Cubs SS Castro held out, given 'mental day off'

Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro was held out of the starting lineup Monday night against Atlanta, one night after television cameras caught him not paying attention in the field as a pitch was thrown.

"It's a mental day off," Chicago manager Mike Quade said during a long pregame press conference at which Castro was pretty much the only topic of discussion.

"I was real disappointed. He understands that. We'll see how the next day or so goes. We'll take it one day at a time. He's got a lot of work to do in terms of bearing down and concentrating."

The pitch in question occurred during the sixth inning of Sunday night's 6-2 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals. As reliever James Russell went into his motion and delivered to Daniel Descalso, Castro kicked at the dirt and then walked toward the outfield, never looking toward home plate when the pitch was thrown.

"When I saw Russ' pitch when he wasn't on board yet, that was the thing that got me more than anything," Quade said. "People stay loose different ways and approach each pitch different ways, but the fact that he wasn't prepared for Russ' pitch was the main thing."

ESPN aired a clip of the play the next inning and commentator Bobby Valentine spent nearly seven minutes haranguing Castro and the Cubs' inability to get him to focus. Quade said he didn't hear any of Valentine's comments.

"I don't listen to Bobby very much," Quade said. "I looked at everything with the mute on. That's kind of what I do. I don't want any outside influences. I want to know exactly what I see and make up my own decisions.

U.S. Officials: Gadhafi Is Still in the Country

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's regime appears to be nearing collapse, but the colonel himself has apparently gone underground.

U.S. officials say they believe he is still in Libya, but if they have any more precise fix on his whereabouts, they aren't sharing the details.

In a briefing Monday afternoon on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where President Barack Obama is vacationing with his family, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the "best information" indicated that the Libyan strongman was still in Libya, whereabouts unknown.

"That's the latest," Mr. Earnest said. "There's no evidence to indicate that he's left."

Dia Alhutmany, a spokesman for the rebel-aligned Libyan Mission to the United Nations in New York, said Col. Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, once seen as his possible successor, had been captured and was in rebel hands. It wasn't immediately possible to confirm cable reports that Seif el-Islam had turned up at a Tripoli hotel later Monday. He said another son, Mohammed, had been captured, but may have escaped rebel custody.

Mr. Alhutmany wasn't able to confirm reports of the capture of a third son, Saadi, and added that another son, Mutassim, may have escaped to the city of Sabha in the south.

Clashes were reported Monday around Col. Gadhafi's Tripoli compound. The colonel has held power for more than four decades, alternately defying and courting the West. He survived U.S. airstrikes in the 1980s after being linked to the bombing of a Berlin disco popular with American service members.

During the George W. Bush administration, he won renewed relations with the U.S. by agreeing to give up his quest for weapons of mass destruction.

How Google+ Is Like Twitter—but Not in a Good Way

Like Twitter, Google's social network has yet to solve some challenging problems. Among them: the "noisy stream" and how to find interesting content

Tech blogger Robert Scoble, the king of the early-adopter crowd, has posted some thoughts about what he likes and doesn’t like about using Google+, and some of his points hit home with me as well. And the more I thought about the new social network and the things it doesn’t do very well, the more similar it seemed to the issues that have also been dogging Twitter for some time. Like Twitter, the Web giant has to figure out how to solve some pretty challenging problems—including the "noisy stream" issue, the problems of search and discovery, and, of course, how to keep people from going away and never coming back.

As more than one person (including Scoble himself) has noted, he isn’t exactly the average user of social tools. As someone with hundreds of thousands of followers, who jumps on every new Web or social tool that comes along—in some cases dominating those new services to the point where they become almost unusable, as some found with FriendFeed—Scoble is definitely an "edge case." But at the same time, that makes him a little like the canary in a coal mine: He can highlight problems that may only become obvious for others much later.

The "Noisy Stream" Problem

In his post, he mentions a couple of things that I’ve also noticed, as someone who has used Google+ since it launched, including the fact that over time a stream of activity on the network can become noisy to the point where it’s hard to follow at all. That is especially true if one follows—or "circles"—people who produce a lot of content (like Scoble). But it’s also true if you follow someone whose content gets a lot of comments, as is the case with users such as Myspace co-founder Tom Anderson, or even Google (GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin (and yes, I don’t use Circles as much as I probably should).

U.S. disappointed by Iran's sentencing of U.S. hikers: Clinton

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that Washington was "deeply disappointed" by Iran's sentencing of two U.S. hikers for eight years in prison.

In a statement issued by the State Department, Clinton said the United States continued to call and work for the two Americans' "immediate release," saying it was time for them to return home and be united with their families.

"I joined President Obama and the people of the U.S. in expressing our unflagging support for Shane, Joshua, Sarah and their families during this difficult time," she added in the statement.

The two detained U.S. hikers, Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer, were sentenced to eight years in prison by Iran on Sunday on charges of illegal entry to the country and espionage.

Three U.S. nationals were arrested in Iran on July 31, 2009, for illegally entering Iran's western border and were later charged with espionage. The U.S. government considered the charges unfounded.

The female U.S. hiker Sarah Shourd, once jailed in Iran with the other two Americans, was released by Tehran's prosecutor in September 2010, on a bail of 500,000 U.S. dollars due to her health situation.

News analysis: Shootings, attacks test Israeli-Egyptian relations

JERUSALEM, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- The killing of Egyptian policemen and soldiers Thursday apparently by Israeli troops, who were in hot pursuit of militants responsible for attacks earlier in the day within Israel, have strained relations between the two nations.

On Saturday, an Israeli diplomat in Egypt delivered a statement from Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak expressing his regret over the killing and proposing a joint investigation during a meeting at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.

But officials in Egypt were unimpressed by the Israeli gesture.

"The Israeli statement was positive on the surface, but it was not in keeping with the magnitude of the incident and the state of Egyptian anger toward Israeli actions," Egypt's official news agency MENA quoted an Egyptian cabinet statement as saying on Sunday.

Israeli analysts told Xinhua that the cool reaction of Egyptians is an indication to how much the relations between the two countries have declined since former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February.

CHANGES ON GROUND

Mubarak was considered a strong ally by Israel because of similar views on many regional issues. During his 30 years in power, Israel could count on the southern border to be relatively quiet and demand few military resources. However, after Thursday's attacks, that could all change, according to Prof. Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research for International Affairs Center.

"Clearly, it will have to be a military priority to reinforce the border," Rubin said, adding that "It means re-establishment of the southern command as a regularly functioning front."