Charlie Rose interviews Bashar Assad  —  Charlie Rose interviewed Syrian President Bashar Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus on Sunday morning.  —  The interview, Assad's first with an American television network in nearly two years, will air in its entirety on PBS's “Charlie Rose” …

And now it's global COOLING!  Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year  — Publication of UN climate change report suggesting global warming caused by humans pushed back to later this month  —  A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles …

Fox News Pundit Shuts Down Network's Hysteria Over Benghazi: 'It's Gone, Baby.  It's In Your Head'  —  Fox News' Juan Williams tersely dismissed the GOP's year-long effort to implicate the Obama administration in a so-called “cover-up” of the attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi …

Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011  —  The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately …

LEFT WITH NOTHING.  —  On the day Bennie Coleman lost his house, the day armed U.S. marshals came to his door and ordered him off the property, he slumped in a folding chair across the street and watched the vestiges of his 76 years hauled to the curb.  —  Movers carted out his easy chair, his clothes, his television.

Collapse of American Influence Recalls Dis-Integration of Soviet Union, Fall of France  —  Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and prior to that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States.

Iowa grants gun permits to the blind  —  No one questions the legality of the permits, but some officials worry about public safety.  —  CONNECT  —  DES MOINES, Iowa — Here's some news that has law enforcement officials and lawmakers scratching their heads:

NSA Can Spy on Smart Phone Data  —  SPIEGEL has learned from internal NSA documents that the US intelligence agency has the capability of tapping user data from the iPhone, devices using Android as well as BlackBerry, a system previously believed to be highly secure.

Surveillance and Arrogance  —  There is plenty to read about the National Security Agency's success in co-opting most commercial encryption technology (see these summaries by Ryan Cooper and Matt Buchanan).  I have just one thing to add.  —  President Obama has said that he welcomes a debate …

Israel deploys Iron Dome near Jerusalem  —  Israel is setting up its Iron Dome missile defense system outside of Jerusalem as violence continues in neighboring Syria.  —  According to an Agence France Presse (AFP) report, the Israeli military is deploying a battery of the missile shield west of the city …

Syrian forces may have used gas without Assad's permission: paper  —  (Reuters) - Syrian government forces may have carried out a chemical weapons attack close to Damascus without the personal permission of President Bashar al-Assad, Germany's Bild am Sonntag paper reported on Sunday, citing German intelligence.

Here's Michele Bachmann thanking the Egyptian military for the coup and crackdowns  —  Three U.S. lawmakers who have generated controversy for their statements about Islam and Muslim Americans released a video Saturday praising the Egyptian military and thanking it for staging the July 3 …

Britain sent poison gas chemicals to Assad: Proof that the UK delivered Sarin agent to Syrian regime for SIX years  —  British companies sold chemicals to Syria that could have been used to produce the deadly nerve agent that killed 1,400 people, The Mail on Sunday can reveal today.