The U.S. Census Bureau has dropped Acorn, one of the nation’s largest community organizations, as a partner for publicizing the 2010 Census after hidden-camera videos showed four employees giving tax advice on running a brothel, The Wall Street Journal reports. The employees addressed a man posing as an aspiring politician and a woman who said she was his girlfriend and a prostitute. The filmmaker is reported to be 25-year-old James O’Keefe, an activist for conservative issues. He told Acorn workers in both Baltimore and Washington D.C. offices that he planned to use his girlfriend’s prostitution profits to fund his campaign. The workers, who’ve been fired, told the couple to set up a company so they could prove they had the income to buy a house where the brothel could be run. "We will continue to do what we've said we'll do, which is encourage people in communities to participate fully in the Census," said Acorn’s deputy national director.

A multimillion-dollar collection of art from icon Andy Warhol has been stolen from a West Los Angeles home. A housekeeper for art collector Richard L. Weisman noticed on Sept. 3 that several pieces were missing, though police say there was no sign of forced entry and nothing else in the home was disturbed. The thief left several Warhol works untouched. Weisman left the house the day before the housekeeper made the discovery. An anonymous source has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the paintings. Weisman was a friend of Warhol's and commissioned the silk screen Athletes series in the late 1970s.

Larry Summers, the president's chief economic adviser, said Friday that the nation's unemployment rate will most likely stay "unacceptably high" for years. “The level of unemployment is unacceptably high,” Summers told reporters. “And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.” Summers still praised his boss's $787 billion stimulus package, saying it helped stave off even greater economic suffering. The unemployment rate is at a 26-year high of 9.7 percent, and 6.9 million jobs have been lost in the recession overall. High unemployment has the potential to trip up Democrats in 2010, who hope to claim the stimulus as a victory.

Members of both the left and the right have reached into their wallets in the aftermath of the "You lie!" comment. The challenger to Republican Congressman Joe Wilson has raised $1 million dollars in the 48 hours since Wilson shouted "You lie!" during the president's speech, while Wilson has raised $700,000. Wilson now trails his Democratic challenger, Rob Miller, by one point, according to Public Policy Polling. Miller, who has twice run against Wilson and lost, now leads 44 to 43 percent. Only 29 percent of respondents approved of Wilson’s actions, while 62 percent disapproved.

Annie Leibovitz has been saved from her debts—at least for now. The famed photographer—who was drowning in a $24 million loan she couldn’t pay off without selling her catalogue and homes—was granted a loan extension Friday. The deadline for the loans with Art Capital, the lending agency, was originally set for Tuesday, but that came and went without news. It’s unclear how long the new reprieve is for, but Art Capital has also dropped its lawsuit against Leibovitz, which claimed she owed the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in overdue fees.

A day after Rep. Joe Wilson yelled "You lie!" during the president’s speech, the White House announced it will prevent illegal immigrants from purchasing health coverage through a mandatory verification process. Hospitals will still be required to provide emergency treatment to illegal immigrants, the White House added. The Obama administration is determined to show illegal immigrants will not benefit from his proposed overhaul, a hot-button issue that could potentially sway public support. A draft of the House bill would allow illegal immigrants to purchase coverage but would prevent them from obtaining government subsidies,
while the senators in the “Gang of Six” Senate Finance Committee are revisiting their bill to make sure they are prohibiting illegal aliens from receiving subsidized insurance. A White House spokesman said anyone who wants to purchase coverage will have to show verification of their immigration status in the new proposed insurance marketplace.

