Will the US Congress reach a deal with the White House in raising the debt ceiling? This is the question that is being asked, but many experts are saying that the impasse has already negatively impacted the US economy.

Arabs reacted strongly on Monday to the deaths of dozens of Syrians in Hama at the hands of the Syrian army but most Arab governments kept silent, apparently fearing the power of protest movements that have spread throughout the region this year. - "It's no longer possible to understand the silence of Arab and Islamic states and organisations before the massacres against Syrians," wrote Saudi columnist Hussein Shobokshi in the Saudi pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat. Rights activists said 80 civilians were killed in Sunday's tank-backed assault on the central Syrian city where President Bashar al-Assad's father crushed an armed Muslim Brotherhood revolt 29 years ago, killing many thousands of people.

Xinhuanet: Security Council to meet on Syria

The Syrian authorities` crackdown on protesters in different parts of the country on Sunday left 145 people dead and injured hundreds more. This is the highest death toll since a wave of uprising first hit Syria in mid-March.

Al Jazeera says the biggest number of victims – 113- was in the country’s fourth most populous city of Hama. Hama had been controlled by the army for about a month, with arrests of opposition supporters taking place mainly outside the city. On Sunday the authorities organized a brutal crackdown on protesters in what they explained was aimed to kill armed extremists who had been trying to storm government buildings and police stations. Meanwhile, Hama has been witnessing the biggest protests for a fourth consecutive month. Demonstrators want President Bashar Assad to step down. The visit to Hama by the US and French ambassadors on July 8th was criticized in Damascus as ‘interference into the country`s home affairs’. The US and French embassies in the Syrian capital were attacked soon afterward.

AdnKronos: Assad praises military amid violent crackdown
Al Jazeera: Deadly Syrian crackdown continues
Antiwar: Hama Massacre: At Least 140 Killed in Syrian Tank Offensive
Uruknet: Syria Protests in solidarity with Hama and Deir Ezzor - July 31, 2011 : A Video Roundup

Liam Fox conceded yesterday that Libyan rebels were unlikely to muster the forces to topple Muammar Gaddafi, and the Defence Secretary admitted that the best chance of ousting him was a palace coup. - Mr Fox's striking change of emphasis came more than four months after Britain, France and the US began bombing raids on Colonel Gaddafi's troops in an effort to protect rebels in the east of the country. Yet Colonel Gaddafi shows no sign of relinquishing power and a military stalemate appears to be developing. Mr Fox, who flew to Washington yesterday to discuss the operation told BBC Radio 4: "The key for the Libyan resolution will be whether or not the close circle around Colonel Gaddafi realise there's no point in investing in him: he's a busted flush, he will sooner or later have to leave power. When the penny drops with them that that's inevitable, then you're likely to see the sort of change, the political momentum, that we've been looking for."

Jason Ditz: Four Killed Overnight as Rebels Clash in Benghazi
NYT: Benghazi Clash Exposes Cracks in Rebel Ranks

His original ouster from Pakistan came nominally for “medical reasons,” but the CIA station chief for Pakistan won’t be back, officials confirm. The Pakistani government says this is because of “US issues with Pakistan.” - An official with the Pakistani government said that the move was an effort to “quickly repair the damage to their intelligence cooperation” and this is the second time in the past few months that a CIA chief has been ousted from the country. The outgoing station chief was also said to have clashed with US Ambassador Cameron Munter, who reportedly objected to his use of drone strikes during key diplomatic meetings, even after Pakistani government officials objected.

Obama says a deal has been reached with Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders and urged members of Congress to get behind the proposed legislation.

Barack Obama declared on Sunday he had reached agreement with Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders aimed at ending the US debt deadlock that has threatened to throw the US and world economy into chaos. However, in an address from the White House, he added cautiously, "We are not done yet." Although the Senate is almost certain to pass it, the vote in the House could be a nailbiter, facing opposition from both hardline Republicans and disenchanted, left-wing Democrats who feel Obama has conceded too much. Obama urged members of Congress to get behind the proposed legislation, which will raise the country's debt ceiling and cut federal spending.

