NASA's Curiosity rover has successfully landed on Mars! The first pictures are expected shortly. (Guardian liveblog) - At 06.14 BST Nasa's Curiosity rover touched down safely in Gale Crater on Mars following a complex landing sequence, leading to scenes of jubilation at mission control. Follow the landing, as it happened, here.

Reuters: NASA rover Curiosity makes historic Mars landing, beams back photos

Washington Post: ‘Touchdown confirmed’: NASA rover Curiosity lands on Mars, beams back photo of own shadow - The robotic explorer Curiosity’s daring plunge through the pink skies of Mars was more than perfect. It landed with spectacular style, said a NASA scientist, describing the first images of its mechanical gymnastics. Hours after NASA learned the rover had arrived on target, engineers and scientists got the first glimpses of the intricate maneuvers it made to hit the Martian soil safely. The extraterrestrial feat injected a much-needed boost to NASA, which is debating whether it can afford another robotic Mars landing this decade. At a budget-busting $2.5 billion, Curiosity is the priciest gamble yet, which scientists hope will pay off with a bonanza of discoveries and pave the way for astronaut landings.

A British photographer who was captured by insurgents in Syria has said that his captors were foreign extremists including several Britons with “not a Syrian in sight”. - On July 19, freelance photographer John Cantile, alongside his Dutch colleague Jeroen Oerlemans, was kidnapped in northern Syrian and freed one week later. Cantile said he was held in a camp by 30 foreign extremists including some from Britain and Pakistan. He also revealed that

some of his captors were “young men with south London accents”. “They were aiming their Kalashnikovs at a British journalist, Londoner against Londoner in a rocky landscape that looked like the Scottish Highlands”, said Cantile. The British photographer also disclosed that some of the insurgents could not even speak Arabic, with around a dozen of his captors speaking English out of whom nine spoke with London accents. “Not a Syrian in sight. This wasn't what I had expected”.

The United States and the Western military alliance, NATO, want to see a bloody Gaddafi-like ending for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government and will do all it takes to see that happen, says an analyst. - The comment comes as UN envoy to Syria Kofi Annan on Thursday quit his post after blaming a lack of international support for his six-point plan aimed at ending the country's violence. The proposal envisaged a ceasefire between foreign-backed insurgents and the Syrian government forces, a deal which went into effect in mid-April but failed to end the violence as the insurgents refused to lay down their arms. Syria has been the scene of deadly unrest since mid-March, 2011 and many people, including large numbers of army and security personnel, have been killed in the violence. Press TV has conducted an interview with investigative journalist, Wayne Madsen [08:35], to further discuss the issue. The video also offers the opinions of two other guests: Haitham Al-Sibahi with the Syrian Social Club and Middle East Expert, Jihad Mouracadeh.

Makram Khoury-Machool: Dismembering the Arab World
Stephen Lendman, Israel's Longstanding Middle East Plan
Oded Yinon, "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" /
Israel Shahak, "The Zionist Plan for the Middle East"[*]

Fighting continued again today in Syria’s largest city of Aleppo, with air strikes reported against the rebels and both sides again claiming progress in their efforts to take over the city, but no sign yet of the “decisive” battle so often promised. - There have been comments from unnamed Syrian officials however, suggesting that their end of the deployment of reinforcements is over, with the official putting the number of Syrian soldiers around the city’s outskirts at 20,000. After rebels managed to quickly take several suburbs of Damascus and the regime has managed to retake those suburbs in fairly short order, all attention is on Aleppo, where neither side seems to be making any serious inroads but both sides seem entirely confident of their inevitable victory.

Michel Chossudovsky: Towards A "Soft Invasion"? The Launching of a "Humanitarian War" against Syria

A debunking of the global warming agenda, from Roy W. Spencer, former NASA climatologist and climate expert. For more on this topic, purchase his new Broadside, "The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama's Global Warming Agenda" by clicking here: http://amzn.to/jYWzEH.

Senate Republicans recently blocked cybersecurity legislation, but the issue might not be dead after all. The White House hasn't ruled out issuing an executive order to strengthen the nation's defenses against cyber attacks if Congress refuses to act. - The president urged Congress to pass the Cybersecurity Act, which was offered by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). The bill would have encouraged private companies and the government to share information about cyber threats and would have required critical infrastructure operators to meet minimum cybersecurity standards. But Senate Republicans, led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), worried the bill would burden businesses with unnecessary and ineffective regulations.

People pray at the memorial cenotaph for victims of the 1945 atomic bombings at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in western Japan early on August 6, 2012 - Hiroshima is marking the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing of the city with tens of thousands of residents, visitors, blast survivors and their relatives having gathered at the Peace Memorial to commemorate the victims. Monday marks 67 years since an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A bell toll set off at 8:15 am local time – the time of detonation – announcing a moment of silence. About 50,000 people have gathered for an official ceremony, while thousands more joined other commemoration events held across the city.

At least seven people have been killed and twenty injured as a gunman took over a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The number includes the gunman, who was killed by police. Officials are treating it as a "domestic terrorist-type incident." - Four of those shot died inside the temple, while the three others (two victims and the gunman) were killed outside. Tactical units scoured the temple and concluded there was no second gunman, a claim police say was based on the fact that they had received several radio calls about the shooter. Three adults have been hospitalized with gun wounds into their faces, police report. They are all in critical condition. The first police officer to arrive tried to help a wounded victim outside the temple, but was “ambushed” by the gunman, Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards said. A second policeman then shot the gunman, killing him. The wounded policeman was taken to hospital and is expected to survive.

LA Times: Gunman opened fire at Sikh temple - Photos
BBC: Seven killed in Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting - Video

LA Times: Gunman's tattoos lead officials to deem Sikh shooting terrorism - Tattoos on the body of the slain Sikh temple gunman and certain biographical details led the FBI to treat the attack at a Milwaukee-area temple as an act of domestic terrorism, officials said Sunday.

A US drone strike and a "suicide bombing" against a funeral for a tribal chief have left Yemen with another bloody weekend, with 51 people killed overall and scores of others reported wounded. The funeral bomber targeted mourners in Jaar, in the contested Abyan Province. The attack killed 46 people, including a pro-government tribal leader and a number of other prominent officials. The attacker disguised himself as a mourner, "according to a statement".