First lady Michelle Obama will travel to Denmark in October to lobby for her hometown to host the 2016 Olympic Games, the White House announced. The first lady might be the only Obama in attendance since the president will be focusing on getting his health-care plan passed. Chicago is in tight competition with Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, and Tokyo to host the Summer Games. The presence of world leaders has been key to securing votes in the past, as when Tony Blair landed the 2012 Games for Britain and Vladimir Putin landed the 2014 Winter Games. But Michelle brings star power of her own. She was born and raised on Chicago's South Side, near where the Olympic stadium would be, and has highlighted the importance of bringing opportunities to underserved communities. Top Obama adviser and Chicago native Valerie Jarrett will also travel to Copenhagen.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs trounced CNN for erroneously reporting that shots were fired during a Coast Guard exercise on the Potomac River Friday morning, saying the reports, not the military exercise, caused unnecessary panic. Gibbs said he wouldn’t second-guess the Coast Guard’s decision to hold a training exercise on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, which briefly shut down departing flights from Washington National Airport. He added that the Coast Guard was holding a news conference to explain the exercise. "Hopefully CNN will go,” Gibbs said. "My only caution would be that before we report things like this, checking would be good." He later got into a tense exchange with CNN reporter Elaine Quijano. The Coast Guard said they simulated the sound of gunfire on an open police-radio frequency, but that no shots were fired. Neither the White House, the Coast Guard, nor CNN has apologized for the snafu, which is being compared to the New York photo-op flyover that set off a panic in April.

World, get to know him before it’s too late: Your new oldest person is 114-year-old Kama Chinen of Japan, after 115-year-old Gertrude Baines died on Friday. Baines liked bacon and fried chicken, but never drank, smoke, or fooled around. She was born in 1894, when Grover Cleveland was president. “'I'm glad I'm here. I don't care if I live a hundred more,'' she said after voting for Barack Obama for president. ''I enjoy nothing but eating and sleeping.” She spent her final days watching her favorite TV show— The Jerry Springer Show.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) isn’t just a buffoon: He’s also a hypocrite. His Web site says he “is passionate about stopping government-run health care,” but Wilson himself receives government-run health care. As a retired Army National Guard colonel with four sons in the military, he and his family enjoy free military Medicare coverage, known as Tricare. Tricare is a single-payer system and covers 9.5 million people. Though Wilson enjoys Tricare, he has voted 11 times against health care for veterans in eight years.

A man with a loaded handgun attempted to board a Delta flight at LaGuardia Airport on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks before a security officer spotted the weapon. Michael Williams, 40, was reportedly arrested while trying to catch a flight to Atlanta. Officials say it doesn't seem like he was planning to use the weapon to threaten anyone. The 9/11 hijackers sneaked boxcutters onto the planes to take over the planes and fly them into the Twin Towers. In the past year, officials at LaGuardia have confiscated hundreds of weapons, including two firearms and 65 boxcutters.

Annie Marie Le, 24, a pharmacology grad student at Yale University, has disappeared days before her wedding. Le's roommate reported her missing after she failed to return home on Tuesday. Tuesday morning, Le used her university swipe card to enter the lab where she worked. Police are searching the lab's surveillance video to see if Le left when the building was evacuated later that day. Le left behind a purse with her cell phone, credit cards, and money. According to her fiance's roommate, Le and Columbia University grad student Jonathan Widawsky were an extremely happy couple, and Le was not the type to get wedding jitters.

Ready your mute button: Washington Whispers is reporting that Fran Drscher, the former star of The Nanny, is in negotiations with Fox News for a talk show. Figures that the conservative network, when searching for a liberal—Drescher is a Democrat—would choose one who is nearly impossible to listen to. Drescher has served in the State Department as a public diplomacy envoy, and is also in talks with MSNBC.

The age of pristine tweets is over. Twitter has changed its terms of service to allow ads on the site, Reuters reports. The microblogging site boasts 45 million monthly users and has been seeking ways to make money on the site. Analysts are split on whether the move is a good one. Skeptics say companies won't want to juxtapose their brands with unpredictable and potentially offensive content, while the optimistic point out that users get hooked on social-networking sites and burn a lot of time on them, making sites like Twitter attractive to advertisers, particularly if preferences are tracked.

A year ago, members of a group of 9/11 responders sent a DVD to Barack Obama asking for help. One member of the group had just died of 9/11-linked leukemia, while a former firefighter member died of cancer just last month. They asked Obama to help Congress pass the $8.4 billion compensation bill to help ailing Sept. 11 workers. The group got a note from the White House that said "thank you for your kind gift," last week, a year after they delivered the plea. House representatives blame the bill's slow pace on the GOP, which has denied there was a problem. But even if the House votes on the bill this November, the Senate has barely started on the issue, The New York Daily News reports. President Obama has affirmed his commitment to helping sick Sept. 11 responders.

