Obama cancels meeting with Putin amid Snowden tensions  —  In a rare diplomatic snub, President Obama is canceling plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next month.  —  The decision reflects both U.S. anger over Russia's harboring of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden …

Al Qaeda Conference Call Intercepted by U.S. Officials Sparked Alerts  —  It wasn't just any terrorist message that triggered U.S. terror alerts and embassy closures—but a conference call of more than 20 far-flung al Qaeda operatives, Eli Lake and Josh Rogin report.

CNN Exclusive: Two more women come forward, say San Diego mayor harassed them  —  Photos: San Diego mayor's accusers  —  (CNN) — The man on the voicemail is flirty and clearly asking for a date.  But it's the name on the message that's raising red flags.  —  “Hi, it's your newly favorite congressman, Bob Filner.

Reince Is Right  —  WASHINGTON — Reince Priebus says a lot of goofy things, but the chairman of the Republican National Committee has a point.  —  Films can dramatically alter the way famous people are viewed, making them cooler, more glamorous, more sympathetic — and the reverse.

First criminal charges filed in Benghazi attack probe  —  Demonstrators set the U.S. Consulate compound in Benghazi, Libya, on fire on September 11, 2012.  The U.S. ambassador and three other U.S. nationals were killed during the attack.  The Obama administration initially blamed a mob inflamed …

Weiner allegedly hurls ‘grandpa’ remark during AARP forum  —  At an AARP-Univision mayoral forum this morning, mayoral contender Anthony Weiner pulled out the age card to taunt his most vocal challengers, 69-year-old Doe Fund founder George McDonald.  Weiner is 48.

Chrome's insane password security strategy  —  Chrome does something interesting when you first run it.  —  The other day, I was using Chrome in development for an Ember.js app.  I use Safari for day-to-day browsing, but it has a habit of aggressively caching files when I least expect it, so from time to time I switch to Chrome.

Daring to Fail  —  Secretary of State John Kerry has pulled off a major achievement in getting Israelis and Palestinians to say yes to the United States.  Can he now get them to say yes to each other?  —  I admire Kerry's doggedness in getting Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table …

Wall Street rules a conundrum for Chris Christie  —  Getting reelected as New Jersey governor is the easy part for Chris Christie.  It's keeping the job while raising money for a presidential race that threatens to complicate his national ambitions.  —  The bombastic Garden State chief …

Jay Leno's interview with President Obama (transcript, video)  —  And what's happened over the last 20 years is — actually longer than that, probably over the last 30 — is that the gap between those of us at the very top and the vast middle has been growing wider and wider.  And some of that is globalization.

The Quiet Mobile Giant: With 300M Active Users, WhatsApp Adds Voice Messaging  —  WhatsApp, a tiny startup with a very basic idea, boring design and lots of competition, has somehow managed to connect up most of the world.  And that's actually pretty exciting.

Tech Magnates Bet on Booker and His Future  —  The conference room in the Mountain View, Calif., headquarters of LinkedIn was packed with the stars of Silicon Valley.  Top executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter gathered around a table; the billionaire Sean Parker looked on from a back row.

Obamacare months behind in testing IT data security: government  —  (Reuters) - The federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1

Broad U.S. terror alert mystifies experts; 'It's crazy pants,' one says  —  WASHINGTON — U.S. officials insisted Tuesday that extraordinary security measures for nearly two dozen diplomatic posts were to thwart an “immediate, specific threat,” a claim questioned by counterterrorism experts …

Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom criticises aid to ‘bongo bongo land’  —  Ukip says comments are being discussed at ‘very highest level’ of party after outrage from MPs and campaigners  —  A senior Ukip politician has been recorded telling activists that Britain should not be sending aid to “bongo bongo land”.

The Post's Fire Sale  —  It's not often that the zeitgeist whups both of the newspapers the Right loves to hate — the Washington Post and the New York Times — upside the head with a righteous shillelagh simultaneously, but (as Mattie Ross says in True Grit) it did happen.  In fact, it happened this week.

The Post Sale: An Indefinable Sense of Loss  —  They say that your life flashes before your eyes when you're drowning.  I felt that way Monday when a surprise phone call informed me that The Washington Post, where I worked for 26 years, had been sold to Jeffrey Bezos, the Seattle billionaire.