Cheat Sheet
The Best In Brief
Please register to manage your email preferences and comment on the site.
Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has agreed to take President Obama up on his offer to have a beer with Sgt James Crowley, who arrested him earlier this week, at the White House. "I am hopeful that my experience will lead to greater sensitivity to issues of racial profiling in the criminal justice system. It is time for all of us to move on, and to assess what we can learn from this experience," Gates wrote in an email to the Boston Globe. Obama said in a surprise appearance on Friday that Gates and Crowley were both "decent people" and should have "a beer here in the White House." He then called both men to invite them personally. Obama earlier caught heat from police and others when he said Crowley "acted stupidly" when arresting Gates in his own home. He dialed back on those comments Friday after igniting a fiery national debate about race, saying he should have “calibrated those words differently.”
Don't listen to Harry Reid: The House will indeed vote on health-care reform before the August recess, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told NPR on Friday morning. While he said that a final product of health reform is only likely to come by the end of the year, Emanuel said that after meetings with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House leaders, "their intention is to go next week and she is working toward that goal." And though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday, "It's better to get a product that's based on quality and thoughtfulness than on trying to just get something through," Emanuel insists that the summer months should be useful for Congress to "work out and iron out differences." He added: "having a deadline focuses the mind."
Defying the recommendations of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other international leaders, ousted President Manuel Zelaya stepped across the border into Honduras Friday, vowing to reclaim his post. Wearing his trademark white cowboy hat, Zelaya walked up to a sign reading "Welcome to Honduras" and "smiled to cheering supporters at the remote mountain pass surrounded by banana trees," the Associated Press reports. He stopped a few steps in, however, saying he was in talks with military officials to let him reunite with his family in the country. "I've spoken to the colonel and he told me I could not cross the border," Zelaya said. "I told him I could cross." Meanwhile, Zelaya's supporters clashed with soldiers and police after officials ordered everyone off the streets along the 600-mile border with Nicaragua. International leaders have feared Zelaya's return will lead to bloodshed, but the leader said he had no choice after diplomatic negotiations failed.
Who—not what—killed Michael Jackson? Jackson's toxicology results are expected next week and the cause of death will "almost certainly" be a homicide, law enforcement sources tell TMZ. There is reportedly "clear evidence" that natural causes of death have been ruled out, and the coroner is expected to announce that Jackson was indeed killed. The LAPD has reportedly been investigating Jackson's death as a homicide for weeks. There's evidence that Propofol, a strong, intravenous anesthetic, may have contributed to his tragic end. Dr. Conrad Murray, whose Houston office was raided on Wednesday, is thought to have prescribed the drug and is now a leading suspect in the case.
Was CNN president Jon Klein hoping for an off-screen Face Off with host Lou Dobbs? Klein sent "Lou Dobbs Tonight" staffers an email on Thursday saying that the controversy surrounding the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate—one of Dobbs' pet topics of late—is a "dead" story. In the email, Klein elaborated that CNN researchers had determined that Hawaiian officials tossed out paper documents in 2001—thus, Obama's long-form birth certificate no longer exists and a shorter certificate of live birth that has been made public is the official record. "It seems to definitively answer the question," he continued. On Friday, however, Klein softened his tone, saying that he wasn't ordering the staff to drop the story. "He's got more than 30 years as a television journalist, and I trust him, as I trust all our reporters and anchors, to exercise their judgment as various stories evolve," Klein said of Dobbs. Meanwhile, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a major civil rights group, has asked Klein to take Dobbs off the air for his role in perpetuating the conspiracy theory.
While former Vice President Dick Cheney could only "muster a sinister looking grin" on trips abroad, current VP Joe Biden seems to really be enjoying himself, the BBC reports. He "just never stops smiling," the British press point out, even as "he shook the hands of a never-ending stream of Ukrainian and Georgian politicians. And it looked genuine—not the usual diplomatic grab and grin." He's also showed sincere enthusiasm while playing the role of tourist on his trip to Eastern Europe, calling Ukrainian women "the most beautiful in the world." Following in the footsteps of Teddy Roosevelt, who famously defined American diplomacy in the words "speak softly and carry a big stick," Biden seems to have his own doctrine: "smile broadly and give them a prod." Amid all the pleasantries, Biden has issued a tough message, encouraging the leaders of Georgia to increase transparency, and the Ukraine to focus on shoring up the support of its people to join NATO.