It's the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and events in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Penn. are marking the somber occasion. In Washington, the Obamas held a moment of silence at the White House at 8:46 a.m., when the first plane hit the World Trade Center eight years ago. At a Pentagon ceremony, the president placed a wreath in honor of the 184 victims of the crash there. "Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this barbaric act and who plot against us still," Obama said. "In defense of our nation, we will never waver." In New York, Vice President Biden placed flowers at the Ground Zero memorial site. And in Shanksville, Colin Powell and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar are on tap for a ceremony for the 33 passengers and seven crew members who died trying to wrest control of United Airlines Flight 93 from terrorists.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hinted Friday that he is planning to retake his old job as president in 2012. Speaking to scholars and journalists in Moscow, Putin said that he and the current president, Dmitry Medvedev, will make a joint decision over who will hold the position next. "Was there any competition in 2007? No. Then we won't have this in 2012," Putin said. "We will agree because we are people of one stamp. We will take all these things into account and then decide." If Putin took over again in 2012, he would be allowed under the new constitution to stay in power for two six-year terms, meaning he could be in office until 2024.

The idea of a stranger plunging a syringe filled with god-knows-what into their flesh has panicked many Chinese. The attacks began in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where ethnic violence between Han Chinese and Uighurs killed 200 people in July. Officials say that more than 600 people in Urumqi have reported being stabbed, although many incidents turned out to be mosquito bites, and more than 40 people have been detained in connection with the attacks. However, the attacks in Xinjiang spread outward from Urumqi, and they may have reached Beijing, where security is tight in anticipation of October 1's celebration of 60 years of Communist Party rule. Officials have ordered Web sites to delete discussions and mentions of syringe stabbings in Beijing. In China's restrictive media culture, where propaganda authorities monitor content, the Internet has become an important source of breaking news.

An ultimatum on the Hill: House Democrats plan to vote early next week to formally admonish Republican Rep. Joe Wilson for yelling “You lie!” at President Obama unless he apologizes on the House floor, according to the Associated Press. A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the decision was reached at a meeting Thursday. Wilson’s office says that the congressman considers his original apology, offered after the incident on Wednesday, sufficient.

Today is a rainy day indeed. The man who satisfied the primordial human need to know whether to wear a sweater or bring a raincoat has died at age 82. The Wall Street Journal reports that Frank Batten, founder of the Weather Channel, felt his programming served "basic human needs rather than trendy interests." Batten started out in newspapers, eventually owning several and acquiring television stations. In 1982 he founded the Weather Channel, which began as the brainchild of Good Morning America's weatherman John Coleman. Initially, the channel faltered as it failed to generate advertiser interest, but finally, cable operators agreed to pay a monthly fee of three to five cents per viewer to prevent the channel from going bankrupt and scuttling interest rates for operators. Battan retired in 1990, and went on to give multimillion-dollar endowments to the University of Virginia, Virginia Wesleyan College, and Old Dominion.

It was the kind of funeral he would have loved. Writer Dominick Dunne's farewell was as studded with celebrities as some of his best writing. Richard Gere, Julianna Margulies, Liev Schreiber, and Dana Delaney turned out, as did designer Diane von Furstenberg, while honorary pallbearers included composer Stephen Sondheim, current Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, and playwright Mart Crowley. Father Daniel Morrissey said Dunne spent nine years planning his funeral, which began with his favorite Cole Porter Song "Anything Goes," down to the last detail. Dunne will be remembered for chronicling the lives of the rich and famous, and also for his foray into crime journalism, sparked by the killing of his daughter, Dominique Dunne, in 1982.

If the debate over health care didn't end Obama's honeymoon with his own party, surely Afghanistan will do it. The New York Times reports that Carl Levin, the leading Senate Democrat on military matters, opposes sending more troops to Afghanistan until it's exhausted other options, such as equipping and speeding up training of Afghan forces. Nancy Pelosi also said that the president would face opposition if he tried to fulfill top Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's request for more troops. Levin and Pelosi's stance underscores the skepticism Obama is facing from inside the Democratic Party as the war in Afghanistan loses popular support. The White House looks likely to delay making a call on whether to send more troops for weeks or longer, a strategy that has the political advantage of delaying further fragmenting the party during such a sensitive time for health-care reform.

