason we have a democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.” Aside from the glaring error in his declaration that we live in a democracy (the United States is actually a Democratic Republic, not a democracy) his assertion is spot on. In light of the logic in Mr. Brook’s statement, it would seem that the woman slated to be Barack Obama’s “Muslim liaison” is dangerous, especially to women.

The 180lbs. “Guerilla”: China’s Military Aspirations
Nancy Salvato, Senior Editor
As the mainstream media is dominated by its attention to the preparations for Beijing Olympics being held August 8-24 this year, an obvious truth is being ignored or going unaddressed. The more important story is that China is on a mission to dominate the United States and the rest of the world militarily by building nuclear weaponry meant to defeat the United States on the world stage. The actual Olympics pale in comparison to this upcoming event. And while our people continue to be distracted by a variety of “shiny things” meant to divert their attention, the Chinese continue their march to dominance in the military sphere. What serves to distract our nation from such an important subject?

Obama’s Pompous Circumstance
JB Williams, The New Media Journal
Watching what has become ObamaTV, 24/7 alphabet network coverage of every Obama “er – ah – uh – hm – uh – huh – er” uttered, it’s clear that the mainstream American media is desperate to demonstrate Obama’s readiness to be the big cheese by showing the fantastic rock-star welcome he is receiving abroad. To the average American onlooker, the term “Obamessiah” looks more and more appropriate as the news networks work around the clock to show how Europe and the Middle East react to his arrival as if he were indeed the second coming.

Vetting the First Ladies
Paul R. Hollrah, The New Media Journal
Michelle Robinson Obama was born in Chicago in January 1964. Following graduation from high school she attended Princeton University where she majored in Sociology and African American Studies. In her senior thesis, titled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,”' she asserted that America was a nation founded on “crime and hatred” and that white Americans were “ineradicably racist.”

The Politics of Showmanship
Alan Caruba, Capitol Hill Coffee House
For political theatre, there is no denying that the speech Sen. Barack Obama delivered in Berlin drew a huge, adoring crowd and was filled with the kind of talk intended to impress, not just Berliners, not just Europe, not just America, but the entire world that a new leader has appeared on the scene to work miracles...

8,000 Foreign Fighters in FATA Ring Alarms in Islamabad
Hamid Mir, Canada Free Press
In a disturbing report presented to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, days before he travels to the United States, the latest figure of foreign fighters present in the tribal areas of Pakistan is estimated to be more than 8,000. The government is reluctant to officially confirm this number.

The 'Fairness' Doctrine: America In The Balance
Christopher G. Adamo, GOPUSA
Lurking in the gloom of the Democrat agenda is a resuscitation of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine," which would allow the federal government, at the behest of liberal special interests, to selectively harass and intimidate radio stations whose broadcasting format it finds objectionable. Thus, the proliferation of conservative talk-radio and virtually all of the alternative media would be threatened with eventual extinction.

Mile High’ Hypocrisy
Gabriel Garnica, Family Security Matters
I was amused to learn that Denver officials have hatched an interesting plan to “escort” that city’s homeless population away from the site of its Democrat Convention next month. The area around the convention center just happens to be home to many of that city’s approximately 5,000 vagrants, and the city just happens to be planning a free-for-all pass blitz to encourage these people to visit movie houses, the Denver Zoo, museums and just about every venue away from the center itself. All the events will be free, funded by Denver Road Home, a branch of the mayor's office combating homelessness using United Way money.

Muslim Dynasties & Islamic Imperialism
David Watkins, Fighting Radical Islam through Knowledge
While Ahmadi Muslims are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the return of the Caliphate whom they believe is the spiritual guardian of Islam, “an office they believe was revived after an absence of nearly 1,400 years in 1908,” America and the rest of the world still haven’t come to terms with even the term Caliphate, it’s meaning to Muslims around the world, and the implications it has to stamping out our current freedoms we have enjoyed for the past 300 years in both western Europe and America.

Obama's Berlin Subtext
Helen Cadogan, American Thinker
Obama gave his long awaited speech in Berlin today. It was much ado about nothing. With classic Obama arrogance, he appropriated Ronald Reagan's rhetoric seeming to think that he was being original. The walls that must come down, according to Obama, are racial and religious walls. The theological differences between Judaism (it must always come first), Christianity, and Islam, must become nothing. Thus says Obama.

Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Entitlements
Ercille I. Christmas, The New Media Journal
President John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, exhorted the nation: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.” This rally to selflessness has been trampled upon by a new class that has sprung up over the past 20 years or so. We are all familiar with environmentalists, but their influence is in danger of being surpassed by the “entitlementalists,” the new breed of Americans who have made taking what their country can ill afford to offer and offering not half as much in return. I may need a mentalist to sort this all out.

We're Experiencing a Democratic Coup
Greg Lewis, GregLewis.org
What's happening in America right now is no longer an election, it's a coup d'état, and the degree to which we as free Americans let this happen through our not opposing Obama's candidacy and the candidacies of other Democrats who support the coup is the degree to which we guarantee that the hell that Democrats have in mind for us comes nearer to realization.

USA
Petrol Procrastination
Gordon Cucullu, FrontPage Magazine

Terrorism
'Compared to Us, Hamas Is Islamism Lite'
Ulrike Putz, Spiegel

Government
Senate Vote on More Money for UN
Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media

Politics
Obama Cancels Troop Visit
Jonathan Martin, The Politico

The Fifth Column
Jamie Gorelick's Ties to Fannie Mae
Jim Lindgren, The Volokh Conspiracy

Education
Change He Can't Believe In
Steve Chapman, RealClearPolitics

Culture War
[The Islamist-Leftist] Allied Menace
Daniel Pipes, EuropeanNews.dk

Media
End of the Affair
Gabriel Sherman, The New Republic

Current Events
Inside the Taliban Jailbreak
Graeme Smith, The Globe & Mail

Religion
Religion Like Breath
Mujtaba Hamdi, AltMuslim.com

'08 Election
McCain: 42.0%
  Negatives: 34.1%
  *Delegates: 163

Obama: 46.0%
  Negatives: 33.0%
  *Delegates: 238

* - Projected

"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if Rome doesn't want to become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."
-- Cicero

1780 - American General Horatio Gates takes command of the southern army from Major General Johann DeKalb at Coxe's Mill, North Carolina.

1832 - The first recorded railroad accident in US history occurs when four people are thrown off a vacant car on the Granite Railway near Quincy, Massachusetts.

1861 - The Crittenden-Johnson Resolution passes, declaring that the war is being waged for the reunion of the states and not to interfere with the institutions of the South, namely slavery. The measure was important in keeping the pivotal states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland in the Union.

1898 - During the Spanish-American War, US forces launch their liberation of Puerto Rico, the 108-mile-long, 40-mile-wide island that was one of Spain's two principal possessions in the Caribbean. With little resistance and only seven deaths, US troops under General Nelson A. Miles were able to secure the island by mid-August.

1956 - At 11:10pm, 45 miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria and the Swedish ocean liner Stockholm collide in a heavy Atlantic fog. Fifty-one passengers and crew were killed.

1969 - President Richard Nixon announces that henceforth the United States will expect its Asian allies to tend to their own military defense. The Nixon Doctrine, as the president's statement came to be known, clearly indicated his determination to "Vietnamize" the Vietnam War.