In his weekly video address, Obama is pledging that the administration is acting aggressively to combat the spread of the H1N1 virus. But there may already be a glimmer of hope for those who have forgotten to wash their hands: The flu is beginning to look a little less threatening. In New York, where 50 cases have been reported, health officials say the flu has failed to move beyond a few schools. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the outbreak has been only “a relatively minor annoyance.” And in Mexico, where there have been 397 cases and 19 fatalities, officials have announced that the risk of swine flu spreading person to person is relatively low. Instead, the slow response to the disease–people are slow to get to the hospital, health workers were initially unsure of how to respond–may have made the disease seem more virulent than it really is. Said President Obama: "It may turn out that H1N1 runs its course like ordinary flus, in which case we will have prepared and we won't need all these preparations."

Twelve prison guards convicted for inmate abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail may be able to use the newly released Bush-era torture memos to their advantage. At the time when photographs of prisoner abuse in the Baghdad jail were made public in 2004, President Bush said the guards depicted were "bad apples" and that torture-related guilt did not go up the chain of command. The pictures— which showed the guards physically intimidating and sexually humiliating the prisoners —became central evidence in the military's trial of the guards, who received jail sentences and dishonorable discharges from service. Now that President Obama has released memos related to Bush's administration's internal discussion of interrogation tactics, the guards' lawyers are investigating whether their clients deserve some sort of parity. But is "we were following commands" reason enough for reversal? Charles Graner—the officer convicted of being the abuse scandal’s ringleader, currently halfway through his prison sentence—is appealing his conviction on the basis that the memos prove he did not mastermind Abu Ghraib’s systematic abuse. A lawyer for fellow convict Ivan "Chip" Frederick says the memos may not provide the guards with a defense, but could suggest that his client didn’t deserve a dishonorable dischrage: "What we know is that we had at the time a rogue government that created an environment where this sort of conduct was condoned, if not encouraged."

So, how's the government handling the economic crisis? Not bad, says Warren Buffett. The billionaire, speaking today at the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, defended the Obama administration's response to the recession, which he called "as close to a total meltdown as you can imagine." But he warned that the purchasing power of the dollar could fall as the government tries to pay for all of its rescue plans. One way or another, he said, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program and the $787 billion fiscal stimulus plan will have to be financed. With no indication that taxes will be raised, a sure way to pay for the spending will be to inflate the value of the dollar. "I haven't had my taxes raised," he said. "My guess is the ultimate price will be paid by a shrinkage of the value of the dollar." Buffett, 78, who has run Berkshire for 40 years, also said a new CEO would come from within the company.

A huge upset in Louisville yesterday, as underdog race horse Mine That Bird beat 50-1 odds and won the Kentucky Derby. Originally purchased for just $9,500, Mine That Bird had never won a graded race before. Liveblogging the race, The New York Times' The Rail blog blurted at the moment of the win: "Mine That Bird, 50-1 in morning line, wins!!!! An impossible upset!" Jockey Calvin Borel was "in tears" after his win, his second in three years.

Coach Joe DeCamillis of the Dallas Cowboys was among five people injured today when 64mph winds knocked the roof of the team's practice facility in. The collapse occurred during a severe thunderstorm on the second day of the Cowboys' rookie minicamp, reports the Associated Press. According to Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, 27 rookies participated in the weekend; in addition to DeCamillis, four team staff were injured. All players and coaches were accounted for, and there is no word yet on the exact nature of the five injured people's medical conditions.

It’s been a hard week for Republicans. Arlen Specter jumped ship, David Souter threw in the towel (read: any liberal Obama chooses will be a lock for the Supreme Court), and swine flu made pandemic preparedness naysayers feel pretty stupid. This moment may very well be the nadir in the Republican playbook, Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal. In order to evolve, the party must reevaluate, she writes. The GOP may never have an Obama, but until it does, it just has to do its best. As all good parties do, the GOP needs to let everyone in—it needs to be "expansive and summoning. It needs to say, 'Join me.'" Noonan writes: “All the metaphors here are tired, so let's stick with the big tent. A big tent is held up by tent poles. No poles, no tent. No poles, all you have is a big collapsed canvas.”

