Al-Qaida's deputy issues new videotape  —  CAIRO, Egypt - An American thought to be an al-Qaida activist appeared in a videotape with the terror group's deputy leader Saturday and called on his countrymen to convert to Islam and for U.S. soldiers to switch sides in the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Mr. Bush's Nuclear Legacy  —  Unless something changes soon, by the end of President Bush's second term North Korea will have produced enough plutonium for 10 or more nuclear weapons while Iran's scientists will be close to mastering the skills needed to build their own.

EU gives Iran two more weeks in nuclear standoff  —  LAPPEENRANTA, Finland (Reuters) - The European Union agreed on Saturday to try to clarify Iran's stance on halting uranium enrichment within two weeks and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan held talks in Tehran to try and settle the standoff.

The ambulance hoax - why no missile could have done this  —  A military source I know, who cannot be identified, has checked to see if Israel has any missile that would pop a neat hole in the roof of an ambulance and explode, causing no scorch marks, no shrapnel damage and no fatalities to the people inside.

PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES....Brad DeLong says something worth starting a conversation over: … I would have agreed with this 15 years ago.  And I am enough of a temperamental moderate to agree with it still — emotionally, anyway.  —  But one has to respond to reality, no?

Attacks on Jews soar since Lebanon  —  Synagogues and citizens have been targeted  —  BRITISH Jews are facing a wave of anti-Semitic attacks prompted by Israel's conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Synagogues have been daubed with graffiti, Jewish leaders have had hate-mail and ordinary people …

Police swoop on Britain's first 'jihad training camp'  —  Anti-terror police raided what is believed to be Britain's first home-grown jihad training camp in the grounds of a former English ballet school.  —  They rounded up a network of alleged terrorist recruiters after spying on them at the secluded country mansion.

War Veterans Lend Support to Lieberman in TV Ads  —  An independent group, Vets for Freedom, will begin sponsoring television commercials early next week for Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, thanking him for his support of the war in Iraq.  —  Vets for Freedom is a group of veterans of the wars …

Iraqi Casualties Are Up Sharply, Study Finds  —  A girl checked her parrots Friday in her Baghdad home, which was damaged by rocket attacks.  Attacks on civilians have risen sharply.  —  Iraqi casualties soared by more than 50 percent in recent months, the product of spiraling sectarian clashes …

I Know This Little Boy In New Orleans  —  I get a lot of e-mail.  Most of it is very nice, some funny and some from right-wingers who — go figure — I seem to have made very angry.  But the most gratifying I've ever received has been over the last week or so when a large number of people …

Palestinian group to target non-Muslims  —  CAIRO, Egypt - Palestinian militants who held two Fox News journalists hostage for nearly two weeks threatened in a statement posted online Saturday to abduct non-Muslims visiting the Palestinian territories and kill them unless their demands were met.

Rove's Word Is No Longer G.O.P. Gospel  —  Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, is struggling to steer the Republican Party to victory this fall at a time when he appears to have the least political authority since he came to Washington, party officials said.

Accommodating Genocide in Darfur  —  In the face of ongoing genocide in Darfur, the international community's failure to accept the "responsibility to protect" (that's United Nations language, officially adopted) innocent civilian lives has taken its last, abject form.