The Taliban has captured two American soldiers and is holding them in Logar province, in the south, according to a Taliban official. A local radio station has broadcast appeals for information that leads to the return of the soldiers, with a $20,000 reward, Reuters reports, but Western forces have offered no comment. The broadcast said the troops, wearing their standard-issue uniforms, had been captured by insurgents somewhere in the province and may have been separated or moved somewhere else. The message added that one of the soldiers is 6 feet tall, 200 pounds, with brown eyes and blond hair; the other is 190 pounds, bald with a moustache, and both have tattoos. A Taliban spokesman said that three soldiers had been captured but one had died.

BP will begin drilling off the coast of Libya in the next few weeks as part of a deal signed in 2007. The news comes as BP continues to face scrutiny for its safety practices in the wake of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as well as claims that BP lobbied for the release of convicted terrorist Abdelbaset Ali al Megrahi, convicted of plotting the 1988 airplane bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. When embattled BP CEO Tony Hayward inked the deal three years ago, he hailed it as the company’s biggest exploration commitment (a minimum of $900 million) and a “welcome return” to Libya after three decades of absence. The new well is even deeper than the one in the Gulf, whose depth has made stopping the huge leak extremely difficult. A spokesman said BP would apply any lessons that come out of the Deepwater Horizon investigation. Ships began returning to the site of the spill Saturday afternoon to continue relief work, after Tropical Storm Bonnie was downgraded to a depression.

Mass panic erupted in the middle of Germany's Love Parade in Duisburg Saturday, claiming the lives of 15 people and injuring dozens more. A stampede broke out at the techno music festival when thousands of people were blocked from entering the parade grounds. Emergency responders had trouble wading through the crowd to attend to the crushed victims.

Northeast Iowa has been getting pummeled with rain over the last few days, receiving as much as nine inches in some areas. The downpour proved too much for the Lake Delhi dam, which failed Saturday, sending a flash flood toward towns downstream. As many as 700 homes have been evacuated because of the water. The problems began when the highway running on top of the dam began to fracture. "Chunks of the two-lane highway broke off in 15- and 30-foot blocks and washed away. The iron guard rail snapped and flapped in the wind like a party streamer as the water rushed by," The Des Moines Register reported on its website. Jack Klaus, a spokesman with the Delaware County emergency management office, said that there was a great deal of damage to roads, and the county had run out of barricades to block them off.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent himself, met with the recently deported spies at an undisclosed location on Saturday, and they apparently hit it off. Putin said that they sang Soviet songs together and that he told them he admired what they did. "As far as those people are concerned—everyone of them had a tough life," Putin said. "First (problem) was to master foreign language as your own. Think and speak it and do what are you told to do for the interest of your motherland for many years without counting on diplomatic immunity,” he continued, before adding cryptically “This (spy scandal) came as a result of betrayal. They (the betrayers) end up taking to drink or drugs."

So who exactly is important enough to be considered worthy of an invitation to the Chelsea Clinton wedding? Apparently, the family is restricting the event to its 400 closest friends and relatives, meaning that many donors, supporters, and aides are not making the cut for next Saturday’s nuptials. And not all of them are taking it well. “I’m good enough to borrow a plane from, but not good enough to be invited to the wedding?” one friend grumbled, pointing out that he had loaned Bill Clinton his private jet and pilot. But many realize that the bride and her parents had to draw the line somewhere. “We’re outer circle, not inner circle,” said a prominent New York lawyer who supported Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid. “We’re very happy for them, we’re very happy for their parents, and mazel tov, as we say in New York.”

In an interview with Nightline, Floyd Landis says he saw Lance Armstrong using drugs. Landis has been stripped of his Tour de France title and banned from cycling for doping, but he says he’s far from the only one. The discredited cyclist says he started doping when he joined Armstrong’s Postal Service team. Landis claims Armstrong gave him testosterone patches, that he saw Armstrong get blood transfusions, and that he saw Armstrong use the banned drug EPO. Armstrong has long denied any doping charges, but Landis says that if Armstrong “didn't win the Tour, someone else that was doped would have won the Tour. In every single one of those Tours… Look. At some point, people have to tell their kids that Santa Claus isn't real. I hate to be the guy to do it, but it's just not real."

