The Israeli military has suspended from duty an entire army company following the shooting of an unarmed Palestinian man in the West Bank on Thursday.

The army said the soldiers, on a foot patrol near Hebron, had commandeered a Palestinian taxi and had shot a man who had come near them.

It said the troops had then failed to give first aid to the wounded man or report the incident.

• Guardian - "The extent of the deterioration in US-Saudi relations was exposed for the first time today when Washington accused Riyadh of working to undermine the Iraqi government. The Bush administration sent a warning to Saudi Arabia".

• NY Times - "Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at... Saudi Arabia's counterproductive role in the Iraq war... the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow."

• McClatchy - "The Bush administration has decided to supply billions of dollars in advanced new weapons to Saudi Arabia, other Arab allies of the United States and to Israel... The arms and aid package.. is to be announced on Monday... include selling Saudi Arabia advanced weapons known as Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMs."

• WaPo - "The House gave final approval today to a Democratic bill that implements recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, mandating tighter screening of air and sea cargo and shifting more federal security money to high-risk areas such as New York and Washington, D.C. The package, already approved by the Senate, passed the House by a vote of 371-40 and now goes to... Bush for his signature."

• AP - "Wall Street extended its steep decline Friday, propelling the Dow Jones industrials down more than 500 points over two days after investors gave in to mounting concerns that borrowing costs would climb for both companies and homeowners. It was the worst week for the Dow and the Standard & Poor's 500 index in five years."

• Guardian - "The White House tonight made a concerted attempt to inject fresh confidence into the world's battered stock markets as share prices suffered a fresh day of falls on fears that a looming credit crunch will end an era of cheap funding for corporate takeovers... After meeting his economic team at the White House, Mr Bush said: 'The world economy is strong and I happen to believe one of the main reasons why is because we remain strong.' Markets remained unimpressed by the comments".

• LA Times - "The director of the FBI told a congressional committee Thursday that he had had reservations about the Bush administration's terrorism surveillance program -- a statement that appears to contradict sworn testimony last year by Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales that the warrantless eavesdropping had generated no serious disagreement among high-level officials. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Robert S. Mueller III also undercut statements Gonzales offered this week to lawmakers about a controversial hospital visit to the bedside of then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft in March 2004." Congress should removed Gonzales from office this August.

• WaPo - "Two American civilian contractors who worked on a massive U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad told Congress yesterday that foreign laborers were deceptively recruited and trafficked to Iraq to toil at the site, where they experienced physical abuse and substandard working conditions."

• The Hill - "An altercation Friday in the House Rules Committee, which prompted one Republican to storm out of a meeting, led the lawmaker to charge that the actions of the panel's chairwoman have shown she is no longer capable of leading. During a meeting to discuss the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007, an exchange between Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) turned rancorous after Slaughter cut off the Texas lawmaker."

  Accounts differ regarding what led to the dust-up.

  According to Sessions, Slaughter gave his speaking time to another member seeking recognition, but not the lawmaker whom Sessions wanted to speak.

  Sessions claims that, after he asked whether he was in control of his time, Slaughter replied, "You are in control of your time, but I control the committee." Upon hearing this, he stormed out of the room.

  However, according to a transcript shown to The Hill, Slaughter tried to yield to a lawmaker who had been trying to speak and inquired as to whether Sessions would permit Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) to speak.

• Chicago Tribune - "Vice President Dick Cheney, who wears a heart defibrillator following four heart attacks, will undergo minor surgery on Saturday to replace a device in need of a new battery."

• NY Times - The Bush administration announced they have reached a nuclear deal with India. The deal would give India an exception to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The deal circumvents restrictions Congress placed last year with the Hyde Act. "Bush has agreed to go beyond the terms of the deal that Congress approved, promising to help India build a nuclear fuel repository and find alternative sources of nuclear fuel in the event of an American cutoff, skirting some of the provisions of the law." Significantly more in depth coverage is available in my diary today at the European Tribune: U.S.-India Nuke Deal.

