Iran has issued its strongest signal to date that it will defy UN demands for a suspension of uranium enrichment - a possible route towards a nuclear bomb - threatening to respond to any further sanctions and accusing the Americans of "running away" from negotiations to end the crisis over the Iranian nuclear programme.

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Fox News ought to buy a copy of Monday's Democrat debate on CNN to play over and over during the general election campaign. For now, the Democratic candidates need to appeal only to their nut-base. So on Monday night, the candidates casually spouted liberal conspiracy theories that would frighten normal Americans, but are guaranteed to warm the hearts of losers blogging from their mother's basements.

B. Hussein Obama got the party started by claiming he couldn't get a cab in New York because he's black. This line was a big hit with white liberals in the audience who have never been to New York.

Even writers for The New York Times don't drag this canard out anymore.

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Hide the nuns, possible riot alert here. We all remember the last time the Pope mentioned Islam...

Pope Benedict XVI's private secretary warned of the Islamization of Europe and stressed the need for the continent's Christian roots not to be ignored, in comments released Thursday.

"Attempts to Islamize the west cannot be denied," Monsignor Georg Gaenswein was quoted as saying in an advance copy of the weekly Sueddeutsche Magazin to be published Friday.

Gaenswein also defended a speech Benedict gave last year linking Islam and violence, saying it was an attempt by the pontiff to "act against a certain naivety."

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If you're a crazy tin foil hat wearing Mullah in Iran, then behind every corner lurks a Zionist ready to drink Muslim blood...

In an article, the Iranian daily Kayhan, which is identified with Iranian Supreme Leader 'Ali Khamenei, criticized Iran's Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry for approving the distribution of the new book in the "Harry Potter" series.

The paper said that "Harry Potter" was a Zionist project in which billions of dollars had been invested in order to disrupt the minds of young people.

Source: Kayhan, Iran, July 26, 2007 

Because of his name, 15-year-old Jehad Faleh knows there are many usages for the Arabic word jihad, and many Arabic speakers say the one meaning holy war is a distortion.

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In her first tell-all interview since the release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” J.K. Rowling told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira she “probably will” publish a Potter encyclopedia, promising many more details about her beloved characters and the fate of the wizarding world beyond the few clues provided in the seventh book’s epilogue.

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A federal judge on Thursday struck down the city of Hazleton’s tough crackdown on illegal immigrants, ruling unconstitutional a law that has been emulated by towns and cities around the nation.

The Illegal Immigration Relief Act, pushed by the city’s Republican mayor last summer after two illegal immigrants were charged in a fatal shooting, was voided by U.S. District Judge James Munley following a nine-day trial in March.

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Supervisors at a hydroelectric plant never approved requests to fix water-level sensors at the Taum Sauk reservoir before its collapse sent a torrent of water into a state park, a company engineer testified Wednesday.

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A cat that is reportedly able to sense when a nursing home's residents are about to die is baffling doctors.  Oscar has a habit of curling up next to patients at the home in Providence, Rhode Island, in their final hours.

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Paternalistic agitators must be in a real quandary. A Massachusetts man is suing his former employer for firing him for smoking. The man lost his job as a lawn-care specialist after testing positive for nicotine.

Isn’t this great? After all, anti-smoking types have been haranguing us for years about the dangers of smoking. On the moral-outrage scale, nicotine ranks up there with Attila the Hun in its repulsiveness.

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Many of the Democrats running for president will speak at the DailyKos convention next week. That is a major mistake.

While all of those Democrats lean left, most are not far left, but the Kos is. Very far left.

So the candidates will be tarred with that radical brush. And that is not a good place to be. Here are some of the things the far left wants. A cut and run strategy in Iraq, which would leave the Middle East in chaos and greatly strengthen the terrorist element in play there. Higher taxes in the USA, which would pay for entitlements like socialized medicine. Those taxes might very well lead to recession, as investors paying much more on profits would invest less.

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Forget the coyotes. Do you really think your biggest concern is getting bitten by a wild animal?  Frankly, if you are in Golden Gate Park, a far greater danger is that you, or your child, or your pet, will step on a dirty hypodermic needle. Step off the paths, and you'll have plenty of chances.

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Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26, left, and Steven Hayes, 44, right, were charged with assault, sexual assault, kidnapping, burglary, robbery and arson on Tuesday. More charges are pending and the two may face the death penalty.

Two parolees with long criminal records were arraigned Tuesday on charges alleging they broke into a doctor's home, forced a hostage to withdraw cash from a bank and set fire to the house several hours later, killing the doctor's wife and two daughters.

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James Lee Witt, left, then the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, toured tornado destruction in Alabama with President Bill Clinton in 1998.

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Domestic politics in most countries normally are of little interest geopolitically. On the whole this is true of the United States as well. Most political debates are more operatic than meaningful, most political actors are interchangeable and the distinctions between candidates rarely make a difference. The policies they advocate are so transformed by Congress and the Supreme Court -- the checks and balances the Founding Fathers liked so much, coupled with federalism -- that the president rarely decides anything.

That is not how the world perceives the role, however. In spite of evidence to the contrary, the president of the United States is perceived as the ultimate "decider," someone whose power determines the course of action of the world's strongest nation. Therefore, when presidents weaken, the behavior of foreign powers tends to shift, and when elections approach, their behavior shifts even more.

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On Sept. 14, Warner Independent Pictures expects to release “In the Valley of Elah,” a drama inspired by the Davis murder, written and directed by Paul Haggis, whose “Crash” won the Academy Award for best picture in 2006. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones as a retired veteran who defies Army bureaucrats and local officials in a search for his son’s killers. In one of the movie’s defining images, the American flag is flown upside down in the heartland, the signal of extreme distress.

Other coming films also use the damaged Iraq veteran to raise questions about a continuing war. In “Grace Is Gone,” directed by James C. Strouse and due in October from the Weinstein Company, John Cusack and two daughters struggle with the loss of a wife and mother who is killed on duty. Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss,” set for release in March by Paramount, meanwhile, casts Ryan Phillippe as a veteran who defies an order that would send him back to Iraq

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