Levi Johnston, who is once more Bristol Palin’s fiancé, is slated to appear in a music video with the Minneapolis-based R&B singer-songwriter Brittani Senser. According to the Associated Press, the video depicts the couple sharing tender moments before being driven apart by Senser’s mother. The video is scheduled to be shot in Los Angeles on August 9, after Senser and Johnston attend the Teen Choice Awards. Johnston used to want to act, but in the July 26 edition of Us Weekly, he seemed to be changing course, expressing pleasure at being “almost out of the limelight” after posing for Playgirl, despite recent rumors of a reality show. The video’s creator and director, Evan Winter, said he “kind of riffed on the real-life situation.”

To their neighbors in the tiny town of King Salmon, Alaska, Paul and Nadia Rockwood were a normal, social, cheerful couple—he a weatherman and she a cheery mom—but behind closed doors, Paul Rockwood was frequenting radical Islamist websites and compiling an assassination list. The pair was planning to move back to Nadia’s mother’s hometown in England and got a teary goodbye ceremony before flying to Anchorage, where the FBI was waiting for them. The Rockwoods pleaded guilty to willfully making false statements to the FBI this week. Paul had researched ways to kill the people on his list, and Nadia had taken a list of assassination targets—she initially claimed she thought she was merely carrying an innocent litter—to a person she thought was a fellow radical in Anchorage. Their old neighbors are baffled by the development, saying they never saw a sign of radicalism (Nadia even sang Christian songs in the community play). “If all terrorists were this harmless, we'd all be living in a much less complicated world,” one local said.

Oksana Grigorieva began taping her ex Mel Gibson’s rages over the phone on February 18, when the actor flew into a jealous rage because he thought Grigorieva was sleeping with the landscaper. Gibson had come over to visit on the same day he quit smoking, putting him in a terrible mood. Suspecting she was having an affair with the person he referred to as the “tree man,” Gibson feared he would hurt Grigorieva and his kid, so he left. Then the phone calls—and the taping—began. TMZ reports that all the recordings were made on that single day.

Inception took top box office honors Friday, bringing its haul to $13.2 million. The dreamy thriller has made a total of $113.4 million, with impressive midweek numbers. The No. 1 total weekend haul is still up for grabs, though, as the Angelina Jolie action flick Salt grossed only slightly less, $12.7 million, on its opening night. The role appears to be a good career move for Jolie, whose Wanted, another explosion-heavy film, took in $341 million in 2008. Ramona and Beezus landed in third place, with $3 million Friday. In fourth was Jerry Bruckheimer’s The Sorcerer's Apprentice, with $2.9 million. And in fifth was Toy Story 3, which made $2.8 million for a domestic total of $373.2 million.

Spaniard Alberto Contador is all but certain to win his third Tour de France title in four years Sunday, having held on to the lead in the penultimate stage of the race Saturday. Contador, 27, had tears in his eyes as he addressed the crowd with his trademark finger-gun gesture and slipped on the yellow jersey. The 20th and final stage, a 63.7-mile stretch from Longjumeau to Paris’ Champs-Elysees, is traditionally ceremonial, making any attacks unlikely.

Ted Haggard was shamed into resigning as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and leaving his Christian ministry—as well as Colorado—after a scandal four years ago involving a sexual encounter with a prostitute, from whom he also bought meth. But now he says he “over-repented.” Haggard started a ministry with his wife Gayle in their backyard barn two months ago, and now the congregation has swelled to 200 people, so many people that they had to move out of the barn and into a community center this Sunday. Haggard says he was the victim of a “witch hunt,” and that the sexual encounter was really a massage gone wrong. Christian critics say the pressures of leading a church could cause Haggard to be tempted again, but the preacher says ministering is part of his repentance, reminding him every week of his sins. In one way, he says, his painful public scandal encourages his flock to confide in him: "It's amazing. People tell me everything," Haggard says. "That never happened when we were respectable."