• Guardian - "The House appropriations committee cut $139m (£69.5m) from the $310m the Bush administration wants for preparatory work on the missile project in Europe. It approved funds for a radar system in the Czech Republic but cut the $139m Mr Bush requested to establish a missile interception system in Poland, the most controversial part of the defence system. In addition, the committee cut a further $159m from US-based parts of the missile plan."

• LA Times - "The Army secretary is expected to take the rare step of recommending a retired three-star general be demoted for misleading investigators probing the military's handling of the 2004 death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman... The move by Army Secretary Pete Geren would go beyond the punishment recommended by the military general assigned to review findings of a critical report earlier this year by the Pentagon inspector general. Defense officials said Geren believed the findings that retired Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr. misled investigators merited the harsh punishment."

• Houston Chronicle - "NASA is investigating the apparent sabotage of electronic equipment bound for the international space station aboard the shuttle Endeavour... The damage involves the cutting of wires in a device meant to record and transmit to Mission Control several measurements of stresses to the space station structure, according to NASA."

• Aviation Week - "One astronaut was deemed too drunk to fly after reporting for a shuttle launch that was subsequently scrubbed for mechanical reasons... A second astronaut apparently was allowed to board a Russian Soyuz vehicle and fly in it to the International Space Station under similar circumstances... Ellen Ochoa, director of flight crew operations at [Johnson Space Center], has... issued a memo reminding astronauts of... the unwritten 'bottle-to-throttle' policy banning alcohol use within 12 hours of flight applies both to aircraft and spacecraft." Maybe it should be written down... like on a cocktail napkin.

• Chicago Tribune - "Although the federal government ordered states more than a decade ago to dramatically limit mercury discharges into the Great Lakes, the BP refinery in northwest Indiana will be allowed to continue pouring small amounts of the toxic metal into Lake Michigan for at least another five years."

• NY Times - "William C. Cox Jr., one of the Bancroft family elders who control Dow Jones & Company, has switched positions, and now favors selling the company to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, a person close to the family said".

• The Hill - "Nine months after Republicans were routed in the midterm elections, campaign observers, K Street lobbyists and political experts say there is little evidence the party can rebound in 2008. The same bad news -- the president's low approval ratings, opposition to the war in Iraq, and the lingering taint of congressional scandal, from the Jack Abramoff investigation to Sen. David Vitter's (La.) involvement with the alleged 'D.C. Madam' -- leave observers skeptical that the GOP can dent Democratic majorities, let alone reclaim power in the next election."

• CNN - "Four people were killed Friday afternoon when helicopters from two rival TV news stations in Phoenix, Arizona, collided while shooting a police chase".

• Spiegel - "Many of the roughly 3,200 US students enrolled in foreign study programs in Germany... are reluctant ambassadors, routinely taken to task by students and even complete strangers for the perceived offences of their government at home -- an affront that visiting students and academics from China, Russia and Arab countries rarely encounter."

• AP - "Jordan pleaded on Thursday for international help to deal with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have fled here to avoid violence at home, saying the refugees cost the kingdom $1 billion a year in basic services. The entry of 750,000 Iraqis has strained Jordan's infrastructure and brought the threat of violence, Mukhaimer Abu Jamous, secretary general of the Interior Ministry, said on the opening day of an international conference on the issue."

• LA Times - "Missing from Thursday's session of the Iraqi parliament were about half of the members, including the speaker, the former speaker and two former prime ministers. Also missing: a sense of urgency... But even as parliament's monthlong August break approaches, key issues aren't being discussed. Quorums are marginal, or fleeting."

• WaPo - "The Shiite-led Iraqi government issued a sharp response Friday to a Sunni political bloc that is threatening to pull out of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's administration, saying the group's 'threatening, pressuring and blackmail' cannot impede Iraq's progress. In a four-page written statement, Maliki spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh dismissed each of 11 demands made by the Accordance Front, Iraq's largest Sunni political group. Dabbagh accused the Accordance Front of working for its own political gains rather than for the benefit of the Iraqi people."

