Morning News Roundup (18 July)

• Bet he doesn't do that with Chirac... Raw Story points us to a video hosted at German magazine Bild, which shows President George W. Bush massaging Germany's first female Chancellor, Angela Merkel. In addition to the Flash video, Bild also has a frame by frame description (in German) of the event. Here's more from Raw Story:
  

  President Bush paid a visit to Germany on July 13, prior to the G-8 Summit in Moscow, with Merkel hosting him in her home region. The video of the massage from a G-8 meeting shows the president getting closer to the German Chancellor than one usually sees between world leaders.
  
  As Merkel speaks with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, Bush approaches Merkel from behind and givers her a squeeze on her shoulders. The video clearly shows Merkel lifting her arms in surprise as Bush lets go.

  Well, that was creepy, yet a little lighthearted. Now onto the mayhem that is the rest of the world...
  
  
• Israeli warplanes bombed a Lebanese army base early Tuesday, wire services reported, killing 11 soldiers and ratcheting up an armed conflict that has raged on both sides of the border for nearly a week.
  
  Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that triggered the fighting with a cross-border ambush last Wednesday, fired seven more rockets that hit the Israeli cities of Haifa and Safed on Tuesday but caused no injuries, officials said.
  
  More than 220 Lebanese civilians and a dozen Israeli civilians have been killed in the fighting so far, according to news agency reports. Among the most recent casualties were seven civilians from one family in the southern border village of Aitaroun, who were hit in an airstrike early Tuesday. [WaPo]
  
  
• US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from "malicious terrorist acts".
  
  Asked to comment on the deaths in an Israeli air strike of eight Canadian citizens in southern Lebanon Sunday, he said: "it is a matter of great concern to us ...that these civilian deaths are occurring. It's a tragedy."
  
  "I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts," he added, while defending as "self-defense" Israel's military action, which has had "the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths". [AFP/Yahoo!]
  
  
• United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, and other world leaders called yesterday for sending an international force to southern Lebanon, amid increasingly urgent diplomatic activity to stop the spiraling conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group.
  
  But discussions about creating a new UN force were still at preliminary stages, diplomats said, as casualties continued to mount and a cease-fire seemed a remote hope for those caught in the violence on both sides of the border. [BoGlobe]
  
  
• US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is preparing for a Middle East peace mission, but Israel said it may be too early for her visit as air raids rocked Lebanon and rockets battered Israeli territory.
  
  The United States also declined to endorse calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, insisting such a pact would be only a temporary fix for the worsening crisis. [AFP]
  
  
• Hundreds of Australians are set to sail to safety from Lebanon tomorrow, joining a flotilla of vessels carrying thousands of foreigners trying to escape Israeli attacks in one of the biggest evacuations in history. [Sydney Morning Herald]
  
  
• A car bomb attack in the southern Iraqi city of Kufa has killed at least 53 people and left 103 injured. The bomb hit a crowd of labourers as they gathered close to a Shia shrine in the centre of the city.
  
  Nasser Kadhim, who lost his brother and was injured in the blast told the AFP news agency that a vehicle pulled over and dozens of labourers surrounded it, expecting to be offered work. "A few minutes later the explosion happened and everything was thrown into the air," he said. [BBC]
  
  
• Aid agencies and the EU have warned Darfur is teetering on the brink of catastrophe and have called for urgent efforts to bolster the peace process. A Darfur peace deal was signed two months ago but correspondents say the security situation has got worse. Most of Darfur's two million displaced people have rejected the deal and rebel movements continue to fight one another. [BBC]
  
  
• U.S.-led forces will launch "decisive operations" to reclaim two southern towns captured in recent days by the Taliban. Scores of Taliban militants chased police out of two southern Helmand districts near the border with Pakistan. Afghanistan's deputy interior minister accused two Pakistani Islamic groups of taking part in the militant operation. [CNN]
  
  
• In an analysis of 13 American cities, the Brookings Institution found “the nation’s working poor households pay much more than moderate- and high-income households for life’s essentials.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• Despite soaring gas prices, automakers “have made no progress in improving vehicle fuel economy over the past year” — stuck at 21 mpg for 2006-model vehicles — “continuing a nearly 25-year trend of industry stagnation on gasoline mileage, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• And finally, for CNN's Lou Dobbs, one of the more influential mainstream talking heads on cable news, the debate is over:
  

  [O]n this broadcast tonight, LOU DOBBS TONIGHT, this broadcast decides global warming is caused by emissions. That discussion is over here. Let's talk about what we should do next.