Iran is studying building a nuclear fusion reactor, which no other country has managed to create. Iran already has a highly controversial nuclear fission program, which Western nations allege is aimed at building nuclear weapons. So far, nuclear fusion has never been used to create energy for civilian use—it’s only been used to make weapons, causing the thermonuclear explosions of the H-bomb. The head of Tehran’s nuclear energy program said the country was putting $8 million into “serious” research on nuclear fusion, which is expected to last two years. It would take another decade to build a reactor. A group of nations—the U.S. the European Union, China, India, Russia, Japan, and South Korea—agreed in 2006 to put resources together to fund a $12.8 billion nuclear fusion reactor on Cadarache, France. The international effort is necessary, members of the agreement say, because nuclear fusion is mind-blowingly expensive, and so partnership is the only way to advance the science. Iran says it would be happy to join an international fusion effort but would work on the project alone if it wasn’t invited.

A mass grave containing 38 bodies has been found in the northern Mexican state of Neuvo Leon. Officials think drug gangs used the remote site to torture and kill victims, finding blood and traces of gasoline in the earth. It’s the third mass grave found in Nuevo Leon, one of the hot spots on Mexico’s disturbingly violent war on drugs. The site featured a ramp into a pit, and investigators believe the thugs dragged their victims along the ramp to the pit, where they were tortured, and some perhaps burned. Diggers are searching for more bodies.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has vowed to stick it out through his ethics trial, a promise that delights Republicans looking for campaign fodder for this fall’s midterm elections. Seeking to hang Democrats for their “culture of corruption,” the GOP will try to tie Rangel’s case (a trial that could last months by a special eight-member ethics panel) to the sexual harassment charges against former Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY). It’s a tactic with that’s proven to bring results—the Democrats used the same tack in 2006 to retake Congress from Republicans. The National Republican Congressional Committee plans to target lawmakers who took campaign donations from Rangel as well as those elected on a “change” platform in 2006, saying they didn’t live up to their promises. Democrats have returned $500,000 in donations from Rangel, but New York Democrats are especially concerned about the impact Rangel’s trial will have on their races.

Maybe the evidence against North Korea isn’t so overwhelming after all? Doubts are beginning to arise within South Korea over who is actually responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan in March. Critics, who claim to have performed their own studies, wonder why South Korean President Lee Myung-bak waited nearly two months to blame North Korea on the same day that campaigning opened for local elections. They also argue that it is extremely unlikely that a country as poor as North Korea could execute such a clean hit against a larger military power. "I couldn't find the slightest sign of an explosion," said a former shipbuilding executive-turned-investigative journalist. "The sailors drowned to death. Their bodies were clean. We didn't even find dead fish in the sea." Two South Korean-born U.S. academics have also raised doubts about a so-called bit of "smoking gun" evidence. They believe that the piece of torpedo propeller with a handwritten mark reading "No. 1" in Korean could have easily been fabricated.

Even though Hurricane Bonnie was downgraded to a tropical depression, it could still wreak havoc on the northern Gulf Coast when it arrives later today. With winds of up to 35 miles per hour, it has already crossed Florida and could make landfall anywhere from Louisiana to Texas and regain tropical storm strength. "While it's only forecasted to be tropical depression at this point, we know from experience that it's best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said. BP’s recovery effort has been halted and all ships in the area were ordered back to shore. Operations at the well could be delayed by as many as 10 to 14 days. Meanwhile, it seems that nothing can stop BP from trying to conduct business as usual. The company announced that it is due to begin deep-water drilling off the coast of Libya in the next few weeks.

