Cheat Sheet

Unsure how, exactly, to illustrate an intelligent Hispanic person, the artist of the cover of this week’s National Review found a solution in another ethnic stereotype: He drew Sonia Sotomayor as Asian. The cover, headlined “The Wise Latina,” depicts her as a Buddha with a pair of slanted eyes that would make a WW-II anti-Japan propagandist proud. Given the brouhaha over The New Yorker’s Obama cover last summer, will the National Review find itself with trouble on its hands?

The Obamas arrive in Paris tonight for the 65th anniversary of D-Day, but will be dining without the Sarkozys: The couple reportedly declined a dinner invitation from the French president and his wife, Carla Bruni. While the president no doubt has a packed schedule, rumors are swirling that he's hesitating to spend much time with Sarkozy because Sarkozy told colleagues that Obama is inexperienced and unknowledgeable, particularly in the realm of climate change. The dinner decline, coupled with Queen Elizabeth’s anger over not being invited to the D-Day commemoration, incited one newspaper to write, “Sarkozy has pulled off a double hit: insulting Queen Elizabeth and exasperating Obama.” The French media has, for some time, mocked Sarkozy’s attempts at befriending Obama.

Does Robert Hanssen need cell mates? The FBI has arrested Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn, on Thursday and charged them “with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government and to communicate classified information to the Cuban government,” according to CNN. Myers is a former State Department official, and the couple has allegedly worked as spies for Castro’s government for 30 years. According to the indictment, the couple met with Fidel Castro himself in 1995. According to the Associated Press, "The indictment says the two agreed to be spies in 1979 after meeting with a Cuban government official while they were living in South Dakota." 

Convicted murderer and terminally ill cancer patient Susan Atkins may have a chance at freedom after serving 38 years in prison. Officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation have scheduled a September 2 parole hearing for Atkins, who in 1968 had a role in the murder of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others in Los Angeles. In 2008, Atkins was diagnosed with brain cancer and has since had one leg amputated, while the other remains paralyzed. Doctors diagnosed Atkins with only six months to live, prompting her to appeal for “compassionate release” from her sentence. The plea once again raises the question of mercy in the court system, not to mention the amount Atkins is costing the state by being kept in prison. Most critics, however, hope for Atkins to stay in prison given the severity and brutality of her crimes.

Dial P for PETA. Newly released videos allegedly depicting medical testing on monkeys and goats may be used as evidence to prove that the military is violating its own animal-welfare regulations, says the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine under the Freedom of Information Act. The animals are used to train physicians in battlefield medicine and are inflicted with wounds, intubated with chest tubes, and administered drugs to simulate certain symptoms, such as difficulty breathing. The PCRM argued that alternative training methods can and should be employed; joined by 17 former military doctors and medics, they have filed a Petition for Enforcement with the Army surgeon general to put an end to the animal testing. Military officials argue that not only do they comply with animal welfare regulations, but that the animal testing provides an invaluable training opportunity. Jamie Campbell, a former U.S. Army medic, said the use of animals in medical training was "most definitely" an asset to him.

The photograph of an anonymous man standing down a tank in Tiananmen Square is one of the defining images of the twentieth century. On Thursday, the day before the 20th anniversary of the taking of that photograph, The New York Times published for the first time a new photo of the famous confrontation. The so-called “Tank Man” is only a small figure on the left side of the image, his posture erect and his back facing the lens of the camera in contrast to the men in the foreground who are facing the camera as they run away. On the right-hand side of the image, the tanks approach. “While working as a reporter in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, [photographer Terri Jones] shot many photographs and recorded several hours of video. It wasn’t until weeks afterwards, when he had returned to Japan, that he discovered the magnitude of what he had captured—an iconic moment in history from an entirely unique angle.”

Eckehard Schulz / AP Photo

Watch your back David Hasselhoff: The Germans have a new favorite American. President Obama. A whole slew of Obama-related merchandise has hit the German shelves, including a plush doll of Bo, the family’s Portuguese water dog. It’s quite cute. On the other end of the spectrum? “Obama-fingers”—frozen chicken fingers with curry sauce.

Already a cult figure, David Carradine may have punched his ticket to permanent urban legend status as details emerge about his untimely death in Thailand. According to Thai police, Carradine's death, originally thought to be a suicide, may in fact have been the accidental result of a fetish gone wrong. The 72 year-old actor was found hanging in his hotel with a rope tied around his neck—and his penis. "The two ropes were tied together," one officer told the Associated Press. "It is unclear whether he committed suicide or not or he died of suffocation or heart failure due to an orgasm." Adding to the theory that Carradine's death was not intentional: friends say the actor was happy and did not exhibit signs of suicidal depression.

He may not have won the race, but Lance Armstrong is thrilled. Hours after he finished twelfth in the Giro d'Italia in Rome, he welcomed his fourth child: a baby boy named Max. His girlfriend, Anna Hansen, gave birth to the 7 lb. 5 oz. baby—the couple's first child together. And Armstrong did what any proud dad would do: immediately Twitter the news. "Wassup, world?" he tweeted. "My name is Max Armstrong and I just arrived. My mommy is healthy and so am I!"

