Morning News Roundup (17 July)

Criminy! The world is blowing up and hotting up:

• Several suspected Hezbollah rockets hit the northern Israeli city of Haifa today. The sixth day of the brewing conflict in the Middle East witnessed Israeli ground troops briefly entering southern Lebanon to attack Hezbollah bases on the border. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the deployment of international forces to stop the violence. Meanwhile, G8 leaders “crafted a plan to stop the fighting.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  Keep up with the latest with this Middle East News Tracker from the WSJ.
  
  And check out this map from the BBC for a geographical understanding of the affected areas.
  
  
• "What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over." -- George W. Bush, talking to Tony Blair today with his mouth full and a microphone on. [Quote of the Day from Salon's War Room]
  
  
• Dozens of heavily armed attackers raided an open air market Monday in a tense town south of Baghdad, killing at least 41 people and wounding about 90, Iraqi and U.S. officials said. Some reports put the death toll far higher. Most of the victims were believed to be Shiites. [AP/Yahoo!]
  
  
• Five Iraqi sports officials have been released in Baghdad, but gunmen are still holding the country's Olympic Committee chief and many others. They have not said who carried out the abductions or why. Olympic chief Ahmed al-Hadjiya and 30 others were taken after being stopped by uniformed men on Saturday. [BBC]
  
  
• Four years after the leaders of the world's eight largest economies vowed to raise $20 billion over 10 years to prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear materials, only $3.5 billion has been donated -- and far less has been used to secure enriched uranium, the key ingredient of a nuclear weapon.
  
  Hundreds of tons of uranium remain at loosely guarded facilities across Russia and the former Soviet Union, and in nearly 40 other countries, according to specialists. And the need to secure the material has grown: In April, Russian police arrested a foreman in a nuclear plant for attempting to sell 22 kilograms of uranium. [Boston Globe]
  
  
• Went to see An Inconvenient Truth again yesterday with Mrs. F and the visiting Old Fogey and her husband J. And if we survive the amped up Hatfields v McCoys in multiple locations in the Middle East, we really need to start concentrating on the looming climate crisis, cos it's getting hot in herre!
  

  Temperatures soared into the upper 90s and higher Sunday from coast to coast, and choking heat is expected to continue for the next few days, meteorologists said, as hot air is moving toward the East Coast.
  [...]
  The National Weather Service issued excessive heat warnings for Las Vegas, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Tulsa, Okla., and parts of New Jersey, where thermometers made it into the 90s Sunday and were expected to reach 100 degrees Monday. [Newsday]
  
  

  
  
• A huge slice of rock has fallen from the Eiger mountain in the Swiss Alps in a spectacular collapse that came after days of warnings from scientists. The rock - loosened by melting glacial ice – crashed down shortly before 8pm on Thursday (13 July), blanketing the Bernese Oberland resort of Grindelwald in a cloud of dust for hours. [SwissInfo]
  
  
• For the second time in eight days, thousands of supporters of the leftist presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, filled Mexico City’s historic central plaza to demonstrate their support for his demand for a vote-by-vote recount of Mexico’s disputed July 2 election.
  
  In a voluminous complaint before the electoral tribunal, Mr. López Obrador charged that the voting was riddled with mistakes and rigged against him by President Vicente Fox, who openly supported Mr. Calderón, who is from the same party. He also accused business leaders of meddling in the election by conducting a campaign that depicted Mr. López Obrador as a danger to the political and economic stability Mexico has enjoyed over the last six years. [NYTimes]
  
  
• In 2004, two lower-court judges ruled in favor of Rev. Peter Ilgenfritz and David Shull and 18 other gay and lesbian couples, who all sued for the right to marry. The judges struck down the state's Defense of Marriage Act — which defines marriage as between a man and a woman — as unconstitutional.
  
  But those rulings were stayed pending the state Supreme Court's ruling on the matter, and 15 months later, the plaintiffs still anxiously await each Thursday, the day when the court traditionally issues its rulings. The court will effectively decide whether Washington should become the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriage.
  [...]
  Advocates on both sides of the matter say it is very difficult to divine when the court might rule, or whether the long time the nine-member panel has spent on the case is an indication of a deep divide over the issue.
  
  The court could uphold the marriage act; strike it down, either explicitly or implicitly giving gays and lesbians the right to marry; strike it down, but also find there is not a right to same-sex marriage under the state constitution; or kick the whole matter over to the Legislature. [LATimes]
  
  
• And finally, a fitting protest: Former Vice President Dan Quayle walked out of a John Mellencamp concert over the weekend because the singer dedicated his song “Walk Tall” to “everyone hurt by policies of the current Bush administration.” The song’s lyrics include: “Bigotry and hatred are enemies to us all/ Grace, mercy and forgiveness/ Will help a man walk tall.” [ThinkProgress]