All eyes are on the Senate Finance Committee this week, where a comprehensive plan floated by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) is making the rounds in the bipartisan Gang of Six that's been slowly negotiating legislation. Baucus has pledged to advance a bill with or without Republican support, and hopes for an agreement with any GOP senator beyond blue-stater Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have typically been regarded by observers as all but dead. Nonetheless, the other Republican members of the gang are offering detailed critiques of the Baucus plan, suggesting that talks might still have life yet. The biggest disputes are over the cost, with Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) trying to lower its price tag to significantly below the president's $900 billion request. They also are trying to include language barring the use of private insurance subsidies to pay for abortions and more explicit restrictions on both legal and illegal immigrants' receiving health care subsidies. Despite their list of objections, none of them cut into the basic framework of the proposal, which includes a universal mandate, a health-insurance exchange, and money to help poor and middle class Americans afford coverage.

Morgan Stanley is facing the end of an era as John J. Mack steps down as chief. Relative newcomer James P. Gorman, the man behind a quiet strategy to lure ordinary investors to the bank's brokerage business, will replace him. The New York Times reports that in 2005, cheers erupted when Mack returned to the firm to save the soul of the bank. During the intervening years, he presided over record profits and losses, although overall Morgan Stanley's share price lost nearly a third of its value, diminishing his legacy. The changeover from Mack to Gorman, whom Mack hand-picked for the job, will occur on January 1. Mack will remain chairman.

A former FBI informant, Elie Assaad, has told ABC News that the agency blew a chance to stop 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta. Assaad says he first became suspicious of Atta in early 2001, when he infiltrated a small mosque outside of Miami. Assaad now says he’s a “million percent positive” the 9/11 attacks could have been stopped if the FBI had pursued his lead on Atta, but that the agency instead told him to focus on two smaller targets whose cases were easier to crack. "I was right, I was 100 percent right," Assaad says. When he learned that Atta was a 9/11 hijacker, Assaad says he was “very upset, angry” and that he cried.

As it turns out, celebrities will debase themselves for the amusement of Vogue editor Anna Wintour, whose Fashion's Night Out last night was designed to get consumers into stores to boost the flagging fashion industry. Oscar de la Renta performed a song and dance at his own store, accompanied by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Barbara Walters; the Olsen twins served drinks at Bergdorf Goodman's bar; and Robert Verdi beat Donna Karan in a fashion-trivia contest. A savvy Bronx native who attended Wintour's appearance at the Queens Center Mall's Macy's (where Mayor Bloomberg, Diane von Furstenberg, and Kate Hudson accompanied her) said of the editor, "She knows that she has to restore her image," adding, "This is her reaching out to the bottom level, to the masses, like kissing babies."

Osama bin Laden may still be at large, but his flock, it seems, is getting smaller: Under heavy pressures in Pakistan, al Qaeda is having difficulty attracting new recruits, according to The Guardian. The organization is increasingly relying on its affiliates in Yemen and North Africa, which are disorganized and have much less popular support. Apparently, attacks by CIA drones and disruptions of al Qaeda communications have lowered morale in al Qaeda’s “core,” which has been reduced to a senior leadership of six to eight men. The Guardian also reports that al Qaeda’s relationship with the Taliban is souring, increasing the chances of acquiring intelligence that will lead to bin Laden’s capture.

Despite Glenn Beck’s best attempt to dig up dirt on Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law professor won Senate confirmation Thursday to be President Obama’s director of regulatory affairs. Sunstein, who is known for blending behavioral economics with politics, drew dissent from both the left and the right wings: Environmentalists worried that Sunstein’s cost-benefit approaches would hurt their field, whereas Jon Kyl (R-AZ) accused Sunstein of supporting preferential treatment for young people and wanting to give animals lawyers. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) threw his support behind Sunstein, calling him “fair and not anti-business,” and his moderate voice won the day: Sunstein’s confirmation vote was 57 to 40.

