Updated

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Ticking Time Bomb?

The John McCain campaign insists it is trying to arrange a meeting with the Evangelist Billy Graham after a letter surfaced from the McCain camp that suggested the candidate didn't have time for such a meeting. Graham, the nation's best-known Christian evangelist, had long been a spiritual adviser to presidents of both parties.

The letter, written June 3 by McCain scheduling director Amber Johnson to an intermediary trying to set up a meeting, came to light as the McCain camp tries to patch things up with Christian conservatives.

It reads, "I must pass along our regrets and do not foresee an opportunity to add this event to our calendar."

But a McCain spokesman tells FOX News the campaign has been working with Graham's office directly for months on a meeting.

It's In the Mail

A group of 3,000 political activists is planning to send letters to American soldiers in Iraq, telling them that the U.S. is to blame for the 9/11 terror attacks.

Mark Dice, founder of the international media watchdog group known as The Resistance, says, "We... want them to know the real reason they have put themselves in harm's way."

Dice is urging his members to tell American troops that the attacks were aided by corrupt U.S. officials for political purposes. Dice has already handed out at college campuses more than 1,000 DVDs of a 9/11 conspiracy film and adds, "I don't want the soldiers... to be used as pawns in the creation of the new world order."

Aiding the Alarmism

Remember that world AIDS pandemic?

Back on June 12, 1990, World Health Organization AIDS director Michael Merson warned the Associated Press, "It is very unlikely that the global prevalence of HIV infection will stabilize... for at least several decades." It estimated that around a half-billion people would be at risk.

The WHO is now backtracking and says the threat of a global AIDS pandemic has disappeared.

WHO's AIDS Department Chief Kevin de Cock says there will be no epidemic in the heterosexual population outside Africa. It is the first official admission that the prevention strategy promoted by major AIDS organizations may have been disproportionate to the problem.

The WHO and other organizations have been criticized for inflating estimates of the number of people infected — diverting funds from other health needs and spending on those who are not at risk. De Cock says there are "elements of truth" in that criticism.

Acting Up

Egyptian actor Omar Sharif says Americans are ignorant.

The actor best known for his roles in "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago", tells Al-Hayat television "only 10 percent of all Americans have a passport. In other words, 90 percent never left America. They don't know anything."

Shariff blasted U.S. policy in the Middle East saying the region will never have a democracy because people like him quote "prefer to go to the neighborhood sheik."

He also claims to have met with President Bush before the war telling him "we, the Arabs... are not like regular countries. You will drown out there."

FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.