- The Walt Disney Company said Friday it has agreed to sell Miramax Films for around $660 million to an investor group....

- Book a hotel in a popular destination and you know what to expect: a bed, a mini-fridge, and a big bill at checkout. In Europe's big cities, for example, you can easily spend anywhere from $150 to $300 a night (hotels in Florence average $205).

- U.S. stocks were set for a lower open Friday, looking to add to the previous session's losses, as investors braced for a report on second-quarter economic growth....

- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange 'can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,' Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said Thu...

- Democrat Kerry tells The Boston Globe that he doesn't believe he dealt with the issue quickly enough or effectively enough. He added that he did nothing legally wrong....

- Presidential aides believe President Obama has received too little credit for progress in the auto industry, so Obama will stop at three auto plants over the next several days to blow his own horn....

- Economists expect the government to report Friday that economic growth slowed in the April-to-June quarter as consumers bought less, builders pulled back further, and cash-hungry state and local governments cut spending....

- Rep. Charles Rangel (DEMOCRAT-N.Y.) is a crook and a cheat and everyone (with the possible exception of Rangel) knows it....

- As Democrats may learn in November, voters, not Washington politicians, are the ultimate ethics committee....

- Nowhere in the U.S. is local enforcement more stringent than in metropolitan Phoenix, where Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio routinely carries out sweeps to arrest illegal immigrants....

- Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tim Kaine, refused Wednesday to say whether he agreed with former DNC Chairman Howard Dean, that FoxNews "did something that was absolutely racist" by airing the Shirley Sherrod video and story....

- Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said a mosque should not be built near Ground Zero in Manhattan and that there should be an investigation into the funding for the proposed Islamic community center, as well as the imam who is promoting the initiative....

- U.S. and NATO commanders had warned that casualties would rise as the international military force ramps up the war against the Taliban, especially in their southern strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces....

- More than 1 million people in Missouri are expected to participate in what amounts to the largest-ever public opinion poll on the nation's new health care law....

- Administration officials and senior military officers insist that Pakistan's cooperation against terrorists has improved significantly in the last 18 months, but ongoing threats posed by the Taliban faction known as the Haqqani network and its jihadist allies shows there is a long way to go....

- Conservative media watchdog L. Brent Bozell III has issued an open letter to Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli calling on the Post to fully divulge the involvement of its employees with the controversial Journolist e-mail list....

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- An organization that facilitates embryo donation and adoption is encouraging couples to consider adopting special-needs embryos. ...

- Under the terms of the new economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year, electronic health records will be kept on Americans beginning in 2014 -- but not everything has to be reported. ...

- Serious questions are being raised about a study that suggests the sexual orientation of prospective parents should not be considered in adoptions. ...

- An attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund is describing the ruling in a case at Eastern Michigan University, which is challenging a Christian's rights to maintain her beliefs, as "open season on Christians." ...

- Lost in the hoopla over Arizona's immigration law is the fact that state and local authorities for years have been doing their own aggressive crackdowns in the busiest illegal gateway into the country.

- Obama administration proposes to change the Electronic Communications Privacy Act raises privacy, civil liberties concerns.

- Well, that was fast. Just a few weeks ago, the Gulf oil spill was a turning point for America. It was precisely the providential prodding Americans needed to wean ourselves from the diabolic goo that runs our cars,......

- Chelsea Clinton is getting married, and we all wish her well on the biggest day of a girl's life. Bill and Hillary were the focus of scandal and controversy, left, right and in-between, but never the first child.......

- Come in. Make yourself comfortable. What's that? You are a congressional Democrat? You voted to triple the national debt, destroy a health care system that the overwhelming majority of Americans were happy with in a way......

- WASHINGTON -- On the federal debt crisis, inertia has all the momentum. A compelling political logic favors inaction. Americas debt problem is mainly an entitlement spending problem. Serious entitlement reform......

- Asked if the United States might send still more troops to Afghanistan, if the Obama surge is not succeeding by year's end, Vice President Joe Biden answered, "I do not believe so." So, that is it. Biden is saying......

- Yesterday's federal court decision to enjoin enforcement of the Arizona immigration law is the latest example of a virtually unchecked renegade federal government waging war against the states and against the liberties......

- It never ceases to amaze that Oliver Stone thinks Ronald Reagan was a dunce. When it comes to judging iron-fisted dictators and anti-American despots, Stone is the intellectually incurious simpleton. He thinks Reagan......

- WASHINGTON -- With their poll numbers plunging in a jobless recovery, skyrocketing budget deficits, an unpopular health care plan, and their majority teetering on the edge of defeat, Democrats have switched to a novel......

- WASHINGTON -- In most administrations, "leaks" of classified information precipitate presidential ire. Nearly all such unauthorized disclosures are the consequence of disgruntled government employees deciding that a......

- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the world's worst cleaning lady. How has she fulfilled her vaunted promise to "drain the swamp" and preside over the "most ethical Congress in history"? By shrugging her shoulders,......

- The Sarah Palin Express may be gaining even more steam, at least within the Republican Party. Another of her "Mama Grizzlies," Georgia's former secretary of state Karen Handel, on July 20 emerged from obscurity in the......

- Thousands of garment workers unhappy over their wages rampaged through central Dhaka on Friday, clashing with police who used tear gas and batons to clear the streets. <...

- The leaders of Syria and Saudi Arabia were heading to Beirut on Friday to help defuse a simmering crisis over expected indictments in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Raf...

- A British author vowed Friday to fight charges in Singapore related to his book on the city-state's death penalty policy, even if it lands him in jail.

- A South African court is ordering four white former students to pay fines for a video they made humiliating black university employees.

- Forest fires continue to rage around several Russian cities and officials say at least seven people have died, including two firefighters.

- Britain's Court of Appeal says four legislators aren't immune from prosecution following the lawmakers' expense claim scandal.