Scientists are predicting that New York City's eventual spectacular demise may be less Ghostbusters and more Waterworld. Sea levels will likely rise faster near metro NYC than other port cities, new forecasts show, thanks to local effects of gravity, water density, and ocean currents. As scientists try to more accurately predict the future, Gotham has become a testing ground for engineering new ways for coastal cities to adapt to climate change. The city is uniquely vulnerable—unlike Amsterdam or New Orleans, New York was not built below sea level, so the threat is not to buildings but to its vast underground infrastructure. And even now the city is perpetually battling the Atlantic; millions of gallons are pumped out of the subways every day, and the right hurricane conditions could flood 100 square miles of New York. But if the ocean were to rise 20 inches, the Big Apple "would look like Venice."

More red ink at the Crimson: Harvard and Yale announced Thursday that their endowments—the nation’s two largest—each shrunk by 30 percent for the year ended June 30, for a combined $17.8 billion in losses. Consequently, the schools are cutting budgets and delaying staff hirings and campus expansions. Though other elite universities like Princeton and Stanford are expected to perform just as poorly, most colleges were not hit nearly as badly, as Harvard and Yale had adopted a unique investment strategy that capitalized on assets not available to most investors. After stellar results over the past decade, the colleges’ investments in private equity were pummeled this past year. The plain-vanilla approach that most colleges followed—60 percent of holdings in stocks and 40 percent in bonds—would have generated a loss of about 13 percent.

Is Ahmadinejad going soft? Iran has proposed a global system for eliminating nuclear weapons and made an offer for some diplomatic talks. The moves were met with skepticism but not total dismissal from the U.S. State Department, which notes that Iran still refuses to discuss ending its own uranium-enrichment program. The top political aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave the proposal to the U.N. Security Council and Germany Wednesday, and also offered to help Western countries deal with terrorism, Afghanistan, and other issues. The aide noted Tehran's proposal was similar to one President Barack Obama made in April. A State Department spokesman explained, "It's not really responsive to our greatest concern, which is obviously Iran's nuclear program… We'll be looking to see how ready Iran is to actually engage, and we will be testing that willingness to engage in the next few weeks."

Legendary drug lord Pablo Escobar was gunned down in 1993, but his spectacular excesses have left Colombia with plenty of non-cocaine related problems, namely an infestation of giant hippos. Escobar imported the creatures to his estate along with a variety of non-native animals like zebras, giraffes, and kangaroos, leaving behind environmental issues as their numbers have expanded over the years through breeding. To counter the prospect of hippos spreading throughout the area and wreaking havoc on the local habitat, teams of hunts are being dispatched to take out the gigantic beasts, at least 28 of whom are believed to live on the estate. While some are upset over the harsh fate, experts say it may be necessary. "Colombia is absolute paradise for hippos, with its climate, vegetation and no natural predators," a consultant for the Frankfurt Zoological Society in Tanzania, Peter Morkel, told The New York Times. "But as much as I love hippos, they are an alien species and extremely dangerous to people who disrupt them."

New stats on the recession's impact on poverty over the last year are out and, not surprisingly, they're looking grim. According to Census Bureau numbers released on Thursday, the poverty rate jumped to an 11-year high in 2008, incomes fell across the board, and the ranks of the uninsured rose to 46.3 million, the Los Angeles Times reports. Experts expect the poverty rate, which climbed from 12.5 percent to 13.2 percent from 2007 to 2008, to keep climbing this year and next. Meanwhile, the average unemployment rate of 8.9 percent for the year, compared with 5.8 percent in 2008, is also expected to climb. With 3 million lost jobs since the beginning of 2009, the numbers of uninsured are expected to climb even higher than the currently estimated 50 million, as people lose their employee health plans.

Europe's most celebrated anticommunist leader was apparently less than enthused by the fall of the Berlin Wall, fearing that a united Germany might eventually produce another Hitler. A new book by former West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl recalls their clashes over the issue days after the historic event. "I told her that not even Margaret Thatcher could stop the people from deciding its own fate. She was beside herself with rage and said, 'That's how you see it! That's how you see it!,'" Kohl writes, adding that Thatcher stamped her feet in protest. In 1990, Thatcher convened a group of historians to help her evaluate her concerns that Germany could rise again. "There is no danger of a Fourth Reich," Professor Norman Stone recalled telling Thatcher, the London Times reports. "Even if there had been, the low German birth rate would mean that the new Wehrmacht would consist of old-age pensioners."