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Air-to-air combat just isn't what it used to be. The Senate eliminated increased funding for seven F-22 Raptors Tuesday, saying the purchase of the high-tech jets was unnecessary use of $1.75 billion. The measure passed 58-40 in the Senate, not nearly as close as many expected, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The pro-jet crowd had become a mix of Democrats and Republicans who argued that rejecting the purchase would cause a loss of jobs. Senator John McCain sided with President Obama, arguing that the jets amounted to frivolous spending. "We're not saying the F-22 is not a good aircraft. We're saying it's time to end production," McCain said. A Republican senator argued on the floor that the Chinese government was amassing a powerful air force, and that the U.S. needed to secure it's dominance in the skies. Air combat is nonexistent in Afghanistan, and was very rare in Iraq.
With rumors circulating that his job is on the line, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said that the economic downturn is slowing, though the labor market "remains weak." The Fed chief did not paint a rosy picture, however, saying that the housing market remains weak due to falling home prices, unemployment and tight credit, all of which undermine "the recent stabilization in household spending." Still, Bernanke said the necessary tools are at his disposal to prevent a sudden rise in inflation—a common concern among those with stakes in American debt, like the Chinese government. "We are confident that we have the tools to raise interest rates when that becomes necessary to achieve our objectives of maximum employment and price stability," Bernanke said in prepared comments laden with economic jargon to the House Committee on Financial Services.
Another day, another political push from the White House over health-care reform. President Obama spoke from the Rose Garden Tuesday, addressing the delays in passing a sweeping health care reform bill. Blaming the GOP for their political motives, Obama said that Republicans "who openly announce their intentions to block this reform" would "rather score political points" than confront the "broken" system that leaves 46 million Americans uninsured. Obama urged politicians not to "play the politics of the moment instead of putting the interests of the people first," and urged them to adopt a new strategy of cooperation. His remarks come just one day after Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele called Obama's plan "an experiment" and agreed that this could be President Obama's Waterloo.
Is Mike Huckabee planning a broadcast in East Jerusalem this weekend? New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind told Haaretz that the Fox News host and former presidential hopeful would tape an episode of his show from a disputed Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territory. Dozens of U.S. activists, he said, would participate in the mission to show their allegiance to Irving Moskowitz, a supporter of the disputed Israeli construction project. But a spokesperson for Fox News said that Hikind—who is an activist in right-wing Jewish causes—had been misinformed and that Huckabee has no plans of broadcasting from the area in East Jerusalem.
This is no way to go about the business of "progressing Alaska." A legal fund set up by Sarah Palin to cope with her mounting legal debts may have been a violation of ethics laws, an independent investigator has found. The investigator's report alleges that the fund amounts to "unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts." The report does not recommend further legal procedures however, instead only advising that Palin does not accept money from the fund. The Associated Press reports that the total amount of donations the fund received is unclear, though a fundraising drive over the Internet last month earned $130,000. Palin has said she owes at least $500,000 in legal fees. The man who filed the ethics complaint regarding the fund noted that Palin has not directly addressed it. "When ethics complaints are dismissed, she's quick to publicly respond, but this one, she's sitting on," he said.
Looks like Henry Louis Gates Jr. will be using his first-hand experience with the "rotten" criminal justice system in a project examining how cops treat black men and women differently from their white counterparts. "I hope to make a documentary about racial profiling for PBS. [The idea] had never crossed my mind but it has now," Gates told The Washington Post in an exclusive interview. The Harvard academic also gives new details on his arrest. He said he repeatedly demanded that one officer give his name, and that when he stepped outside of his house and demanded the information from six other cops, they arrested him. Gates time in the slammer was a traumatic experience. "I have mild claustrophobia. The jail cell was very claustrophobic," Gates said. The city of Cambridge and the police department, in full damage-control mode, released a joint statement calling the arrest "regrettable and unfortunate" and said the criminal charges would be dropped.
