Here are the stories that caught my eye today...

Russia and Britain are talking about sending peace-keepers to Lebanon. But Wait! Hold on! Let's wait for the UN to catch up with us! No unilateral action can possibly succeed! (sarcasm alert)

Sometimes this president makes me so disappointed...he should have known better. But this quote is slightly ominous..."It was the second time in less than a month that remarks at a G-8 event in Russia ended up being heard over an audio system officials thought was off. "

This AP report is worth quoting in full...and it's short.

A new barrage of rockets fired by guerrillas in southern Lebanon hit northern Israel late Monday, Israeli security officials said.

Security officials said one rocket hit a hospital in the northern town of Safed, but the army later said the rocket hit near it.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Other rockets hit the northern city of Haifa, where a three-story apartment building was destroyed by a rocket earlier in the day, and the border town of Kiryat Shemona, officials said.

Should Israel respond in kind (directly targeting a hospital or an apartment building?), or should it continue with it's strategy of attempted destruction of Hezbollah's fighting ability? And, it's amazing that Al-Jazeera is only reporting 25 Israeli civilian deaths in the conflict to this point. I guess that Israel's emergency medical system is really well trained and experienced, at least in this part of the country. I wonder why that would be? At least they are good at keeping casualties from turning into deaths.

Of course, Israel has hit some targets that I don't believe they intended to hit...if only because they wouldn't have wanted the reaction the world has given to these probably mistakes...though, I don't doubt that they would hit a house if there was a missile launcher right next door and they couldn't destroy the missiles without hurting the house...

At least some attempts at diplomacy have been made...despite statements from earlier today that Israel wouldn't stop without returning the two soldiers to their homes, stopping the rocket attacks, and having the Lebanese Army patrol their border with Israel, Olmert evidently softened his position today, though I can't really tell how. But the same news agency put out these two reports, and the 'softer' one comes later, so ok.

From Afghanistan, some good news and some bad news. The first is that someone is promoting soccer for girls in Afghanistan - though they did have to come to America to play. But, five years ago, women and girls weren't allowed to go to school, so there has been some improvement. However, the Taliban have reportedly re-taken two towns. That sucks. I'm sure we'll take them back, but I don't like the idea anyway...

Evidently Human Rights officials are bored. They couldn't find any human rights abuses that they couldn't fly first class to, so they decided to pick on America. I don't doubt that they are correct about what they saw, I just dispute the priority it should be given...I'm sure that illegal immigrants in other countries get treated worse (in fact, Mexico is notorious for this) and the only problem I really have with our supermax security prisons is the fact that the inmates get cable...but point well taken. We'll see what we can do to clean up our act. If we do that, can the Human Rights people take a look around the world and stop some serious abuses?

They figured out the type of explosive that blew up the subway in India (well, not all of it, to be fair), and it's the kind that the Kashmiri militants use all the time. Figures.