For those who want to follow as News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch takes questions from members of the British Parliament about the "hacking scandal" that has engulfed some of his company's newspapers in the U.K.:

Britain's Channel 4 News is webcasting the morning's hearings here, and has made the feed available to other news sites.

Heather Hurlburt is the executive director of the National Security Network.

The think-tank world — the double-X chromosome part of it, anyway — is buzzing with Micah Zenko's July 14 piece in Foreign Policy examining statistics and anecdotes that prove, once again, the woeful underrepresentation of women in the U.S. national security policymaking establishment.

There was a 14.6 percent increase in housing starts in June from May, the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development just reported.

Construction (at an annualized rate) was begun on 629,000 homes and apartment buildings.

Bloomberg News points out that starts rose to "the fastest pace in five months."

Don't mess with the little guy with the big bark at the Ace Smoke Shop in Altadena, Calif.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's office released some amazing surveillance video on Monday, showing what happened when armed robbers stormed into the shop on July 7.

Though the legislation is said to have "little chance in the Senate," the Republican-controlled House today is expected to easily approve the "Cut, Cap and Balance" plan that advocates say would put lawmakers on record as supporting moves to put the federal government's fiscal books in order.

Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire is the subject of a corruption and phone-hacking investigation, was briefly accosted Tuesday by a protester at a British parliamentary inquiry as he answered questions about his role in the scandal.

The man ran toward Murdoch and tried to attack him with what appeared to be white foam in a foil pie dish. Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, rose from her seat and slapped the protester, who was handcuffed by police and removed from the room. Murdoch was apparently unharmed, and the hearing resumed after a brief recess.

The current mayor of Tar Hell, N.C., is moving away, and no one in the town of 117 people has filed to run in the next election. All three town council seats are wide open too. One catch: You have to live within Tar Heel town limits to be elected.

Two New Jersey men spotted a police van and climbed in to get a picture while pretending to be arrested. But they locked themselves in and were arrested for real. In California, when I-405 was closed for repairs, three people pretended to have dinner on it. They posted the photo on Facebook sitting around a table with candles in a passing lane.