Somewhere, somehow, there is always something lower than rock bottom: Fox News host Neil Cavuto ran a segment Tuesday entitled “Is Surgeon General Appointee Too Fat?” suggesting that Dr. Regina Benjamin doesn’t fit the bill for a national role model. “The bottom line is, Dr. Benjamin is 50 pounds overweight—she’s obese,” said guest commentator Michael Karolchyk, CEO of the Anti-Gym in Denver, which emphasizes getting clients in shape for sex. “Would you want your head of the Fed Reserve to be a guy who lives in a box under the highway because he understands the plight of poor people?” Karolchyk, sporting a shirt with the phrase “No Chubbies” emblazoned on its front, argued that Benjamin is “lazy” and makes poor food choices, making her an ineligible candidate for the title of surgeon general. For his part, Cavuto doubted the accuracy of Karolchyk’s claims. “If she’s 50-60 pounds overweight, then I’m on a separate planet,” he said.
To the dismay of millions, what is said to be the longest solar eclipse of the 21st century could be seen in India and China on Wednesday, but was not visible to most parts of the countries due to thick cloud coverage. The village of Taregna, India, deemed by scientists as the clearest place to watch the eclipse, had been overrun for the past week with scientists and tourists who were hoping to track the bizarre changes in the atmosphere and animal behavior brought on by eclipses, marking a boom in the local economy. The eclipse became visible in the eastern city of Gauhati, and reached its peak Wednesday morning at about 6:20 a.m. local time. Over the course of six minutes and 39 seconds, it moved northeast to Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and China. Unfortunately for almost everyone, there will not be a longer eclipse until 2132.
It turns out those eager fans waiting in line outside Apple stores, hungry for the latest gadget to drop, equal three things: money, money, money. For its third quarter, Apple posted an extraordinary 15 percent jump in profits, even beating Wall Street’s expectations, with a jump of $1.35 a share, or $1.23 billion on its revenue of $8.34 billion. Lower-priced laptops and the extremely popular iPhone 3GS catalyzed the company’s success, even during the recession. “We're making our most innovative products ever and our customers are responding," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "We're thrilled to have sold over 5.2 million iPhones during the quarter and users have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications from our App Store in its first year."
If Susan Boyle was struck by fame like a "wrecking ball," does that mean Simon Cowell was the crane operator? In an interview with The Today Show set to air Wednesday, Boyle says that she struggled to cope with "the impact" of becoming a worldwide sensation overnight. "I guess I had to get my head around it," Boyle said. And the singer certainly had her rough moments. After losing in the Britain's Got Talent final, she had an infamous freak-out in a London hotel and also had to check into a clinic for exhaustion. But Boyle will not be fading back into obscurity—she is currently working on an album with Cowell, and despite all her difficulties, says, "I don't want it to end."
Vice President Joseph Biden has a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease. While visiting the capital of the Ukraine, Kiev, Biden was reportedly overheard saying to the mayor, "I cannot believe that a Frenchman visiting Kiev went back home and told his colleagues he discovered something and didn't say he discovered the most beautiful women in the world. That's my observation." According to the pool report, Biden then reiterated his point: "It's certain you have so many beautiful women." Biden shared his thoughts over two Cokes in a pub.
The Apollo 11 crew would be proud: A day after the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing, an amateur astronomer in Australia spotted an Earth-sized hole in Jupiter that was apparently made early Tuesday morning. The "dark scar" was brought to the attention of NASA, which confirmed the impact. Scientists guess that it could have been caused by a comet. The man who made the discovery, Anthony Wesley, is a 44-year-old computer programmer who devotes about 20 hours a week to his hobby of "observing and photographing Jupiter." He spotted the impact using a "backyard 14.5-inch reflecting telescope." Wesley nearly missed the discovery because he was distracted by golfer Tom Watson's run in the British Open.
Hot on the heels of former president Mohammad Khatami's indirect criticism of Ayatollah Khamenei, reformist protesters took to the streets Monday and clashed with riot police. The BBC reports that the protests turned violent, and that "a number" of protesters were arrested. Though the Iranian government has gone to great lengths to put down any signs of an uprising, protests still occasionally flare up. Meanwhile, Roger Cohen, writing for the New York Times, says that the Iranian people are furious that they have become a global laughing stock due to the shamelessly fraudulent elections.
President Obama may wear his suits well, but he’s got news for you: “I’m a little frumpy,” he told Meredith Vieira on the Today show Tuesday. The president answered questions about his fashion sense after he sported worn-out jeans on the mound when he threw the first pitch at the major league All-Star Game last week. “Those jeans are comfortable,” he said, adding that he hates to shop. If you’re looking for fashion in the White House, Obama pointed to the first lady. “Here’s my attitude,” he said, “Michelle, she looks fabulous… For people who want a president to look great in tight jeans, I’m sorry."