Kenny's Sideshow: We don't owe the debt of criminals
Raw Story: Black Caucus, progressives to oppose debt deal
Paul Craig Roberts: Disastrous Outcomes From An Orchestrated Crisis
The Guardian: Obama's sharp right turn: Republicans can argue that where they blazed the trail on spending cuts, the president followed

Nearly three years after the Icelandic economy imploded, the country appears to be recovering, and some believe its approach may offer a possible solution to Europe's debt problems. Iceland does not seem like a country in the grip of a crisis. On my first day the sun was shining brightly and out in Reykjavik's main shopping area the shops and boutiques, the cafes and restaurants were busy. Indeed, Reykjavik seemed pretty much like any other prosperous northern European city. Yet Iceland was hit hardest by the credit crunch in 2008. Its current recovery is why Iceland is being held up as the model for an alternative way to deal with the debt that plagues so many economies. That is because when Iceland's banks went spectacularly bust, instead of pouring in billions of taxpayers' money to shore them up, Iceland just closed them down.

At least ten NATO oil tankers were torched in southern Pakistani Sindh province early Monday morning while on their way from Karachi to Peshawar, reported local Urdu TV channel Geo. - According to the report, the incident took place at about 2:00 a.m. local time Monday morning when unknown gunmen opened fire at a NATO supply convoy moving from the southern port city of Karachi to Peshawar, a major city in northwest Pakistan, on the national highway near Khairpur, a city in the northern part of Sindh province. Following the attack, the oil tankers caught fire and four people including three drivers were seriously injured. One hotel and three shops nearby the attack site also caught fire, said police. Six fire brigades from Khairpur and the neighboring city of Sukkur were called in to put off the fire.

Human rights activists say over 100 people have been killed and several others injured across Syria as President Bashar al-Assad vows to foil plots to divide the country.

"One hundred civilians were killed on Sunday in Hama by gunfire from security forces who accompanied the army as it stormed the city," AFP quoted Abdel Karim Rihawi, head of the Syrian League for the Defense of Human Rights as saying.

Activists further claimed that a number of other people have also been killed in several other cities.

This comes as al-Assad said in a Sunday interview to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the Syrian army's foundation that Syria will thwart what he dubs a new chapter of conspiracy, which aims to divide the country as a prelude to splitting the whole region.

Meanwhile, according to the Syrian State News Agency (SANA), six military officers were killed on Sunday by armed men in the northeastern city of Deir Ezzor and central city of Hama. It has further reported that scores of gunmen have been seen on rooftops shooting at people.

The US Secret Service is paying Vice President Joe Biden $2,200 (£1,300) a month to rent a cottage next to his Delaware home in order to protect him and his family. - Records show Mr Biden has collected more than $13,000 since April on the cottage in Greenville, a wealthy Wilmington suburb, and is eligible for up to $66,000 (£40,000) before the contract expires in 2013. Asked if the Secret Service typically pays rent to those it protects, agency spokesman Edwin Donovan told The Washington Times: "It's a rental property so we pay rent there."

Fishing fleets have thrown away 2.1m tonnes of cod worth £2.7bn to avoid falling foul of EU regulations, says the New Economics Foundation. - UK fishing crews have thrown away stocks of cod worth about £1bn since 1963 due to the practice of discarding catches which exceed or fall outside quotas, according to a thinktank report. Across all EU fleets, stocks of cod worth £2.7bn were discarded in the North Sea, the Channel and Skagerrak, the strait adjoining Norway, Sweden and the north of Denmark between 1963 and 2008, the New Economics Foundation (NEF) study, Money Overboard, calculated.

Using discard data compiled by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and focusing just on cod, one of the best-documented stocks, the NEF calculated that just over 2.1m tonnes of the fish was thrown overboard during the period. The report adds fuel to the bitter debate over the longstanding fisheries practice, particularly prevalent in heavy-regulated EU waters, of throwing overboard a significant proportion of any catch – up to two thirds in some areas – most of which is by this time dead or dying.

