Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has deployed troops to areas near the Colombian border and says he is reviewing plans for a potential war as tension between the two nations rises.

Six U.S. service members were killed in southern Afghanistan in the last two days, the NATO-led command said, making the death toll in July the deadliest month for American forces since the war in Afghanistan started nine years ago

Israel launched a series of airstrikes in Gaza starting late Friday in response to a rocket assault on Ashkelon earlier in the day.

In a bid to remake the enforcement of federal immigration laws, the Obama administration is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants and auditing hundreds of businesses that blithely hire undocumented workers. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration's 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007. The pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush's final year in office.

A Tea Party-backed Senate candidate in Colorado was caught on tape Friday referring to 'birthers' who question President Obama's citizenship as "dumbasses." Republican Ken Buck, who has harnessed Tea Party support to become the front-runner for the GOP Senate nomination, made the comment unsolicited to a Democratic staffer after an event in Pueblo, Colorado.

For some time now, various "reporters" and on-air personalities on the Fox News Network have failed to report the full story or relevant facts, instead indulging in race baiting in order to exploit people's fears and crank up the fringe of their audience. This was exemplified by Glenn Beck's nightly assault on Van Jones earlier this year.

Sarah Palin, who waded into a New York political fight by endorsing Ann Marie Buerkle in NY-25, is drifting into a decidedly higher-charged battle - the fray over the planned mosque near Ground Zero.

Despite a clear public record to the contrary, BP is continuing its public relations effort to define the blowout that has been spewing oil into the Gulf for nearly three months as an isolated departure from a record of safe and sound practices. The latest BP executive to parade out the claim is Bob Dudley, BP's Gulf Coast Restoration Organization director, who told PBS's Ray Suarez that other than the obvious belching counterexample, "there is nowhere that I believe that there was a systematic lack of emphasis and attention to safe and reliable operations for our people and equipment."

The Wall Street reform package currently awaiting the return of Congress from the Fourth of July recess is packed with provisions that will remake the financial landscape. One element, though, which has gotten relatively little attention in the media, is a wild card: the authorization of a far-reaching audit of the Federal Reserve for the first time in the central bank's history.

Too many Republican leaders are acquiescing to a poisonous "demagoguery" that threatens the party's long-term credibility, says a veteran GOP House member who was defeated in South Carolina's primary last month

President Barack Obama is wrapping up a two-day swing through Missouri and Nevada with a speech on clean energy that could deliver a boost to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who's in a tough fight for re-election.

Retirees and other residents from all over the country were among those who donated nearly $500,000 to help Arizona defend its immigration enforcement law, with most chipping in $100 or less, according to an analysis of documents obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.