Last week marked the official transfer of Camp Cropper, the last American-controlled prison in Iraq, to the Iraqi government. Its problems, however, are far from over: Five days later, at least four prisoners—three of whom are said to be high-ranking members of Iraq’s most violent insurgent group—escaped. Compounding the situation, the prison’s warden and several guards have now disappeared. This news offers little hope for the country’s long-troubled prison system, especially after the Abu Ghraib scandal, in which detainees were tortured and abused by Americans. Today, experts say the system remains abusive, with high-level suspects disappearing frequently. Iraqi officials didn’t reveal the prison break until Thursday, two days after it happened.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is mellowing its policy regarding medical marijuana in states where it’s legal, allowing patients treated at its hospitals and clinics to use it. This relaxed rule resolves a long-standing conflict in veterans’ facilities between federal laws and the 14 states that have legalized medicinal use of the drug. Under V.A. department rules, if a veteran is caught using illegal drugs, they can be denied pain medications—which, until now, did not include an exception for marijuana. Now that's changed. “By creating a directive on medical marijuana, the V.A. ensures that throughout its vast hospital network, it will be well understood that legal medical marijuana use will not be the basis for the denial of services,” Michael Krawitz, executive director of Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access, told The New York Times. This is great news, no doubt, for the many medical-marijuana-using veterans who had previously abandoned the V.A. hospital system for that reason.

The Harry Potter theme park has generated a lot of buzz over the summer, but Friday was every Muggle's worst nightmare. A new ride at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios amusement park in Orlando broke down, leaving 132 riders stranded. The Orlando Fire Department officials responded to 911 calls from riders and evacuated the passengers, but said there were no medical complaints. According to a local report from WESH 2, Universal officials would only reveal that "a ride" was stuck and crews were attempting to evacuate it, but did not cite the particular Potter ride. WESH 2's reporter confirmed that it was Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, a ride which broke down when two previous WESH 2 journalists were on board in June. A Fire Department official told the local news site that there was a mechanical issue with the ride. Too bad they couldn't simply resort to working some wand magic.

Although actress Zsa Zsa Gabor was reportedly fine after having hip surgery this week, her husband told Reuters Friday that she is unresponsive and in critical condition. The 93-year-old socialite’s ninth husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, told the press that “it is not looking good.” Gabor suffered a fall last Saturday while rushing to get the phone while watching Jeopardy! She was brought to UCLA Medical Center, where she underwent hip surgery on Sunday. Afterward, her rep released a statement Monday saying, “She will be held at the hospital for four-to-five days minimum while she recuperates.” According to Gabor’s daughter, Constance Francesca Hilton, von Anhalt’s update on her mother’s status is false. “She is not in a coma. She is not on any kind of death watch. She is responsive and on medications. All vital signs are still going strong, and she is talking," Hilton told Reuters.

Although The Simpsons is entering its 22nd season, the animated series is welcoming some new voices to Springfield with guest stints from actors Halle Berry and Paul Rudd, Entertainment Weekly reported Friday. In an early 2011 episode, the Oscar-winning actress will present a statuette at the Academy Awards where Bart and Homer are nominated for an animated short based on the younger Simpson’s webseries, Angry Dad. “It’s a bit of a satire of the different Oscar acceptances where two people clearly race to the stage to get there first,” the show’s executive producer tells EW.com. In another upcoming episode, Rudd lends his voice to Dr. Zander, a therapist who runs a “fathering enrichment class” that Homer is ordered to attend. “For 20 years we’ve shown Homer strangling Bart and we’ve never had anybody go, ‘Oh, that’s horrible!’” the exec says. “So Paul Rudd goes, ‘That’s terrible!’ and he tries to cure him.” The episode will also feature NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who “puts on a Homer wig and then starts strangling Homer to show him how it feels.”

With a victory on the financial regulation overhaul in his pocket—a “key pillar” in his recession recovery plan—President Obama said a Republican plan for the economy would move the country backward to the job-killing policies of his predecessor. "It took nearly a decade of failed economic policies to create this mess, and it will take years to fully repair the damage," Obama said in his weekly address that aired Saturday, vowing that his policies would move the country forward. That’s expected to be one of the White House’s main messages during this fall’s midterm elections. The president admitted that the growth since the credit crisis two years ago hasn’t created enough jobs, but said the GOP would make things much worse. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) countered that the GOP would promote growth by cutting spending and taxes.