USA Today poll finds that most think Hillary is a divisive figure in U.S. politics.

Significantly, fewer people felt compatible with the New York Democrat on values than when she was first lady despite her recent efforts to reach out to moderates and conservatives on health care, abortion and other issues

Meanwhile, Victor Davis Hanson writes on Hillary's attempt to rebrand herself from liberal to centrist.

But as the Democratic Party moved leftward and upward, middle-class Americans below and to the right nevertheless remained distrustful of unearned aristocratic privilege. They don't like, for example, hearing about CEOs finagling multimillion-dollar bonuses from their publicly held companies that have no connection with their own actual performances or the businesses' health.

So Hillary Clinton is now voicing the old Democratic fair deal, without giving too much rope to her fringe zealots, who could hang her in places like Topeka or Memphis with gay marriage, open borders, partial-birth abortion or skedaddling from Iraq.

Inasmuch as Sen. Clinton's transformation for now seems cosmetic and is as yet unmatched by a written agenda that spells out reduced entitlements, low taxes and strong national defense, can Hillary pull it off without seeming entirely cynical?

UN official Alexander Yakovlev pleads guilty as the Iraqi Oil-For-Food scandal investigation works its way up the UN bureaucratic ladder:

Alexander Yakovlev, a Russian procurement officer, was the first U.N. official to be charged in the scandal. He was also accused of wire fraud and money laundering for allegedly accepting nearly $1 million in bribes from U.N. contractors in his work outside the program.

Yakovlev pleaded guilty Monday to the charges and surrendered to FBI agents in Manhattan but was later released on $400,000 bail. He could face up to 20 years in prison for each of the three counts.

The Wall Street Journal summarizes the scandal:

Mr. Sevan's graft is reprehensible, but the real scandal is that Saddam Hussein was able to manipulate the Oil for Food program and bend the U.N. to his will for such comparatively tiny sums. That didn't happen because of U.N. oversight failures; it happened because of the U.N.'s political commitment to continued dealings with Saddam, something Mr. Annan endorsed personally, both through his own diplomatic initiatives and his stalwart defense of the prewar status quo.

It is obvious that Kofi Annan must go, and that the entire UN structure needs a serious housecleaning. John Bolton has his work cut out for him.

Here we go again. An exiled Iranian claims Iran has 4,000 centrifuges capable of processing weapons-grade uranium.

Under an agreement with the IAEA, Iran had pledged to stop building centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium to levels high enough to fuel a nuclear weapon.

Centrifuges also can be used for the peaceful generation of nuclear energy, which Iran insists is its only intention. The United States contends the country is running a covert effort to produce nuclear weapons.

"These 4,000 centrifuge machines have not been declared to the IAEA, and the regime has kept the production of these machines hidden from the inspectors while the negotiations with the European Union have been going on over the past 21 months," Jafarzadeh said in a telephone interview.

Iran on Saturday rejected a package of EU incentives presented by envoys from Britain, France and Germany, and on Monday, it announced it had resumed uranium conversion activities at its nuclear facility at Isfahan.

Jafarzadeh said the centrifuges were manufactured in Isfahan and Tehran, and that construction of buildings, concrete foundations and other work needed to prepare the Natanz facility for centrifuge installation has continued in recent months.

Well, it looks like we have another hostile Persian Gulf government, stonewalling UN investigations while building up their capability to threaten their neighbors and potentially the rest of the world. Sanctions and UN resolutions worked so wonderfully well the last time. Hey, I've got an idea--let's try them again!

Scary story:

Researchers focused on a brainstem region called the preBotzinger complex (preBotC) which contains specialised neurons that trigger breathing. Rats were injected with a chemical designed to target and kill more than half the preBotC neurons.

The results were dramatic. Breathing stopped completely when the rats entered REM sleep - the mentally active phase of sleep characterised by dreaming - forcing the animals to wake up. Over time, the breathing lapses increased in severity and spread into non-REM, deeper sleep. Eventually they occurred when the rats were awake as well.

The research looks into central sleep apnea (not the more common obstructive sleep apnea treated by CPAP devices). Still, it's a bit frightening to think that "passing away peacefully in his sleep" might more often be "suffocated at night due to loss of brain cells." Yikes.

Isn't Cisco big enough?

LONDON -- Cisco Systems Inc. is considering buying the world's top mobile handset maker Nokia in a bid to gain its wireless infrastructure technology, the Business newspaper reported yesterday.

NASA plans to scout out landing sites on Mars.

"It's time we start peeling back the onion layer and start looking at Mars from different vantage points," said project manager James Graf of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Like the three current spacecrafts flying around Mars -- including a European orbiter -- the latest probe will seek evidence of water and other signs that the planet once could have hosted life. The $720-million mission, which launches from Cape Canaveral, Fla., also will serve as a communications link to relay data to Earth.

We slowly are building an exploration infrastructure in orbit around Mars.

Discovery is waved off in two landing attempts Monday morning. Four landing opportunities on Tuesday, two in Florida, two in California.

Unstable weather—pop-up rain showers and a broken cloud deck at approximately 1,000 feet above the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility—forced flight controllers to wave-off both of today’s two landing opportunities for the space shuttle Discovery. The landing was originally scheduled for 4:47 a.m. EDT (0847 GMT).

The new NASA safety culture emerges again? Maybe . . .

Former oil-For-Food chief Benon Sevan resigns from his position at the UN.

Benon Sevan announced his decision Sunday in a scathing letter that lambasted UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the UN Security Council, the United Nations' critics, and the Independent Inquiry Committee investigating the allegations of corruption against him.

“As I predicted, a high-profile investigative body invested with absolute power would feel compelled to target someone and that someone turned out to be me,” Mr. Sevan wrote in the letter. “The charges are false, and you, who have known me for all these years, should know that they are false.”

This could get even more interesting as events unfold. It looks like Sevan will go down fighting.

Syrian President Bashir Assad arrives in Tehran for a state visit.

"Common threats deserve the formation of a united front by Iran and Syria more than ever," Aljazeera quoted Ahmadinejad as saying at a joint press conference with Assad.

"Boosting relations could protect the region from the threats," he added.

The Iranian leader did not identify the source of the threats but in a commentary on the visit, Iranian state television commented: "Cooperation between the two countries is important, because the United States and Israel have invaded the region."

Considering that these two nations are primarily responsible for the current carnage in Iraq, further cooperation between them is deeply troubling.

Multilateral talks sponsored by China to resume August 29th.

The chief North Korean delegate, Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan, insisted that his country retain the right to operate nuclear reactors for electricity production as part of any agreement.

The United States has maintained North Korea should not even be allowed to maintain nuclear reactors for civilian use because it had turned a research facility at Yongbyon, near the capital, into a production center for weapons-grade plutonium after the collapse of a 1994 agreement restricting nuclear activity. Going a step further, the North Korean government announced in February that it has used the material to make nuclear weapons.

North Korea continues to blackmail the world for economic and humanitarian aid with their nuclear weapons program.