U.S. Heading for Bankruptcy, Lebanese Guerillas Fire Rockets into Israeli City & N Korea Rejects U.N Resolution in Toay's Details

-A suicide bomber detonated explosives Sunday inside a cafe packed with Shiites in northern Iraq, killing 26 people and injuring 22, an Iraqi general said. Gunmen seized a top Oil Ministry official, the second major kidnapping in as many days. (And the good times in Iraq, just keep coming!) DETAILS

- Temperatures soared into the upper 90s and higher Sunday from coast to coast, bringing out heat warnings, wilting athletes and driving others into the shade. The choking heat was expected to continue for the next few days, and the hot air was moving toward the East Coast, meteorologists said. (Whew! I know it's as hot as hades here - and me with no AC...) DETAILS

-The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country's central bank. A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve. DETAILS

-Lebanese guerillas fired a relentless barrage of rockets into the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday, killing eight people at a train station and wounding seven others in a dramatic escalation of a five-day-old conflict that has shattered Mideast peace. DETAILS

-Ken Lay has taken his place alongside Elvis Presley in the pantheon of people whose deaths have not been fully believed. In Internet sites and blogs, conspiracy theorists and jokesters have floated the idea that the Enron founder's powerful friends helped him fake his death to escape sentencing in one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history. DETAILS

-North Korea on Sunday rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning the communist nation for recent missile tests and warned the measure was a prelude to a renewed Korean War. DETAILS

-Trust in the West and above all in America has given way to deep-seated suspicion and angry resentment among ordinary Russians. Asked on the eve of this weekend’s summit how they viewed America, 58% of Russians polled described it as a unfriendly country. DETAILS

-The New York state Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics has ruled that it is permissible for judges to pack a pistol beneath their robes while on the bench. DETAILS