• LA Times - "The Bush administration... has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on. Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year. But that piece of data has not been sent to lawmakers for months because the State Department, which prepares a weekly 'status report' for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day."

• AlterNet - "In two weeks, Denmark..., will be withdrawing all but a handful of its 470 soldiers now serving under British command in southern Iraq. Last week, the country airlifted about 200 Iraqi interpreters and other employees of its troops and their families to Denmark, where they have been invited to seek asylum... Those 200 evacuees to Denmark represent nearly double the number of Iraqis admitted to the United States in the past year."

• NY Times - "Israel's cautious dance with the non-Hamas Palestinian government in the West Bank continued Friday, with a senior member of the Israeli government advocating partial withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the West Bank and the prospect this weekend, officials said, of an initial pullback of Israeli forces from the quiet town of Jericho." The move is a gesture to Fatah.

• AP - "Firefighters, aided by cooler weather, contained major fires in southern Greece and the holiday island of Cephallonia on Friday, but blazes raging elsewhere destroyed homes and forced more village evacuations. The Fire Service said it had fully contained fires on Cephallonia, where hundreds of tourists had been evacuated from a seaside resort. Fires near the southern town of Aegio, which destroyed or damaged about 100 homes, were also 'partially contained,' the Fire Service said... Heat wave temperatures cooled across the country, dropping from highs of up to 45 C (113 F) on Wednesday to the mid-30s C (mid-90s F) in most of Greece Friday."

• Guardian - "Torrential downpours which hit last week and left swathes of England and Wales under water were officially the worst in more than 200 years of record keeping, according to figures released by the Met Office yesterday. Rainfall was more than double the seasonal average, with the early summer months of May to July witnessing 382.4mm (15.06 inches) of rainwater, topping the previous record of 349.1mm in 1789, officials said."

• Telegraph - "MPs have accused Brussels and Government ministers of preventing proper scrutiny of the new European Union treaty by failing to provide the House of Commons with an English version of the 277-page text... The Government, and EU officials organising negotiations, cannot produce an official English translation of the 145 pages of draft articles, 69 of protocols and 63 pages of declarations until next month, well after the Commons has finished for the summer."

• NY Times - "The European Court of Human Rights issued an unusually harsh rebuke of the Russian government on Thursday, suggesting that its failure to prosecute soldiers responsible for a massacre of civilians in Chechnya showed indifference to the crime. The court ordered Russia to pay damages of nearly $200,000 to five family members of 11 residents killed on Feb. 5, 2000, when contract soldiers from the St. Petersburg special police force unit rampaged through Novye Aldi, a bombed-out neighborhood in Chechnya's capital, Grozny."

• Spiegel - "A newly-signed treaty between the US and the EU will send in-depth profiles of European airline passengers to the US Department of Homeland Security within minutes of take-off... In a report after treaty negotiations were completed, the European Parliament called the treaty's privacy protections 'substantively flawed.'"

• Guardian - British PM "Gordon Brown is to appoint his own Middle East envoy, opening up the possibility of a clash with the work of Tony Blair, who is now representing the international 'Quartet' - the US, EU, UN and Russia. Michael Williams, currently a special coordinator for the regional peace process for the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, is expected to be confirmed in the job next week".

• Telegraph - "President Nicolas Sarkozy urged the West to trust Arab countries with nuclear technology yesterday as he signed a deal that could see France supplying Libya with a new reactor. During a meeting with Col Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Mr Sarkozy agreed to help the country with a nuclear-powered project to desalinate seawater. France has Europe's largest civil nuclear power industry and a vital commercial interest in exporting reactors and technology."

• Economist - "The Nigerian president, Umaru Yar'Adua, has finally named his new cabinet, nearly three months after the People's Democratic Party (PDP) won a strong--if contentious--victory in parliamentary and presidential polls. The size of the 39-strong cabinet is hardly surprising, given the constitutional requirement that each of the country's 36 states provide at least one minister so as to guarantee fair representation. However, it is hardly an encouraging symbol for a country where bureaucracy is a major obstacle to doing business, and where one of the main stated aims of economic policy is to reduce the size of the federal government."

