BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber in a wheelchair blew himself up at the entrance to a police station north of the capital Baghdad Sunday, killing three people and wounding 18, officials said.

Two police officers were killed and 10 injured in Tarmiyah, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Baghdad, two police officers and one medical official said.

The head of the Tarmiyah city council, Qassim Khalifa, said it was not clear whether the bomber was really handicapped or using the wheelchair as a way to deflect attention from security personnel.

The bomber went to the police station claiming to need a letter from the police certifying he’d been maimed in a terror attack, Khalifa said. Iraqis who have been disabled from a bombing or shooting can receive compensation from the government if their injuries are documented.

You never saw stuff like this is Tunisia before the “Arab Spring” forced President Ben Ali, who kept the country firmly secular, into exile.

(AP) — A gang of ultraconservative Islamists have attacked a movie theater in downtown Tunis because it was showing a film about secularism.

Around 100 bearded men shouting “God is great” smashed the windows of Cinema Afrique, where the movie “Neither God nor master” by France-based Tunisian director Nadia Feni was playing on Sunday. An AP reporter saw eight of them forcing their way inside and attacking filmgoers, including prominent directors, before being apprehended by police.

Just another day in an Islamic hellhole.

(AFP) — Suspected Islamists hurled bombs and fired on a beer garden in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, killing at least 25 people and injuring about 30.

The two men came on motorbikes and sped away after the shock attack, police and witnesses told AFP.

“The attackers, believed to be Boko Haram members, threw bombs and fired indiscriminate gun shots on a packed tavern at Dala Kabompi neighbourhood, killing at least 25 people and seriously injuring around 30 others,” a police superintendent said.

An army captain, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “It will be difficult to say with precision the number of casualties, but it can’t be less then two dozen.”

Emmanuel Okon, who sells roast beef on the fringes of the tavern, said: “I just heard a loud bang followed by sporadic shootings and plumes of black smoke filled the area with people screaming and running in all directions.

Disgrace.

(LA Times) — It was imperfectly odd. It was strangely unsettling. It was uniquely American.

On a balmy early Saturday summer evening, the U.S soccer team played for a prestigious championship in a U.S. stadium . . . and was smothered in boos.

Its fans were vastly outnumbered. Its goalkeeper was bathed in a chanted obscenity. Even its national anthem was filled with the blowing of air horns and bouncing of beach balls.

Most of these hostile visitors didn’t live in another country. Most, in fact, were not visitors at all, many of them being U.S. residents whose lives are here but whose sporting souls remain elsewhere.

Welcome to another unveiling of that social portrait known as a U.S.-Mexico soccer match, streaked as always in deep colors of red, white, blue, green . . . and gray.

“I love this country, it has given me everything that I have, and I’m proud to be part of it,” said Victor Sanchez, a 37-year-old Monrovia resident wearing a Mexico jersey. “But yet, I didn’t have a choice to come here, I was born in Mexico, and that is where my heart will always be.”

On a street outside the Rose Bowl before the Gold Cup final, Sanchez was hanging out near a motor home that was hosting 17 folks — 15 of whom were Mexico fans. Inside, that ratio held, there seemingly being about 80,000 Mexico fans among the announced crowd of 93,420.

To add insult to injury:

(ESPN) — Goalkeeper Tim Howard was still upset after the U.S. lost the Gold Cup final, but his strongest reaction had nothing to do with the four goals Mexico slotted in his net.

After El Tri’s 4-2 victory at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., Howard blasted CONCACAF officials for conducting the title ceremony in Spanish.

“CONCACAF should be ashamed of themselves,” Howard said. “I think it was a [expletive] disgrace that the entire postmatch ceremony was in Spanish. You can bet your ass that if we were in Mexico City, it wouldn’t be all in English.

Mecca comes to Washington.

(The Blaze) — A major development project in downtown Washington will not be leasing space to banks or bars once it’s completed, a move that happens to comply with the tenets of Shariah law prohibiting alcohol or collecting interest — the same project a Qatari investment firm is bankrolling.

In April, the Washington Times reported the Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company put up $700 million to fund the CityCenterDC project, six blocks from the White House and slated for completion in late 2013.

A New York Times article last week reported real estate companies Hines Interests and Archstone decided they would not lease space in the complex to banks or to “retailers whose primary business involves selling alcohol.”

Even before the Qatari investors became involved, Hines and Archstone determined that leasing to banks would not help them create lively shopping streets, Mr. Alsup said. But as it happened, their hesitancy on bank branches meshed with the policies of their financial partners, who adhere to the restrictions of Shariah, or Islamic law, including the ban on collecting interest. Restaurants will be able to serve liquor, but retailers whose primary business involves selling alcohol will not be allowed, Mr. Alsup said.

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Pure 100% evil.

(Guardian) — Taliban insurgents used an eight-year-old girl carrying a bag of explosives to attack a police checkpost in central Afghanistan, the Afghan government said on Sunday, making her one of the youngest child bombers of the decade-old conflict.