On the first day of Secret Service boot camp, this year's two dozen recruits were greeted with the following welcome speech: "Sometimes trainees pass out in the bathroom, so develop a buddy system among yourselves.” So it goes in Secret Service training, according to an article in the Washington Post that offers a rare glimpse into the making of the country’s premiere bodyguards. Presidents typically receive 3,000 threats a year, and Obama is outpacing the average. "If we make a mistake, it's going to be devastating for the country,” says current director Mark Sullivan. “We're not going to let the country down." Recruits train for 28 weeks on, essentially, a set—complete with fake colonial-style houses, a mock airport, and a facade-laden main street. But it's not your typical small town: “All day and many nights, explosions rock presidential candidates at the pizzeria...Behind every mailbox, lamppost and flowering bush, a killer possibly squats, racking his AK.” The recruits are taught to use whatever (legal) means necessary to fend off attackers: "You can hit them with your car, stab them with a big pin,” says a trainer.
One reality TV show about raising eight plus children really wasn't enough. Camera-loving Nadya Suleman, a.k.a. Octomom, has reportedly signed up each of her 14 kids to star in a series of their own. The deal was inked with Eyewitness, a European production company whose TV credits include the classic Breaking Bonaduce as well as The Biggest Loser. The contracts, which are awaiting a judge's approval, guarantee that the kids will collectively earn about $250,000 over three years—though 15 percent of their earnings will be stored in a "Coogan Trust Account," as required by California law, which can only be accessed once the children turn 18 or become legally emancipated. The show is set to begin filming September 1.
Governor Sarah Palin's shock resignation may have changed her national image, but not in the way she planned. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, Palin may be moving from polarizing to outright unpopular. A majority of Americans—53 percent—view her negatively, while only 40 percent see her in positive terms, the lowest scores she has recorded since she was chosen as John McCain's running mate. Other responses weren't particularly encouraging either. 57 percent of Americans—including nearly 40 percent of Republicans—said Palin doesn't understand complex issues. 54 percent say Palin is not a strong leader, versus 40 percent who do. President Obama, by contrast, is viewed as a strong leader by 71 percent of respondents in the same poll.
The hordes of fantasy-loving geeks who've swarmed this year's Com-Con convention in San Diego grew even larger Thursday. The stars of New Moon, the highly anticipated Twilight sequel, were in the house, posing for photos and dishing about their upcoming film. Most notably, the cast revealed that Edward Cullen, the hunky vampire played by Robert Pattinson in Twilight, didn't have much of a role in the book-version of New Moon, but the film's director, Chris Weitz, decided there needed to be more of the heartthrob in the film. Pattinson’s now inserted throughout in a series of "hallucination" sequences, the cast says. While in the book, Bella, played by Kristen Stewart, hears Cullen's voice, in the movie, she sees him, too. "It's more effective," Stewart says. The cast also unveiled a new scene where actor Taylor Lautner's Jacob Black teaches Stewart's Bella to ride a dirt bike.
The U.S. major who refused to deploy to Afghanistan because he believed Barack Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen isn’t alone. Sen. John McCain employed a staffer to investigate a “birther” lawsuit that alleged Obama was not an American citizen during the campaign. The staffer, who spoke to The Washington Independent anonymously, said he was responsible for “gauging its chance of success.” McCain also fell under fire during the campaign because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. The lawyer explained that the conversation about Obama's birther lawsuit “was along the lines of, ‘This is idiotic, but explain to me why.'” He continued: “I looked at whether the lawsuit was going to be dismissed. I said yes.” According to Trevor Potter, who served as general counsel to McCain, the team discovered proof that Obama was born in Hawaii, such as a certificate by the state’s Department of Health and a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which, he said, “would be very difficult to invent or plan 47 years in advance.”
For the first time in decades, Chinese officials are actively encouraging married couples to start making babies. Under the current “one-child” policy, instated in 1979 to curve China’s booming population, urban parents who are both only children are allowed to have two offspring, and rural couples are allowed a second child if the first is a girl. Officials in Shanghai are now encouraging the 7,300 eligible couples to have both children to help relieve the pressure on Shanghai’s ageing population. By 2050, China is projected to have just 1.6 working-age adults for every person aged 60 and over, a shortfall made worse by China’s under-funded state pension system. Over 20 percent of Shanghai inhabitants are over 60 years old.
The writing was on the wall, it seems, for Bernie Madoff: He's been a "liar and a cheat from the day (he) was born," the New York Post writes, according to a soon-to-be-released book by celebrity biographer Jerry Oppenheimer, Madoff with Money. "Bernie showed his con-man colors as early as high school, when he held an English class enthralled with an oral book report—one that he made up on the spot out of whole cloth," Oppenheimer told the paper. Other juicy tidbits? Madoff was a "serial Casanova," forced to pay hush money to at least one female employee, and one of Madoff's early Wall Street mentors was reportedly tied to the Chicago mob. Also, the book will likely end on a cliffhanger: Oppenheimer says the case is far from over, as "the Russian mob, the Israeli mob and people in high and powerful places" are being investigated.