• NY Times - "Eritrea has covertly shipped 'huge quantities of arms,' possibly including suicide bomb belts and missiles that can shoot down planes, to insurgents in Somalia in an effort to torpedo Somalia's fledgling government, a new United Nations report says."

• BBC News - "A special court has given the death sentence to one of those accused of masterminding the 1993 serial bombings in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay). Three of Yakub Memon's family members were sentenced to life imprisonment. Twelve people have now been sentenced to death and 20 to life imprisonment in connection with the blasts that killed 257 people and wounded 713. The attacks were allegedly organised to avenge the killings of Muslims in riots a few months earlier."

• Times of India - "The Memons fled India on March 10, 1993, two days before the blasts in Mumbai, and in a hurry they left behind a safe full of family jewels estimated to be worth over one crore [ten million rupees] now... The jewellery was part of a web of evidence that helped investigators crack the case. But what was family jewellery doing in the garage? Officials say the entire family's trip to Dubai must have been hurried and efforts to hide the jewellery must have been delayed..."

• Independent - "A suspected suicide bombing killed at least 11 people and wounded 43 others today at a hotel near Islamabad's Red Mosque, after religious students occupied the mosque and demanded the return of its pro-Taliban cleric. The explosion occurred soon after police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters who had occupied the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, which the government reopened to the public today - two weeks after a bloody army siege dislodged militants." According to the Guardian, "Seven police officers were among those killed".

• Independent - "The two men - Dawa Lepcha and Tenzing Gvasto Lepcha - whose protest has been posted on the popular online video site, have not eaten for 39 days. Doctors at the hospital where they lie in the remote Indian state of Sikkim say they are getting weaker each day."

  The cause that has led these two men to take this drastic action and for their friends to post this powerful video on the internet is the very land on which they and their families live. A massive hydro-electric power scheme backed by the state government, consisting of more than 20 individual projects, threatens to drive the men and their neighbours from the land close to the Teesta river in the Dzongu region of the state. Campaigners say the project is illegal and claim the authorities have failed to obtain the necessary assessment of the impact the schemes will have.

  This land is not only pristine - including as it does parts of a national park on which lies the world's third- highest mountain and a biosphere reserve - but to the people of the region it is also sacred.

• Reuters - "Asia's monsoon misery has spread to Nepal, leaving thousands of people homeless, while more rain is expected to bring further chaos to China's drowned southwest, where many have already lost homes, livelihoods and loved ones. Rescuers dropped relief supplies to hundreds of people in Indonesia's Sulawesi island on Friday after days of torrential rain triggered landslides and floods. About 85 people have died and nearly 8,000 people displaced from their homes in central Sulawesi. A relief official said authorities had not been able to pull out many bodies because of a lack of heavy machinery and equipment."

• SMH - "Mohamed Haneef was free last night after terrorism charges against him were dropped. The Government abandoned a plan to deport him, instead putting him in 'residential detention' under which he may come and go freely, but not work. The Australian Federal Police insisted investigations were continuing into people in Australia in relation to the attempted bombings in London and Glasgow."

• Reuters - "More than 10,000 refugees - mostly from Myanmar - have now left their temporary homes in Thailand to start new lives in third countries, as the world's largest resettlement programme picks up steam... The largest numbers of refugees are departing for the United States, which made an open-ended offer in 2005 to take ethnic Karen refugees from the camps in Thailand. So far, 4,876 have gone to the United States..."

• Economist - "Japan's ruling party is set for a drubbing. The elections on Sunday July 29th for half of the seats in the upper house of the Diet (parliament) in theory have only an indirect impact on who governs Japan. In practice they are crucial test, and not just for the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner, New Komeito, which looks headed for a humiliating defeat... The last time the LDP lost its upper-house majority, in 1998, the prime minister of the time, the late Ryutaro Hashimoto, resigned to take responsibility. Some analysts and LDP politicians predict the same fate for Shinzo Abe, prime minister since September... Yet this week Mr Abe made it clear, through colleagues, that he does not plan to resign."

