The AP is joining the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times with this piece of garbage, and the New York Times-owned International Herald Tribune was only too happy to pass it along:

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Militant Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah suggested Tuesday that Israel may be behind two recent bomb attacks that targeted United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

[...] No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. But in a videotape earlier this month, al-Qaida’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri blessed the attack against the Spanish contingent, fueling speculation that it was carried out by al-Qaida-linked militants.

In an interview Tuesday on the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television, Nasrallah said that while it was possible that al-Qaida or other extremist groups were behind the attacks, Israel could also be the culprit.

“Why not Israel?” Nasrallah said, adding that “Israel has an interest in attacking UNIFIL with the aim of transforming the force into a multinational force under Chapter 7.”

He was referring to a section of the U.N. Charter that empowers a U.N. force to suppress threats to international peace and security — reflecting what could be his perception that Israel hopes to see U.N. troops actively moving against Hezbollah guerrillas in the future.

He also suggested Israel may want UNIFIL out of Lebanon, in case of another Israel-Hezbollah war.

Thanks, AP and the New York Times Company, for our anti-Israel media hit piece of the week!

Every summer, I have my own ways of keeping my home cool, and trying not to expend more energy cooling it down after I cook. The thing is, I’m not much of a scientist. I never took physics in high school. Physics confuses the hell out of me, most of the time. I have some of the more general aspects down (mass, inertia, energy), or at least, I can look them up online and try to get them straight in my head.

So I was wondering something, having just used the toaster oven to make hot, buttered Italian bread. In the summertime, I tend to close the toaster oven door and let it cool down slowly. When I boil corn or peas, immediately upon putting them on the dinner plate, I pour the boiling water down the sink and run cold water on the pots to cool them down so less heat gets into my kitchen, in the thought that it will need less energy to cool it down (and give me savings on the electric bill).

But really, does it make a difference if you, say, let the toaster oven cool down faster by leaving the door open? Isn’t it going to release the exact same amount of heat no matter what you do, and won’t it take the same amount of energy from the AC to keep up with it?

I think I’m onto something with pouring the boiling water down the sink, but it occurs to me that I’m wasting my time with the incremental cooling of ovens. Or am I? Any physics geeks out there want to take this one?

The good news is they haven’t managed to penetrate as many Fatah cells as they’d like. The bad news is they’ve restored their long-range missile capability. Yeah, that arms embargo and the UNIFIL troops have proven so effective, it makes me want to get UNIFIL here to police our border with Mexico.

Hezbollah has restored its military capabilities, particularly its long-range missile arsenal, nearly a year following the Second Lebanon War, senior Israeli security sources confirmed Monday.

On the other hand, Hezbollah’s influence on Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades has been checked in recent months, Palestinian security sources said Monday.

According to Palestinian security sources, Hezbollah has not ceased its efforts to penetrate Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades cells, but its ability to do so has been seriously curtailed.

The sources pointed to a number of reasons Hezbollah is finding it difficult to penetrate the organization and gain control of its members in order to carry out terrorist activities on its behalf against Israel.

Israel’s security forces have primarily succeeded in killing or arresting many of the cells that had been under Hezbollah control, mostly in the area of Nablus and northern West Bank.

Also, the flow of cash from Hezbollah to West Bank militants who carry out attacks, has been contained. The Palestinian Authority has also made an effort to convince many of the militants not to accept funding from foreign sources.

Palestinian security sources also insist that contact between Hezbollah and the West Bank has been weakened. They say this is due to a breakdown in cooperation with Palestinians in Lebanon who collaborate with the Shi’ite group and international jihadist elements based there.

Gee, I wonder if the current destruction of Palestinians in Lebanese “refugee” camps had anything to do with that last.

A mother’s quick thinking saved the life of her baby. Not that you could find this in the mainstream media. It was full of more important news, like the deaths of four terrorists in the act of trying to kill Israelis. Rockets landing on Israeli homes for the second day in a row? Not important.

A Qassam rocket was launched Monday from the Gaza Strip and directly hit a house in Kibbutz Karmiah in the western Negev, penetrating through the roof before exploding in an 8-mont-old baby girl’s bedroom.

When the “Color Red” warning sounded, the mother took the girl from her crib and ran with her to a safer part of the house, since there are no reinforced “safe rooms” in the kibbutz.

Three of the family members- the grandmother, the mother, and the baby -were taken to the hospital for medical assistance.

Cribs and homes destroyed by random rocket fire from Hamas-occupied Gaza? No big deal.

And if Israel should send in soldiers to find the terrorist launching the rockets? Suddenly, the world media has headlines screaming “Israelis Kill 4 Palestinians in Gaza.”

Because that’s the important angle in this story. Israeli civilian casualties? Who cares, when you can post a picture of the damage a rocket caused in Gaza. Because that’s the more important angle, clearly. No matter that a baby was nearly murdered in her crib. Hey, the “crude, homemade rocket” missed, didn’t it? Didn’t it?

Yeah.

So Hamas says it’s willing to talk to Tony Blair. Ehud Olmert says that if he talks to Hamas, he can talk to Olmert’s hand. Hamas also claims to have stopped an attack on IDF forces. (Yeah, and I have this bridge in Brooklyn, been in my family for years, and you can have it dirt cheap, really!) I believe the word used was “unacceptable.” Or, the more diplomatic version:

If Blair was to ever contemplate meeting with officials from Hamas, Prime Minister Olmert’s spokeswoman said on Sunday: “We would state very clearly that there can be no compromise with Hamas.”

Now Hamas says they’re willing to talk to Jimmy Carter. The quesiton is: Is there no organization so evil that Jimmy Carter won’t work with it, and no human being on earth that he won’t talk to (except for Alan Dershowitz)? Oh, c’mon. We all know the answer to that. Carter will be glad to talk to Hamas. He’s already called them the democratically-elected government of the Palestinians.