President Obama attempted to put an end to the controversy over his “stupidly” comment by picking up the phone. Obama hosted a press conference on Friday afternoon to announce that he called Sgt. James Crowley, the officer who arrested Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.—and who the president said “acted stupidly.” The president said that he regretted giving “an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department and Sgt. Crowley specifically,” and that “I could have calibrated those words differently.” However, he said that “I continue to believe based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction.” The president also discussed inviting Crowley and Gates over for a beer.
Forty-four people—including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen, and five rabbis—were arrested Thursday for participation in a vast money-laundering ring that extended from Deal, N.J. and Brooklyn, N.Y. to as far as Israel and Switzerland. It all began when a philanthropist and real estate developer, Solomon Dwek, himself charged once with money-laundering, became a federal informant, and led investigators into two massive networks: that of the rabbis of the Syrian Jewish community and another between public officials in cities like Jersey City and Hoboken. Dwek told his targets that he was trying to conceal his assets, and many accepted checks from him, deducted a fee, and then returned the rest to him in cash—once in an Apple Jacks cereal box stuffed with $97,000. Over $3 million was laundered for Dwek since 2007. To approach the public officials, Dwek posed as a developer building high-rises and took money out of the trunk of his car to bribe them. Among the officials arrested is Peter J. Cammarano III, the 32-year-old mayor of Hoboken who took office this month and is charged with taking $15,000 in cash. Another official, Assemblyman Daniel M. Van Pelt, who runs the Department of Environmental Protection, is charged with accepting money to help Dwek obtain environmental permits. In the Jewish communities, one man, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, is accused of soliciting people to give their kidneys for $10,000—and then selling them for $160,000.
It was an unlikely location for a Cold War showdown: Vice President Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev in the model kitchen of a "typical American house" at the 1959 American exhibition in Moscow. William Safire—who worked as a press agent for the company that built the home at the time (before going on to write speeches for Nixon)—remembers the meeting in Friday's New York Times. As much as Nixon tried to be the congenial guest, Khrushchev was relentlessly abrasive and aggressive. But when talk drifted to war, Nixon suddenly firmed up, scolding the Russian leader for what he said were irresponsibly threatening remarks. In the brief moment of Nixon's superiority, a photo was snapped of him jabbing Khrushchev with his finger, definitively—and inaccurately—summing up the meeting to the public.
In the latest update from the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was announced that 302 people have died from the pandemic swine flu in the U.S, but that the virus is so widespread that health officers are giving up on the official count. 43,771 cases have been confirmed in the U.S alone, with the WHO reporting that 800 people worldwide have died from the H1N1 strain in the last two months (although testing for the illness is difficult and expensive, suggesting that millions may have been infected). A vaccine is currently being tested, with hopes that will be given alongside seasonal influenza vaccines.
He's cute, he's furry, but can the 65-year-old Smokey Bear stay relevant? Smokey Bear—not Smokey the Bear—was created in 1944 to protect the nation's wood, a valuable war material. His original message, "Only you can prevent forest fires," has since been tweaked to "Only you can prevent wildfires," to encompass fires outside of the woods. But as wildfires have ravaged California, how can Smokey, who represents a $1 million-a-year industry, evolve with the times? A new campaign shows Smokey morphing into a human body to admonish a smoker who puts a cigarette out in the brush. Said the ad's creator: "We don't want people to think of him as a 65-year-old bear. We want him to be seen as a very cool bear."
President Obama is unlike many Democrats when it comes to religion. He is exceptionally overt about his religious practice, and recently revealed to ABC News that since becoming president, his Christian faith has deepened. In fact, the president detailed one less obvious utilization of his infamous BlackBerry handheld: he receives daily devotionals from his Faith and Neighborhoods Initiatives director, Joshua DuBois. Obama cited the magnitude and numerousness of issues that face America's executive, saying that he has been constantly humbled. "I had a habit of praying every night before I go to bed. I pray all the time now," he told ABC. "Because I've got a lot of stuff on my plate and I need guidance all the time."
Winning his 15th Grand Slam title at Wimbledon this year wasn't the best day of Roger Federer's life. Instead, it was Thursday—when the tennis pro's wife, Mirka, gave birth to twin girls, Myla Rose and Charlene Riva, late in Switzerland. Federer said that the girls "are both healthy, and along with their mother they are doing great." He continued, "This is the best day of our lives."
