280 boys have been freed from cages where they were being kept in an Islamic school in Zambia. Two men, Boyd Kanyanta, a Congolese who is the vice-chairman at the school, and Iqbal Patel of Asian origin who is the chairman and director of the institution have been arrested.
The boys that were rescued were ages 4 to 10.

The mood of the citizenry
Two polls released in the US this week show public attitudes shifting.
University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) says more citizens believe the US government stretched the truth about WMD.

half of the public (53 percent) believes that the process of rebuilding Iraq is going either “not very well” (40 percent) or “not at all well” (13 percent), and two-thirds believe that the United Nations should now take the lead both on reconstruction and forming a new government in Iraq.

Gallup found that 56% surveyed consider Iraq was worth going to war over, down 17% from April. The Gallup poll indicates:

…53 percent of the public expects that WMD will eventually be found in Iraq, down from 84 percent in the first days of the war. The same percentage said it would matter “a great deal” if they were persuaded that the administration had deliberately misled the public about the weapons.

23 percent believed that WMD had been found in Iraq.

Eighty percent of respondents said that they depended more on television and electronic media for their news, and a particularly high proportion of Republican respondents cited Fox TV, which has been especially jingoistic in its war coverage, as their main source. Similarly, 52 percent of respondents said that they believed close links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found; a percentage that rose sharply to 78 percent among “Republicans following Iraq news closely”.

And one of the more interesting results of the PIPA poll:

the public was worried about increasingly negative perceptions about the US in the rest of the world. Fifty-four percent said that they believe that, on average, people in other countries see US foreign policy as negative, while 19 percent said they believed foreign attitudes remained positive. That is a major reversal of perceptions just two months ago, when the comparable figures were 34 percent (negative) and 43 percent (positive).

Blogs and Politics
While bloggers in the US urge others to set up for the US elections, there is also a blogger in the UK encouraging MP’s to blog.

Dictionary
The more you blog and the more you read blogs, the more you realize there is a sub-language. Here is a decent dictionary of blog-speak.

Mixed Sex Embryo
Scientists in Chicago and New York have created a mixed sex embryo. Their reasoning…

even a small proportion of cells from a healthy embryo might prevent certain genetic diseases from arising.

Pakistan
Thousands of people have been killed in violence blamed on militants from the country’s Sunni and Shia communities since the late 1980s.
30 people are dead and over 50 injured after an attack on a Shia mosque today.
Several hundred Shia rioted after the attack, blaming Sunni muslims.

USA
As millions of Americans barbeque, go to the beach, rest, and celebrate their country, 150 thousand US troops in Iraq spend a more sober day.

Here is what Independence Day looks like for several US bloggers.

Mark Byron
bloggedy blog
Journey Inside My Mind
Fragments from Floyd
The Gutless Pacifist
The Gospel According to Mark
Quantum Tea