In Mideast Strife, Bush Sees a Step To Peace  —  President Bush's unwillingness to pressure Israel to halt its military campaign in Lebanon is rooted in a view of the Middle East conflict that is sharply different from that of his predecessors.  —  When hostilities have broken out in the past …

Hostage to Hezbollah  —  Lesson for Nasrallah: "The violence done to Lebanon shall overwhelm you."  —  Pity Lebanon: In a world of states, it has not had a state of its own.  A garden without fences, was the way Beirut, its capital city, was once described.

Israel calls up troops, warns Lebanese  —  BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israel called up reserve troops Friday and warned civilians to flee Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon, as it prepared for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone.  —  Hezbollah militants fired at least 11 rockets …

Two N.J. Casinos Sued Schlesinger Over Debts  —  When Alan Schlesinger gave a fake name while playing blackjack at Foxwoods in the early 1990s, he had already been sued over a gambling debt by one Atlantic City casino and was on the way to racking up an even bigger debt that led to a second lawsuit.

Count Ethnic Divisions, Not Bombs, to Tell if a Nation Will Recover From War  —  WITH repeated Shiite and Sunni killings in Iraq, the Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel, Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, the assaults by the Taliban and counterassaults by American forces in Afghanistan …

Centrist Democrats Ponder How To Counter Netroots  —  At a time when centrism has become a dirty word in some Democratic Party circles, hundreds of the party's avowed moderates are convening in Denver this weekend to discuss their agenda for this fall's election and the presidential contest in 2008.

A Secret the Media Kept  —  Toward the end of 1979, hundreds of American and Canadian journalists and news organizations got hold of a dynamite news story that would have made personal reputations and careers and sent circulation or broadcast ratings soaring.  The facts were confirmed, unassailably.

Top-Secret World Loses Blogger  —  CIA Contractor Is Fired When Internal Post Crosses the Line  —  Christine Axsmith, a software contractor for the CIA, considered her blog a success within the select circle of people who could actually access it.  —  Only people with top-secret security clearances …

Sources: Negroponte Blocks CIA Analysis of Iraq "Civil War"  —  I reported in May that despite the deteriorating situation in Iraq, no National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has been produced on that country since the summer of 2004.  The last NIE, a classified document that the CIA describes as …

Massachusetts same-sex marriage pioneers split up  —Text+BOSTON (Reuters) - The lesbian couple whose landmark lawsuit helped Massachusetts become the only state in America where same-sex couples can marry legally have split up, a spokeswoman said on Friday.

Out of Disproportion  —  So, now I see that some commentators are saying that Israel's bombing of Lebanese Hezbollah strong points and neighborhoods is "disproportionate."  The Israeli campaign, so this story goes, is bullying and terrorizing the Lebanese populace, and this is (so the argument goes) typical Israeli thug behavior.

Banned cleric begs UK: Save me  —  LONDON, England (Reuters) — A hard-line Muslim cleric barred from Britain for glorifying violence said on Friday he tried to get on board a British warship to flee Beirut but was turned back.  —  "The answer was, 'unless you have a British passport …

Democrats ready to shake up primary; Lynch warns of chaos  —  WASHINGTON —Democrats are prepared to jumble the states in the presidential primary calendar to add more diversity in early voting, prompting the governor of soon-to-be-slighted New Hampshire to warn of chaos in the nominating process.

Germany seeks EU ban on stem-cell research funding  —  BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Germany pressed its EU partners to ban European funding for embryonic stem-cell research, a day after President George W. Bush vetoed a bill that would have expanded such work in the United States.