American and Israeli biological laboratories in Iraq carrying out secret and mysterious experiments in the occupied country . A world class expert has strong objections on the consequences of such actions. For it's a new hidden war. - A confidential letter has been recently dictated by Dayan Schuman , the world class scientist and expert in the fields of biology and biochemistry in Geneve. This letter has revealed that a series of mysterious and very dangerous biological experiments are being carried out in laboratories and different sites in Iraq, these experiments are run and supervised by American and Israeli scientific organizations. A well informed source has leaked the details of Schuman's letter to Al-Mustakbal Al-Iraqi newspaper. Schuman emphasized in his letter that some materials and laboratory samples were sent to his laboratory in Geneva, he conducted a series of tests that proved that these materials and samples were new harmful chemical and biological materials that were subjected to very dangerous scientific experiments.

All 163 passengers and crew on board a Caribbean Airlines jet survived when the plane skidded off the runway while landing at night in Guyana and broke in two on the edge of a ravine. - The Boeing 737-800 flight from New York overshot the runway and burst through a perimeter fence at Cheddi Jagan airport in Georgetown. The front of the plane snapped off and it stopped yards from a jungle gorge. No fire appears to have broken out and only three people were taken to hospital, one with a broken leg. "It's an absolute miracle what happened here in Georgetown," said Caribbean Airlines chairman George Nicholas, who visited the crash site. Passengers screamed when the plane lost control soon after touching down just past midnight.

More than 150,000 take to streets across Israel in largest housing protest yet. Demonstrations held in more than 10 cities across Israel in bid to lower spiraling costs of living; joint Jewish-Arab protest held for first time since demonstrations began 16 days ago.

Marches and rallies took place in eleven cities across the country, with the largest ones taking place in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be'er Sheva and Haifa. The protesters chanted "the people demand social justice" and "we want justice, not charity."

The biggest protest was in Tel Aviv, where tens of thousands march from HaBima Square to the Tel Aviv Museum. "We are very happy to see the Israeli people go out into the streets," said Yonatan Levy, one of the organizers. "We were amazed to see throughout the day that the issues that were raised on the different stages and tent cities are not so removed from each other after all."

In Haifa, 8,000 people marched through the city. In Jerusalem, 10,000 protesters marched from Horse Park to the house of Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. In Be'er Sheva, 3,000 protesters marched carrying banners saying "Be'er Sheva is shouting times seven." (Sheva is the Hebrew word for the number seven)

Alan Lake ran a far-right website where he discussed execution of political and religious leaders and predicted Islamic enclaves. - A senior member of the English Defence League, who founded a far-right website carrying articles by bloggers closely monitored by the Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik, published an online essay discussing the execution and torture of the UK's political and religious leaders. On 23 May 2010, Alan Lake posted on his 4 Freedoms website an article outlining his belief that "in 20 or 30 years the UK will start to fragment into Islamic enclaves". He went on: "It's time we decide... who we will force in the Islamic enclaves (and who we will execute if they sneak out.) By forcing these liberal twits into those enclaves, we will be sending them to their death at worst, and at best they and their families will be subjected to all the depredations, persecution and abuse that non-Muslims worldwide currently 'enjoy' in countries like Pakistan... It will be great to see them executed or tortured to death."

The Telegraph: Norway massacre: British traders helped supply Breivik's arsenal of weapons
The Independent: Breivik demands to be made head of army, but may not be deemed insane
PressTV: Breivik demands Norway king abdication
NRK: Breivik krevde regjeringsskifte

The United States is planning to provide the Iraqi government with a wiretapping system to eavesdrop on cellular calls and messages “to assist in combating criminal organizations and insurgencies,” according to a U.S. Air Force contract solicitation. The proposed system would allow Iraqi officials to monitor and store voice calls, data transmissions and text messages and would be installed with the acquiescence of the three current cellular communications providers in Iraq, according to documents accompanying the solicitation. The system, which would be able to target at least 5,000 devices, would be designed for expansion to cover land-line telephone systems and international mobile telecommunications.

Edzard Ernst keeps a stack of hate mail as a souvenir. Two months after the world's first professor of complementary medicine took early retirement from his post at Exeter university after 18 years, the letters are still coming. An email from a chiropractor denouncing him landed in his inbox a few days ago, while Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted earlier this week that for his latest attack on Prince Charles he should be locked up in the Tower of London.

"I've got used to it," Ernst says. "At first it was a bit depressing. At least the criticism is not racist – 'that bloody German', as it would be in France or Austria. I would find that hard to stomach but mostly I can find it amusing. It's strangely hilarious because the people who attack me are so bonkers."