Headlines for today...it's been a big one.
Senior Israeli officials have indicated that the Jewish state is gearing up for a major “war with Lebanon,” according to sources close to the Israeli government.
The Israeli military has reportedly deployed missile defense systems to the northern part of the country, which sits near Lebanon, and has ordered all civilian aircraft to evacuate Haifa airport, the Jewish state’s northernmost air hub.
(Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that new centrifuges Iran was installing for its uranium enrichment program could cut by a third the time needed to create a nuclear bomb.
As Iran and world powers prepare to resume talks aimed at easing a dispute that has raised fears of a new Middle East war, Tehran announced late last month it planned to install the new machines at its main enrichment plant.
The move underlined Iran's defiance of international demands to scale back the uranium enrichment which Tehran says is for civilian purposes but which could also potentially be used to make material for atomic bombs.
In a speech in Latin to cardinals, the 85-year-old German pontiff, who has been in office since April 2005, said that leading the world's 1.2 billion Catholics was a job that required strength of both mind and body. But the pope said his strength had "deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me."
During a press conference on gun safety in Philadelphia, Vice President Joe Biden said that any reports that suggest that he was trying to take weapons away from gun owners was a “bunch of malarkey.”
"I know that's a word that you've never heard before, although it's now in the dictionary," Biden boasted.
Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, yesterday said his country would not bow to "intensifying pressure or foreign plots", in a statement taken as a rejection of an offer of talks and an indication that the war will continue.
The opposition leader Moaz al-Khatib earlier said he had received "no clear response" from Damascus over his offer to hold talks with Farouq al-Sharaa, the vice-president, to find a political way out of civil war.
Mr Assad seemed to reject talks directly in a state media report of a meeting with officials from Jordan. "Syria will remain the beating heart of the Arab world and will not give up its principles despite the intensifying pressure and diversifying plots not only targeting Syria, but all Arabs," he said.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that he is ready to have talks with United States if the West stops pressuring his country, the latest in a series of hints from leaders in both Washington and Tehran about the prospect of direct bilateral negotiations over the Islamic Republic's controversial nuclear program.
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The Last Days 