For the first time since assaulting singer Rihanna last year, Chris Brown apologized publicly in a video on his official Web site. "I have told Rihanna countless times, and I am telling you today, that I am truly sorry and that I wasn't able to handle the situation both differently and better," the 20-year-old Brown said. He was sentenced to five years probation after pleading guilty to assault. Brown is not allowed to be within 50 yards of Rihanna (10 at music industry events) or contact her until his sentencing in August, when the judge may lower the restrictions at Rihanna's request. "I have let a lot of people down, and I realize that," he says. "Nobody is more disappointed in me than I am." He said there are no excuses for his actions, but brought up his tumultuous childhood and asked for forgiveness. "As many of you know, I grew up in a home where there was domestic violence and I saw firsthand what uncontrolled rage can do," he said.
It’s no Hogwarts, but it’s not bad: Harry Potter star Emma Watson has enrolled at Brown University, according to People. Watson has been rumored to be attending several schools, including Yale, Columbia, and Cambridge, but she confirmed her choice of Brown to Paste magazine last week: "I am [going to university in the Fall] – to Brown, which is an Ivy League establishment in the U.S.A. I've got a place there to read literature."
What kind of lessons can we learn here? During the Bush era, when abstinence education received increased funding, reports of teen pregnancy and STDs "rose sharply," according to a new report from the CDC. Birth rates had been in decline since 1991, but that trend has reversed in more than half the states since 2005, according to the Guardian. The report also finds that syphilis has increased by 50 percent among adolescent girls and that gonorrhea and AIDS among teens are on the rise as well. Abstinence-education advocates say the problem is not the failure of their curriculum, but that they need more money to promote their "no sex before marriage" message.
Baby boomers are the "most selfish generation in American history," Dennis Byrne writes in the Chicago Tribune Tuesday. With our true national debt skyrocketing past $60 trillion, Byrne says, boomers are thanking past generations by saddling the future with a mountain of unpaid bills: "Our gift to future generations is the shaft.” According to Byrne, the boomers' consequences-be-damned approach to debt should not be blamed on Obama but on the president's "own version of Karl Rove," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who "unveils the essence of this administration: its...lust for power."
The results of Iran's June 12 election remain contested, but one thing has emerged clearly from the conflict: the widening grip of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on all facets of Iranian society, The New York Times reports. Founded 30 years ago as a militia force that could serve Islamic revolutionary leaders, the group has now extended its presence into all parts of Iranian life. Its aggressive response to dissent following the recent election is leading political analysts to describe the event as a military coup. According to experts, the corps now manages everything from the country's nuclear program to the manufacturing of cars. Its status has only increased with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power.
Us Weekly editor-in-chief Janice Min will step down from her position at the top of the masthead when her contract expires at the end of the month. Min led the celebrity weekly for seven years—from Brad & Jen to Jon & Kate—helping to more than double the magazine's leadership. She told The New York Times that she hasn't planned her next move. "As long as I'm here, I can't really even begin to think about what I'm going to do next," Min said. "But I'm 39 and I'd like to have another career. I felt like I'd done every possible thing at Us Weekly to make it successful."
California legislators have finally reached a compromise on how to bring their state back from the brink of economic catastrophe—but don't expect dancing in the streets: "There isn't a whole lot of good news in this budget," one prominent state politician said of the deal to close the $23.6 billion deficit. Indeed, major cuts for the elderly and the poor are likely on the way. It appears that the budget accord "will reshape government in California," the Los Angeles Times reports, as many services offered by the state will be scaled back. The changes are extensive, and a few can be expected: Large numbers of state prisoners having their sentences reduced, oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast, and state workers taking more unpaid days off. A small consolation: No broad-based tax increases. Thanks, Arnold.
The Obama administration’s long-term plan to close Guantánamo Bay and deal with war-on-terror detainees will miss its deadline this week, but has Newsweek learned what the report—which a source says will take a “few months”—will say anyway? “Three administration officials familiar with the process said the detention task force, which is jointly run by aides to Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, did agree that the Obama administration should continue to claim the right to hold some Guantánamo inmates indefinitely as ‘combatants’ under the ‘laws of war,’ without charging them either in criminal courts or in military commissions. Three administration officials familiar with the process said the detention task force, which is jointly run by aides to Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, did agree that the Obama administration should continue to claim the right to hold some Guantánamo inmates indefinitely as ‘combatants’ under the ‘laws of war,’ without charging them either in criminal courts or in military commissions.”