It pays to have friends in high places-literally. Michelle Obama announced today that she will replace her current chief of staff with long-time colleague and friend Susan Sher, making Sher's the third top-notch position in the East Wing held by friends of the first lady. Sher is currently an associate counsel to the president and will take the place of incumbent chief of staff Jackie Norris, who is moving on to become senior adviser of AmeriCorps. It's unclear why the first lady made the switch—perhaps the workings of the administration are not as smooth as they appear. Sher and Michelle Obama worked together at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Sher was Michelle's boss. She's also counted as a member of Michelle's inner circle traveling with her during the presidential campaign and socializing with her in the White House. All that may be well and good, but the question remains: Is she "in" enough to go on burger runs with the president?

These women bring new meaning to the term "criminal ring." Hardly the blushing brides, an increasing number of Chinese women are running scams designed to exploit the nation's surplus of young men. In rural towns like Hanzhong, women are getting married, collecting their dowries--and then heading for the hills. The region's influx of bachelors has driven up the "bride price." After being abandoned, one groom, however, was still naive: "I feel I can't hate her," he said. "She must have her own troubles."

All hail—or hate—the American president! The post-speech wraps on Obama's historic visit to Cairo have hit every note in the geopolitical and opinion-making spectrum, from speechwriters' raves to political thinkers' pans. NYT blog The Lede joins the fray with a novel approach: commentary from the Arab blogosphere, including Middle Easterners' chat room responses during the State Department's global livestream of the president's speech. Naturally, the comments shows impressive range—"WE WANT OBAMA TO RULE EGYPT" to "I need to study Hypocrisology in DC. They r good at it."—but most telling were the unexpected moments of outrage. A visiting professor at UC Berkeley who blogs under the name "Angry Arab" criticized Obama for praising King Abdullah's "wisdom": "What is next? Will he praise the public beheadings in the kingdom as example of ideal justice?" Several bloggers accused Obama of patronizing them: "I was offended by his lecturing to Muslims about Jewish suffering: as if the audience is entirely anti-Semitic. There are anti-Semites in the US and he does not lecture them."

Cattle: Mother Nature’s worst nightmare, apparently. Studies show that through their burps, cows emit between 200 and 400 pounds of methane gases each year, one of the most dangerous heat-trapping emission with ties to global warming, second only to carbon dioxide. In an effort on behalf of the cows to go green, farmers in Vermont are altering cattle feed to reduce methane emissions as part of an experiment conducted by yogurt company Stonyfield Farms. In mid-May, when results were last recorded, one herd showed an 18-percent drop in methane output. Milk production has stayed the same, and the cows’ coats are reportedly shinier and their breaths sweeter to boot. But since cows in the United States produce more milk than ever and fewer cows are needed to fill those milk jug quotas, the country’s methane emissions compared with those of less industrialized countries are low to begin with.

AP Photo

Just days before the 65th Anniversary of D-Day, the pilot that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki that ended World War II died at the age of 88. Charles Donald Albury, whose actions killed 40,000 people on Aug. 9, 1945--and thousands more due to radiation sickness--had maintained he felt no remorse. Japan surrendered five days later. He also flew the support plane for the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, which he described to Time magazine four years ago: "When Tibbets dropped the bomb, we dropped our instruments and made our left turn. Then this bright light hit us and the top of that mushroom cloud was the most terrifying, but also the most beautiful, thing you've ever seen in your life. Every color in the rainbow seemed to be coming out of it."

House Republicans spilled the beans on the details of a confidential intelligence meeting on Thursday, repeating a well-known refrain that they have evidence that interrogations prevented terrorist attacks. The loose-lipped congressmen slipped out of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearings—and went straight to the press. But the admissions have outraged Democrats, who say that Republicans shouldn't have shared details of the closed meetings. The GOP, of course, fired back: "Democrats weren't sure what they were going to get," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) of the meetings. "Now that they know what they've got, they don't want to talk about it."

Sweden has taken a card out of America's playbook: the Piratpartiet, or Pirate Party, may land its first seat in European Parliament on the strength of Internet campaigning. The three-year-old party doesn't even have headquarters, but it has catalyzed a youth movement online using issues of copyright laws and personal privacy. Turnout is historically low in these elections, and according to new polls, Swedes are still unsure of how they'll vote in Sunday's elections.

Oliver Multhaup / AP Photo

President Obama toured Buchenwald, a former Nazi concentration camp, on Friday and said he hoped Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would follow in his footsteps. “He should make his own visit,” Obama told NBC in an interview earlier Friday. “I have no patience for people who would deny history.” Earlier in the day, he called for peace in the Middle East with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “The United States can't force peace upon the parties,” he said, but America has “at least created the space, the atmosphere, in which talks can restart.” He called upon Israel to live up to its commitments in the so-called “Road Map” and for Palestinians to renounce violence. He also said that he would dispatch special envoy George J. Mitchell to the region next week.