Hebrew graffiti, including the phrase "Jesus is a monkey," was daubed on the walls of a monastery near Jerusalem early Tuesday in what police suspect was a so-called 'Price Tag' attack by right-wing, pro-settler extremists, according to reports. Vandals torched the wooden door of the Latrun Monastery and spray-painted the graffiti on the holy site's stone walls, Israeli police said.

'Iran must steer clear of US interests in Gulf' - Washington reportedly sends Tehran indirect message saying it will not back Israeli strike on nuclear facilities as long as Iran refrains from attacking American facilities in Persian Gulf. - The United States has indirectly informed Iran, via two European nations, that it would not back an Israeli strike against the country's nuclear facilities, as long as Tehran refrains from attacking American interests in the Persian Gulf, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday. According to the report, Washington used covert back-channels in Europe to clarify that the US does not intend to back Israel in a strike that may spark a regional conflict. In return, Washington reportedly expects Iran to steer clear of strategic American assets in the Persian Gulf, such as military bases and aircraft carriers. Israeli officials reported an unprecedented low in the two nations' defense ties, which stems from the Obama administration's desire to warn Israel against mounting an uncoordinated attack on Iran.

John Glaser: Obama Denies Deal With Iran
Ynet News: Biden: Romney wants war with Syria, Iran
Ynet News: 9 Likud MKs pledge support for Iran strike

Airport officials will increase "security" during DNC. - According to Mark Haught, the TSA's federal security director for Charlotte-Douglas, there are normally around 550 officers stationed at the airport, including 41 behavior detection officers who watch for anyone acting suspicious, six transportation security specialists in explosives and seven K-9 teams. For the DNC, Haught said the TSA is adding 161 officers, including an additional 20 behavior detection officers, five transportation security specialists in explosives and 14 K-9 teams. The TSA said another 55 other officers will help the Secret Service with screening at Time Warner Cable Arena, the Convention Center and Bank of America stadium.

The European Union is spending millions of pounds developing "Orwellian" technologies designed to scour the internet and CCTV images for "abnormal behaviour". - A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as "agents" to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers. Its main objectives include the "automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence". Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and computer scientists at York University, in addition to colleagues in nine other European countries. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a "sinister step" for any country, adding that it was "positively chilling" on a European scale. The Indect research, which began this year, comes as the EU is pressing ahead with an expansion of its role in fighting crime, terrorism and managing migration, increasing its budget in these areas by 13.5% to nearly £900 million.

EFF sues US to uncover details of court decision on phone and e-mail spying. Details on a government ruling that the NSA violated the Constitution could help the EFF in its broader fight against warrantless wiretapping authority granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008. - Last month, a letter to Congress noted that “on at least one occasion” a secretive US court ruled that National Security Agency surveillance carried out under a 2008 act of Congress violated the Fourth Amendment’s restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures. But the actual ruling remains secret. Decisions handed down by the US’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) are classified “because of the sensitive intelligence matters they concern,” the letter from the Office of the National Intelligence Director to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) states. The explanation wasn’t good enough for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for details on the FISC ruling or rulings. Today, the EFF followed that up with a lawsuit against the Department of Justice in US District Court in Washington, D.C., saying its July 26 FOIA request has not been processed within the 20-day deadline.

A pilot hired by the Public Service Alliance of Canada to fly over Ottawa and Gatineau with a political banner was ordered to land his plane, the RCMP admitted Monday, even though the aircraft had not entered restricted airspace. The union says it paid for a plane to fly over the capital region for three hours on Saturday with a trailing banner that read, in French, “StephenHarperNousDéteste.ca” (Stephen Harper hates us), to coincide with the popular Hot Air Balloon Festival in Gatineau. But things did not go according to plan, the pilot says.

In 30 years of fighting poachers, Paul Onyango had never seen anything like this. Twenty-two dead elephants, including several very young ones, clumped together on the open savanna, many killed by a single bullet to the top of the head.

There were no tracks leading away, no sign that the poachers had stalked their prey from the ground. The tusks had been hacked away, but none of the meat — and subsistence poachers almost always carve themselves a little meat for the long walk home.

Several days later, in early April, the Garamba National Park guards spotted a Ugandan military helicopter flying very low over the park, on an unauthorized flight, but they said it abruptly turned around after being detected. Park officials, scientists and the Congolese authorities now believe that the Ugandan military — one of the Pentagon’s closest partners in Africa — killed the 22 elephants from a helicopter and spirited away more than a million dollars’ worth of ivory.

“They were good shots, very good shots,” said Mr. Onyango, Garamba’s chief ranger. “They even shot the babies. Why? It was like they came here to destroy everything.”

Africa is in the midst of an epic elephant slaughter. Conservation groups say poachers are wiping out tens of thousands of elephants a year, more than at any time in the previous two decades, with the underground ivory trade becoming increasingly militarized.

RALEIGH A Raleigh-based group devoted to reducing the potential for voter fraud presented the N.C. Board of Elections on Friday with a list of nearly 30,000 names of dead people statewide who are still registered to vote. The Voter Integrity Project compiled the list after obtaining death records from the state Department of Public Health from 2002 to March 31 and comparing them to the voter rolls. “Mainly, what we’re concerned about is the potential [for fraud],” said project director Jay DeLancy. “Since there is no voter ID law in North Carolina, anybody can walk in and claim to be anyone else.” DeLancy said his group has found evidence to suggest voter fraud in these numbers, but will not quantify how much until he is able to do more analysis. Most cases of what look like a dead person voting are likely just administrative errors, such as a son named Junior voting in his father’s name instead of his own.

Georgia has admitted that at least two of 11 suspected Islamists killed in clashes last week were Georgians. - Originally the Georgian government said they were all foreign extremists, who crossed from Russia's North Caucasus. The government said the 11 were killed - along with three Georgian troops - during an operation to free hostages they were believed to be holding. A BBC correspondent says there are fears the incident could increase tensions between Russia and Georgia. Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Thursday, the day after the clashes: "We understand quite well in whose interests it was, it can only be in the interests of our enemy." Some observers suggested that was a reference to Russia.

Eric Draitser: Barbarians at the Gate: Terrorism, the US, and the Subversion of Russia

Al-Qaeda, backed by Turkey, the US and its regional Arab allies, has set up a new camp in Northern Waziristan in Pakistan to train Salafi and Jihadi terrorists and dispatches them to Syria via Turkish borders, sources said. - "A new Al-Qaeda has been created in the region through the financial and logistical backup of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and a number of western states, specially the US," the source told FNA. Ali Mahdian told FNA that the US and the British governments have been playing with the al-Qaeda through their Arab proxy regimes in the region in a bid to materialize their goals, specially in Syria. He said the Saudi and Qatari regimes serve as interlocutors to facilitate the CIA and MI6 plans in Syria through instigating terrorist operations by Salafi and Arab Jihadi groups, adding that the terrorists do not know that they actually exercise the US plans.