• Xinhua - "Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Friday called on domestic firms to improve product quality and build their own world-class brands in order to secure the reputation of the 'Made in China' label."

• SMH - "Insider trading and other illegal share activities were becoming rampant amid China's stockmarket frenzy, prompting a crackdown by authorities, the state press reported on Friday. Forty-six people had been banned this year from investing on the stockmarket, while 16 listed companies and two brokerage firms had been fined, all for illegal trading activities..."

• BBC News - "A powerful undersea earthquake has struck the north-eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku... The quake hit more than 200km (130 miles) north of Ternate city with a magnitude of 6.6, officials said. There were no immediate reports of damage. "

• LA Times - "An estimated 100,000 cheering loyalists crammed a plaza here as acting President Raul Castro presided for the first time over ceremonies marking the start of the Cuban Revolution. In a one-hour speech, Castro acknowledged that the economy has failed to meet the needs of working people and signaled the need for unspecified 'structural changes.'"

• Reuters - Gen. Manuel Noriega of Panama was in court "to fight extradition to France after his upcoming release from a Florida prison." His attorneys claim his "designation... as a 'prisoner of war' in 1992 entitles Noriega to repatriation to Panama rather than extradition to France or any other country."

• BBC News - "Mexico is to use $205m (£101m) seized at an alleged drug-trafficker's house to fund drug treatment programmes and tackle organised crime, officials say. The money was found in March hidden behind false walls at the Mexico City home of a Chinese-Mexican businessman. No-one had claimed the money within the legal 90-day limit so it now belonged to the state, Mexican officials said."

• NY Times - "Depending on one's point of view, the World Wildlife Fund's financial support of a nature reserve here on the Rio Negro is either part of a laudable attempt to conserve the Amazon jungle -- or the leading edge of a nefarious plot by foreign environmental groups to wrest control of the world's largest rain forest from Brazil and replace it with international rule."

• Canadian Press - "It will be another week before Brian Mulroney finds out if a judge will set aside a court ruling that ordered him to pay $470,000 to former business associate Karlheinz Schreiber. The ruling, which caught Mr. Mulroney's lawyers off guard, came Thursday in a default judgment by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Mr. Schreiber sued the former prime minister to recoup $300,000 in cash the businessman says he handed to Mr. Mulroney over three meetings in hotel rooms in New York and Montreal in 1993 and 1994. Mulroney had already left politics at the time."

• LiveScience - "Hundreds of oil-covered Magellanic penguins have surfaced off the Atlantic coast of South America in the past few weeks, according to an animal welfare organization... A continuous stream of oil from spills has created a chronic problem across South American waters and other parts of the world".

• Guardian - "Whatever Mexico may have lost in terms of direct investment... it has... more than made up through the income generated by whale watching in Baja. The Mexican government, proud of all that is has achieved in Baja, once more took the lead among nations determined to keep the ban in place. As a result, moves to end the moratorium on commercial whaling were defeated. As the importance of whale watching as an alternative to whale catching is now increasingly being recognised, we must hope that those countries which still ignore or subvert the ban - such as Japan and Norway - will finally realise that killing whales has no economic, moral or environmental justification."

• Globe and Mail - "Rodney Dillinger is looking for a swarm of 40,000 honeybees after a coup d'état that left one of his hives half empty. In a storyline that could have been written by Shakespeare, some of Mr. Dillinger's bees are suspected of having become dissatisfied with their queen, tricking her into giving birth to a replacement and then sending her into exile. The deposed queen left in the past few days, followed by about half the bees in the southwestern Nova Scotia colony. Mr. Dillinger, a retiree who has only four hives, wants his bees back and has asked police for help."

• Bush has 541 days left. 3,641 U.S. confirmed deaths in Iraq. Over $446,900,000,000 spent on the Iraq war.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev criticized the United States, and current President George W. Bush in particular, on Friday for sowing disorder across the world by seeking to build an empire.

Gorbachev, who presided over the break-up of the Soviet Union, said Washington had sought to build an empire after the Cold War ended but had failed to understand the changing world.