Former New York City mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani will be the keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday, September 1st. His Tuesday night address will follow primetime speeches from Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who are seen as two of the most likely candidates to become John McCain’s running mate, were not granted primetime speaking slots. Romney is currently slated to speak on Wednesday, Sept 3rd, while Pawlenty is scheduled to join Charlie Crist, Sam Brownback and Mel Martinez to address the convention on Thursday, Sept. 4th, before McCain’s convention-closing address.(The schedule could change.)

Whomever McCain selects as his running mate will give an address in primetime on Wednesday, along with Cindy McCain and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindel.

Former Democrat Joe Lieberman and Vice President Dick Cheney will speak on the convention’s first day. They will be followed in primetime by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia says its response to the further development of a U.S. missile shield in Poland will go beyond diplomacy.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the U.S. missile shield plans are clearly aimed at weakening Russia.

SACHKHERE, Georgia (AP) — Russian forces on Wednesday built a sentry post just 30 miles from the Georgian capital, appearing to dig in to positions deep inside Georgia despite pledges to pull back to areas mandated by a cease-fire signed by both countries.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says his troops will complete their pullback by Friday, but few signs of movement have been seen other than the departure of a small contingent that have held the strategically key city of Gori. ...

Russian soldiers were setting up camp Wednesday in at least three positions in west-central Georgia. Further east, soldiers were building a sentry post of timber on a hill outside Igoeti, 30 miles from Tbilisi and the closest point to the capital where Russian troops have maintained a significant presence.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

McCain leads Obama among likely U.S. voters by 46 percent to 41 percent, wiping out Obama’s solid 7-point advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll.

According to Rick Sallinger of the CBS TV station, Denver Human Services has been handing out coupons for free homeless haircuts.

The idea was to make the homeless feel better about themselves. And maybe then they’d get jobs or something.

Rusty Johnson told Rick he hadn’t had a haircut in three or four months and, frankly, didn’t much care about the Democrats caring about his appearance. “I just want to look good and feel good for myself,” he said.

In the history of life on earth, sex may be the ultimate survival skill, because the bottom line is: reproduce or die. This episode looks at sex in its many forms, from sharks—among the first vertebrates to have intercourse—to dinosaurs that had to figure out how to join their giant bodies together to mate; from the stick insect (that mates nonstop for 10 straight weeks) to macaques monkeys (about once an hour)... and finally to humans. This driving force of life comes in many forms. How will sex evolve in the future? Are we evolving beyond sex? In fact, is a time coming when we will be able to seize control of our own evolution... not via sex at all, but through genetic engineering?

(AP) Turns out Bigfoot was just a rubber suit.

Two researchers on a quest to prove the existence of Bigfoot say that the carcass encased in a block of ice - handed over to them for an undisclosed sum by two men who claimed to have found it - was slowly thawed out, and discovered to be a rubber gorilla outfit.

The revelation comes just days after a much ballyhooed news conference was held in California to proclaim that the remains of the creature found in the North Georgia mountains was the legendary man-ape.

Steve Kulls, executive director of squatchdetective.com and host of Squatchdetective Radio, says in a posting on a Web site run by Bigfoot researcher Tom Biscardi that as the “evidence” was thawed, the claim began to unravel as a giant hoax.

First, the hair sample was burned and “melted into a ball uncharacteristic of hair,” Kulls said in the posting. The thawing process was sped up and the exposed head was found to be “unusually hollow in one small section.” An hour of thawing later and the feet were exposed - and they were found to be made of rubber.

John McCain is seriously considering choosing a pro-abortion-rights running mate despite vocal resistance from conservatives, with former Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) very much in the mix, close McCain advisers say.

Under strong consideration: former Pennsylvania Republican Gov. Tom Ridge, and Lieberman, who was Al Gore’s running mate in 2000.

Multiple GOP sources say that party officials in Washington and in the states have been contacted by the McCain campaign in the past two weeks and asked about the fallout from such a choice. One person familiar with the calls said the party was being instructed to prepare for different candidate prototypes — including one in the mold of Lieberman, who is an independent but still caucuses with the Democrats.

POTI, Georgia - Russian soldiers took about 20 Georgian troops prisoner at a key Black Sea port in western Georgia on Tuesday, blindfolding them and holding them at gunpoint, and commandeered American Humvees awaiting shipment back to the United States.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) — A suicide bomber killed 23 people at a hospital in northwest Pakistan Tuesday, highlighting the militant challenge facing the government after the resignation of Pervez Musharraf.

In other violence in the wake of the US-backed president’s decision to bow out on Monday, five soldiers and 13 Taliban militants were killed in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

The suicide attack happened as Shiite Muslims gathered to protest over the death of a man in a suspected sectarian attack in the troubled town of Dera Ismail Khan, said North West Frontier Province police chief Malik Naveed Khan.

“There are 23 confirmed dead and up to 20 wounded. We have found the legs of the suspected suicide bomber,” Khan told private Geo television, adding that tensions were high in the area after the blast.

ALGIERS, Algeria - A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-rigged car into a police academy as recruits lined up to register for classes, killing at least 43 people. It was the deadliest attack in recent years in the North African country.

The Interior Ministry said 42 civilians and a police officer were killed in the attack early Tuesday in the town of Les Issers, some 35 miles east of the capital, Algiers, the state-run APS news agency said.

The blast ripped off parts of the policy academy’s roof, and damaged its facade. Photos transmitted by APS showed bodies wrapped in yellow plastic bags or blankets lying amid the rubble. Nearby houses and passing cars were also damaged.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents mounted their m