It's meet-and-greet time in the Obama White House, where Barack Obama will host on Tuesday the Democratic members on the House Energy and Commerce Committee—the only one of three House committees weighing health-care legislation that has yet to pass anything. Monday night, the committee worked past midnight, discussing numerous amendments and turning back Republican attempts to alter the bill. The biggest challenge for Committee Chairman Henry Waxman seems not to be Republican recalcitrance but conservative members of his own party who oppose the legislation. Obama continues to make his case in front of the public as well. Appearing on PBS's NewsHour last night he said, "I want this done now. Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town."
At $90 a day, it’s certainly not the Ritz, but the New York state legislature introduced a ‘Madoff’ bill on Monday that will require rich federal and state inmates to pay for the cost of their imprisonments. The bill would work with a sliding tab: inmates with more than $200,000 would have to foot the entire bill, while those with less than $40,000 would pay nothing. "Far too often, taxpayers are stuck with the bill for criminals who have extensive personal wealth waiting for them once they are discharged from our state's penal system," said assemblyman Jim Tedisco. New York spends about $1 billion per year on prisoners.
On November 4, the world's leaders were up all night, awaiting the results of the American presidential election. Silvio Berlusconi couldn't sleep either. "We didn't sleep a wink," an escort said about the evening in recordings of conversations between her and the Italian prime minister released Monday. Berlusconi, according to the recordings, suggested that the next time he and the escort, Patrizia D'Addario, get together, he would involve another girlfriend. "He said that he has a girlfriend and would like to have me lick this girlfriend," D'Addario says in one conversation. The Berlusconi camp has vigorously denied that he has ever paid for sex—a claim that the recordings, however salacious, do not contradict.
Rupert Murdoch's son James, the head of News International, supported the decision to settle for $1.2 million when it was revealed that the News of the World, a paper owned by the Murdoch family, employed someone who hacked into the phone of the head of England's professional soccer league. "James Murdoch was apprised of the situation and agreed with our recommendation to settle," the News of the World editor told parliament Tuesday. "It was an agreed collective decision." Those testifying from News of the World did not respond to a question about whether media mogul Rupert Murdoch knew of the agreement. The former editor of News of the World, now the Conservative party's communications director, said that no other journalists were aware of the phone hacking. He told MPs that his own phone had been hacked by the private investigator.
The charges of disorderly conduct against Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr., who was arrested Wednesday on the porch of his own home, have officially been dropped, the Boston Globe reports. On the heels of outrage and accusations of racism, the City of Cambridge police department has released a statement staying that that the incident was "regrettable and unfortunate," adding that "this incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of Professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department. All parties agree that this is a just resolution to an unfortunate set of circumstances."
Life's a picnic for Sarah Palin. And, as usual, she's inviting all of the national media in on the fun. The former governor will transfer power to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell at the annual Fairbanks picnic on July 26, when 5,000 people and a swarm of media are expected to descend on Pioneer Park. Or at least that's the plan—only C-SPAN has RVSP'd to the event so far. And Palin's only the opening act: after Palin officially resigns her post in front of the riverboat S.S. Nenana—the "Queen of the Yukon"—the event will culminate with a Square Dance in the Fairbanks gazebo for a cake and punch reception. Visitors can also participate in the bathtub race and take in the Red Green River Regatta, "an entertaining river parade of watercraft made with duct tape," according to the Fairbanks Daily News Miner.
After three weeks of silence, it's time for Mark Sanford to get back to politics. The South Carolina governor said today that he is ready to move past the media frenzy surrounding his admission of having a yearlong extramarital affair with Maria Belen Chapur, an Argentine he's referred to as his "soul mate." "I made a mistake in life," he said. "I've apologized for that mistake. I've said all I'm going to say on that one. I'm moving forward, and I think the people of South Carolina are ready to do the same," Sanford said. He has been spending time with his family, including a trip last week with his wife, Jenny, to an undisclosed location. Although his scandal remains fodder for late-night TV banter, Sanford said he is determined to not let that affect the final 18 months of his second term as governor. "Life and the choices that we make begin each day anew," Sanford said. "It's as much as a distraction as you want to make it. I'm going to move on with my life. The question is, will you?...It is time to move on, and that is what I intend to do."
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