The Associated Press has a searing report from Myanmar—a year after deadly Cyclone Nargis, which killed nearly 140,000 people. It's almost monsoon season again there, but the country's villagers are unprepared. "How are we going to survive if another strong wind comes?" asks one woman, who survived last year's storm by clinging to a coconut tree. "It was so dark and the sound of the water and wind was so terrifying. We heard people calling for help." Now, she said, "We have no solutions and no help." The tidal surge that swept through the fertile Irrawaddy delta turned 2 million acres of rice paddies into salt-contaminated wastelands, and many survivors still lack drinking water after wells were befouled. "Shelter is probably the number one challenge or difficulty faced by hundreds of thousands of families across the delta," says a spokesman for the U.N.'s World Food Program.

Citibank is taking the Federal Reserve’s stress test—and it’s stressing. It seems the bank will have to raise $10 billion in new capital as a result of the tests. In a best-case scenario—if it can convince the government of its health—the banking giant may only need to scare up $500 million. However much it is told to raise, the bank will likely do so by broadening the securities held by private investors. On Friday, Citigroup sold its Japanese brokerage business, which boosts its tangible common equity to $2.5 billion. And now, of course, Citi officials are trying to squeeze the results of that sale into the government’s evaluations before it’s too late.

Despite some horrible reviews, Wolverine clawed its way to the top of the box office Friday, opening with a massive $35 million. Its midnight show on Friday made $5 million alone, and it looks like the movie, starring Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber, will scare up $90 million in total this weekend. A distant second was Matthew McConaughey's Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which brought in a far less impressive $6.5 million.

After a lull in violence, a string of recent suicide bombings has put citizens in Baghdad back on edge. April was the deadliest month in Iraq since last September, according to official figures, though the overall number of attacks is low compared to previous years. Playgrounds are emptying out, and cell phones are ringing more often than usual with concerned family members checking in. A series of headline-grabbing suicide attacks has restored a somber mood to the city. And while the anxiety is palpable, Iraqis are still confident that their army will be able to handle the scheduled U.S. military withdrawal on June 30. Said one mother: “I feel a shadow of danger on the horizon, that the old days are coming back again."

It appears that Republicans have almost no chance at stopping President Obama from replacing Supreme Court Justice David Souter with whomever he wants, but that doesn't mean they aren't going to try. A special team of GOP researchers is already combing through the records of potential nominees, hoping to find extreme legal writings and other closet-lurking skeletons, reports Politico. “I don’t think, given their majority, that we can stop them, but it’s a great opportunity for us to tie their incumbents to whatever crazy opinions or statements come to light,” said one senior Republican aide. Finding and airing potential nominees' dirty laundry could help Republicans gain an edge in the upcoming 2010 elections. Obama’s short-list is said to include Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York, Obama’s solicitor general Elena Kagan, federal judge Diane Wood, and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm.

We may think swine flu is spreading from pigs to people, but what about from people to pigs? Turns out no pigs have caught the virus yet, and pig farmers are worried that their herds will contract the disease from infected humans. Pig pens around the country are in a state of lockdown, with extremely limited access to outsiders. Veterinarians are warning farmers to keep an eye on pigs with "coughing, runny nose, fever and a reduction in feed intake.” Said the chief vet for National Pork Producers: "If humans give it to pigs, we don't have things like Tamiflu for pigs. We don't have antivirals. We have no treatment other than to give them aspirin.”

Rande Gerber, supermodel Cindy Crawford’s husband of 11 years, is being sued for sexual harassment by two former employees. One woman says that while she was working at Gerber's Moonstone Lounge in San Diego in 2008, he made repeated attempts to kiss her and tried to reach up her skirt. A spokesperson for Gerber counters: “These allegations were previously investigated and shown to be baseless. This lawsuit has no merit.”

Some of the twelve Abu Ghraib prison guards found guilty of abuse will appeal on the grounds that they were wrongly convicted and used as scapegoats by the Bush Administration. The guards believe that the recent CIA memos show that Bush officials set them up and then sat back while they went on trial. Their lawyers will argue that the convicted guards could never have invented such torture techniques as stress positions or waterboarding on their own and that they were officially ordered to torture prisoners.

Another Bush-era case out the window: The administration’s case against two pro-Israel lobbyists accused of espionage has been dropped by Attorney General Eric Holder. The two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee were accused of obtaining classified government information and feeding it to reporters, and the Department of Justice's request will put an end to a five-year legal battle. The ex-Aipac lobbyists may sue the government to recover legal costs, which are around $10 million. They are free to go now, but many law enforcement officials say they are disappointed to see the case dropped. According to one Justice Department official, "The judge had made so many adverse rulings that this was inevitable, but it grates on me.”