The incident took place in Char Chino district of central Uruzgan province, the interior ministry said. “The insurgents handed over a bag with a homemade bomb to an eight-year-old girl and asked her to take it to police forces,” it added.

“As the girl was getting close to the police, it exploded and killed the girl.”

It was the latest in a string of unusual attacks on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

On Saturday a Taliban car bomber attacked a hospital in a remote district of eastern Logar province, damaging the maternity ward and killing between 20 and 35 people, according to reports.

Around the same time in north-western Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban deployed a married couple who attacked a police station by blowing themselves up. Two burqa-clad figures made their way into a police station in Kolachi, near the Taliban hub of South Waziristan, pretending to want to lodge a complaint, police said.

Even in a country that is 85% Catholic like the Philippines, Christians are still being persecuted by violent Muslim fanatics.

Manila (DPA) — Two people were killed and eight wounded when an bomb exploded outside a canteen near a Catholic Church in the southern Philippines, police said Sunday.

The blast occurred Saturday in Isabela City in Basilan province, 900 kilometres south of Manila, according to regional commander Felicisimo Khu.

Khu said the explosion caused a fire in the canteen.

Basilan is one of the strongholds of al-Qaeda-linked Muslim militants accused of some of the worst terrorist attacks in the Philippines and high-profile kidnappings involving foreign hostages.

The hypocrisy never ends.

Arab Spring alert.

Minya, 24 June (AKI) — Hundreds of Muslim extremists surrounded a church in central Egypt and threatened to kill the local priest, the Assyrian International News Agency reported. The extremists began targeting the church in a village 7 kilometres south of the city of Minya in March after renovation work began, threatening to demolish the church.

AINA Friday cited eyewitnesses as saying that the Muslim mob, dressed in white robes and long beards, chanted: “We will kill the priest, we will kill him and no one will prevent us.”

One of their leaders was cited as saying they would “. . . cut him to pieces,” AINA reported.

The priest Father George Thabet, who was holding morning mass and was locked in the church with several parishioners. Security forces arrived five hours later and escorted the priest away in a police car to the Coptic Diocese in Minya.

Coptic youths who were attending mass remained inside St George’s church to defend it from Muslim attacks.

No police or security of any kind was present during the standoff, according to reports.

The archdiocese of Minya issued a statement deploring the incident and the “return of the Salafists to besiege St. George’s church again, some carrying weapons, threatening to kill the priest unless he leaves the village.”

(Politico) — “Leader Cantor can’t handle the truth when it comes to these tax subsidies for big oil, for corporations sending jobs overseas, for giving tax breaks to the wealthiest people in our country while they’re asking seniors to pay more for less, as they abolish Medicare,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) this week are stepping into the debt ceiling morass with a series of high-level meetings aimed at working out a deal before an Aug. 2 deadline.

Pelosi said Republican determination to fix the deficit with tax cuts is a non-starter. “In the Bush years the Republicans said that tax cuts will produce jobs,” she said. “They didn’t. They produced a deficit.”

Keeping America safe from the maimed, the halt, the infirm, and the elderly.

(News Herald) — A woman has filed a complaint with federal authorities over how her elderly mother was treated at Northwest Florida Regional Airport last weekend.

Jean Weber of Destin filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.

Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.

“It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber said Friday. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”

Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration in Miami, said she could not comment on specific cases to protect the privacy of those involved.

“The TSA works with passengers to resolve any security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner,” she said.

Weber’s mother entered the airport’s security checkpoint in a wheelchair because she was not stable enough to walk through, Weber said.

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Keep carrying that water, Norah.

NORAH O’DONNELL: I covered the Bush White House. He started the war in Afghanistan. But it took President Obama to finally capture and kill bin Laden. There have been more drone attacks under the Obama administration than the Bush administration.

There’s an argument that can be made, and there are numbers that support that Obama has more aggressively prosecuted the quote unquote War on Terror – if you like that phrase, some don’t – than Bush did.

Soon to be in possession of nuclear weapons.

(Ynet) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad questioned the September 11 terror attacks and compared them to the Holocaust on Saturday.

Speaking at an international conference on terrorism in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said: “If the black box of the 9/11 incident and Holocaust were opened, then some of the truth would be exposed, but the United States does not allow this.”

He further added: “There are those who believe that the goal of 9/11 was to revive the Zionist regime, reinforce stability in the region, divert US public opinion from the poor economic state. In terms of reference and benefits, 9/11 is very similar to the Holocaust.”

Among the participants in the conference were Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir who has been accused of war crimes and genocide in Darfur, and leaders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Total BS.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) — The Pakistani Taliban said Sunday the group had sent a husband and wife suicide squad to carry out an attack on a police station in northwestern Pakistan that killed 10 people, a rare instance of militants using a woman as a bomber.

The pair entered the police station in Kolachi on Saturday and said they were there to lodge a complaint, said Imtiaz Shah, a senior police official. Once inside, the two attacked with grenades and machine guns, triggering a five-hour standoff with police.