In the latest chapter of a military debate that's raged since Vietnam, the Pentagon will no longer release figures on how many militants have been killed battling U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The move reflects a shift in strategy in Afghanistan where, like Iraq, soldiers are now concentrating on protecting civilian populations rather than searching and destroying insurgents. "We send the wrong message if all we talk about is the number of insurgents killed. It doesn't demonstrate anything about whether we have made progress," Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, who decided on the new policy, told the Los Angeles Times. During the Vietnam War, the military was notorious for inflating Vietcong body counts in order to boost perceptions of success in that conflict.
Four people are dead in western Maryland after a commercial helicopter slammed into an interstate highway late Thursday night. The cause of the accident is unclear: witnesses say they saw bright arcs of electricity shooting out as the helicopter struck a power line, but the aircraft may already have been on the way towards crashing before the collision. Low visibility caused by fog might also have been a factor in the accident. No cars were hit when the helicopter crashed into the highway.
He may be in the midst of a health-care push, but President Obama is drawing a hard line when it comes to education, too: he's using $4 billion in federal aid—and the threat of withholding it—to force changes in schools around the country. Since taking office, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has met with state officials to lay down the law, telling them they have to embrace reforms like creating more charter schools and establishing performance pay for teachers or risk losing out on federal support. On Friday, Obama announces "Race to the Top," a competition for $4.35 billion in grants—a $100 million increase in education funding—to incentivize national schools. In an interview with The Washington Post, Obama laid out his plan to let "Race to the Top" motivate under-performing schools, saying that he is "counting on the fact that, ultimately, this is an incentive, this is a challenge for people who do want to change."
If there's one thing Americans have learned about the Bush administration, it's that they really did not like testing for dangerous chemicals. First it was lower Manhattan after 9/11, where reports accused the White House of hiding toxins in the air, and now it's the Gulf Coast, where a federal inspector general's report claims that FEMA ignored formaldehyde problems in emergency housing-units for hurricane refugees then exaggerated efforts to confront the problem. The 80-page report portrays FEMA as slow to action, incompetent, and obsessed with its public image, writing that the agency only was moved to action after media scrutiny "grew to disturbing levels" and even delayed testing to come up with a PR strategy first. "Because of the delays, the test results may have underestimated the extent of formaldehyde exposure that residents had experienced," the report says.
Congressional Republicans may have tacked to the right since President Obama's election, but one candidate hoping to join them in D.C. is taking a drastically different approach. Running to replace Republican Rep. John McHugh, New York Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava managed to win her party's nomination despite being pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and supportive of organized labor. "Now more than ever, people are looking for leadership and independence, and for people that don't follow what the party leaders tell them to do," Scozzafava told Politico. While Scozzafava's positions might be necessary to win in the increasingly Democratic region, she's already drawing fire from conservatives outside the state. "This is what Republican suicide looks like," wrote Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.com. The site is currently threatening to support the Democratic nominee in protest.
Could this be the secret of Goldman Sachs' success? Traders at that bank and others financial institutions are employing high-frequency computers, some similar to the machines used by the New York Stock Exchange, to execute deals faster than anyone else—and are pulling big profits as a result. High-frequency trading, which now accounts for half of all trades, uses algorithms to scan trends, change strategies, and make orders in milliseconds. It can outsmart competitors, and the SEC is investigating certain elements of the trading, which critics allege can be used to manipulate prices. Though Goldman Sachs admits to using the technology, the bank insists that it hasn't created an unfair advantage. Says one NYSE Euronext employee: "It's become a technological arms race."
Senate Democrats said they'll miss the August health-care overhaul deadline—but House Democrats are still chugging away, and they're open to a last-resort loophole to get the bill to the floor: bypassing its last, stalling committee, the panel on Energy and Commerce. The Hill reports that, while moderate Blue Dog Democrats in Energy and Commerce drag their feet and keep the bill off the floor, Democratic leadership is now threatening to bypass the committee altogether, if they don't resolve their disagreements fast. "All options will be on the table," said Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson (D-CT), who noted that "the preferable course" would be to go through the committee. Speaker Nancy Pelosi demurred on the possibility of bypassing the energy committee, and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) says progress is still being made. One committee member, California's Rep. Jane Harman, said members were asked to clear their calendars for Saturday, suggesting that the bill could clear its final committee soon.
Should he stay or should he go? Ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya left the Nicaraguan capital Managua—where he has been staying since his exile on June 28—with a "caravan of supporters" on Thursday and plans to return home to Honduras, reports The New York Times. The regime that overthrew Zelaya has vowed to arrest him if he enters his home country again. Nonetheless, Zelaya said his large body of supporters should save him: "I hope when the armed forces see the people [traveling with me] they will lower their rifles." The coup that ousted Zelaya drew international scorn, including the condemnation of the Council of the Americas and President Obama, who said the coup was "not legal."
Partner Sites: Expedia| Hotels| Hotwire| Urbanspoon| Vimeo