With Bernie Madoff locked away, it looks like money manager Stanley Chais is next to blame. Chais, who has suffered "ruinous" losses from the Ponzi scheme, was a close friend of Madoff and— the real giveaway—the first entry on his company speed dial. Now, Madoff’s court-appointed trustee is suing Chais for $1 billion to pay claims from thousands of other victims. Chais maintains that he was a victim of the Ponzi scheme just like everyone else. Because he enjoyed such high rates of return–between 40 and 300 percent–during his years of investing with Madoff, some think there is no way Chais wasn’t in on the crime.

Well, at least they tried, or something? The New York Times reports that the Obama administration “is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself.” The first public moves could come as soon as next week with filings to military judges amending the Bush administration system to include more legal protections for detainees. “Officials who work on the Guantánamo issue say administration lawyers have become concerned that they would face significant obstacles to trying some terrorism suspects in federal courts. Judges might make it difficult to prosecute detainees who were subjected to brutal treatment or for prosecutors to use hearsay evidence gathered by intelligence agencies.”

Scarlett Johansson has said she’d prefer directing to acting, but it looks like she shouldn’t plan on trading places just yet: A segment she directed for the film New York, I Love You was cut after it was found “unwatchable.” Says one source, “it was really bad.” The producer insists, however, that it was cut not because it was bad but rather it did not fit in with the other segments of the film—Johansson’s was in black and white and the story did not involve an interpersonal relationship. It did, however, star Kevin Bacon.

Alleged sleeper agent Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri's guilty plea indicates the relatively low-tech world of Al Qaeda terror plotting post-September 11. The plea document shows how in 2001, Al Qaeda embraced simple strategies like computer search engines, pre-paid calling cards, and public phones to plot attacks. Alleged Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed used a free Hotmail account—HOR70@hotmail.com—to communicate with other terror operatives. The plea states that al-Marri, who was held for five years as an “enemy combatant” without charges, researched cyanide gas on the Internet, and used software to cover his tracks. He also marked locations of major dams, tunnels and waterways in a U.S. almanac, and prosecutors say Al Qaeda was planning to attack those sites with cyanide gas.

When Chip Saltsman, Michael Steele's old rival for the RNC chair, distributed a CD with the song "Barack the Magic Negro" on it, Steele lashed out in January. “It doesn’t help at all,” he said at the time. “Absolutely, it reinforces a negative stereotype of the party.” Now that Steele heads up the Republican Party, has he changed his tune? While hosting a radio show on Friday, Steele laughed along with a caller who called President Obama a "magic negro." The caller continued: "Even when things go wrong, he still manages to come out smelling like a rose." Steele said, "Well, yeah." And thus ends the most politically incorrect statement of the week.

A Texas-sized task: The Times of London reports that next month scientists from San Francisco will map, explore, retrieve, and recycle a shifting continent of garbage in the Pacific Ocean that is twice the size of Texas. “The toxic soup of refuse was discovered in 1997 when Charles Moore, an oceanographer, decided to travel through the centre of the North Pacific gyre (a vortex or circular ocean current). Navigators usually avoid oceanic gyres because persistent high-pressure systems — also known as the doldrums — lack the winds and currents to benefit sailors. Mr Moore found bottle caps, plastic bags and polystyrene floating with tiny plastic chips. Worn down by sunlight and waves, discarded plastic disintegrates into smaller pieces. Suspended under the surface, these tiny fragments are invisible to ships and satellites trying to map the plastic continent, but in subsequent trawls Mr Moore discovered that the chips outnumbered plankton by six to one.” In June, the ship Kaisei will attempt to remove some of the refuse with a specialized net.

One sign the bank stress-test results won’t be pretty: The banks have fought—and won—to delay their release. They won’t come out until next Thursday now, as both Citigroup and Bank of America objected to the findings and are trying to convince the government they need less or even no capital. Even with their fight, however, the findings are leaking: “The results are expected to show that the banks must raise possibly $150 billion or more in fresh capital,” writes Reuters. Citigroup may need up to $10 billion in new capital—grounds, possibly, for bailout number four—while Bank of America may need to convert $45 billion of government preferred shares to common equity.