Both attackers, including the woman wearing an all-covering robe known as a burqa, eventually blew themselves up. They killed eight police officers and two civilians, said Mohammad Hussain, another police official.

“This shows how much we hate Pakistani security institutions,” Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Ahsan claimed it was the first time the militant group had used a female suicide bomber.

However, Pakistani officials said a female suicide bomber wearing a burqa attacked a World Food Program food distribution center in northwestern Pakistan late last year, killing 45 people.

I’m sure I’m not the only one eagerly anticipating seeing the IDF boarding the US-flagged ship “Audacity of Hope.”

JERUSALEM, June 26 (Xinhua) — The Israeli government has ordered the Israel Defense Forces to stop a Gaza-bound flotilla from reaching its goal, official sources said Sunday.

The government issued a warning in different press releases against the flotilla’s attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade, saying it had instructed the Israel Defense Forces not to allow the flotilla to reach its goal.

The Freedom Flotilla 2, consisting of 10 ships, is set to sail on Tuesday for the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s Government Press Office called on foreign journalists to refrain from participating the flotilla, since its purpose is only “to undermine Israel’s right to defend itself and to knowingly violate Israeli laws.”

The number of boats in the flotilla is less than expected, with 10 vessels carrying around 500 people, local Yediot Aharonoth newspaper quoted Israeli government assessments as saying on Sunday.

(AINA) — A mob of nearly 200 Muslims torched eight Christian homes on Saturday morning in the Upper Egyptian village of Awlad Khalaf. The attack was initiated by a rumor that a house which is being built by Wahib Halim Attia will be turned into a church. Two Christians and one Muslim were injured, no fatalities were reported.

Wahib Halim Attia obtained a license to build a house in the village on a 95 square meter plot. The house grew to an area of 350 square meters but was still on agricultural land that he owns. This gave rise to the rumor that he intended to build a church instead.

Father Weesa Azmy, the priest at St. George Church in the neighboring village of Negou Madam East, said that someone went to the City Council in Dar es Salam and told them about the irregularities in the house construction, and Wahib was ordered to remove the excess by June 24. “Instead Wahib carried on with the construction, which angered the Muslims, who decided to play God and take the law into their own hands; they attacked the construction site and other Christian homes.”

According to Father Weesa, Muslims broke into the home of Ihab Tamer, who defended himself with a rifle. A Muslim who was there to help Ihab was injured by a bullet in his leg from Tamer’s rifle. The matter was explained and resolved with the family of that Muslim.

According to eyewitnesses the Muslims, mostly Salafists and some youngsters, looted and torched eight homes belonging to Wahib Halim Attia and his two brothers, his three cousins and two other Copts, including Ihab Tamer.

The police arrived three hours after the looting and torching had ended.

Newt just got thrown under the Sharpton express.

(Mediaite) — Newt Gingrich’s latest outreach effort to the African-American community is not going over so well with some of the louder members of said group. On MSNBC yesterday, Rev. Al Sharpton argued that for Gingrich to even attempt to court the black vote as a Republican candidate was “an insult” intended to “cover up the fact that his campaign is falling apart,” and an actually an underhanded attempt to suppress the black vote.

Sharpton, who spoke to host Cenk Uygur yesterday, explained his outrage against Gingrich for telling Republicans to “have the courage” to sell their ideas to the most Democratic African-American voting block. Sharpton argued that black people received “disproportionate injury from Republican policy” that was so obvious it was offensive for him to promote those policies at all. In doing so, he argued, Gingrich “assumes that we’re stupid,” or “is trying to throw something out at the media to cover up the fact that his campaign is falling apart.”

Sharpton went further to propose that it was possible that Gingrich was also “hoping to suppress the black vote” by speaking ill of President Obama such that those that voted for him in 2008 and would never vote Republican would simply stay home. That theory aside, Sharpton was still outraged. “The audacity of even saying something like that,” he argued of Gingrich’s attempt to court the black vote, “is something that insults us.” It was not exclusively the idea of a Republican courting the black vote that outraged him, however, but what he perceived as Gingrich’s hypocrisy in using language such as “the food stamp president” and citing President Obama’s “anti-colonial, Kenyan” views in order to, according to Sharpton, court the racist vote as well.

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Living it up on the taxpayers’ dime.

MADIKWE GAME RESERVE, South Africa (AP) — It was an African safari Saturday for Michelle Obama and her family.

The first lady, joined by daughters Malia, 12, and Sasha, 10, along with her mother, Marian Robinson, and a niece and nephew, climbed into an open-air Toyota Land Cruiser in search of lions, giraffes, elephants and other animals on the sprawling Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa.

“Let’s go see some stuff,” Mrs. Obama said before she and her family returned to the vehicle after listening to a park guide’s explanation about the mountains off in the distance. “Let’s go.”

They had seen at least one elephant by early afternoon.

The group, including Mrs. Obama’s niece and nephew, Leslie and Avery Robinson, age 15 and 19, were spending the night at a lodge on the reserve.