The Pentagon is searching computers used by Pfc. Bradley Manning to see if they can find proof that he divulged the thousands of military documents just leaked by whiste-blower site WikiLeaks. Although Manning was stationed in Iraq, the intelligence analyst may still have had access to materials related to the war in Afghanistan. "He is someone we are looking at closely," said a Pentagon spokesman. Manning was charged in July with leaking classified information to an “unauthorized source,” presumably WikiLeaks, for a video that showed the killing of two Reuters journalists in Iraq by Apache helicopters in 2007. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, refused to reveal his “courageous source,” and would only say, "There is no allegation as far as we can determine" that the leak is "connected to Bradley Manning." However, Assange has “committed funds” to Manning’s legal defense.

The pressure’s on: New economic sanctions have been approved by Canada and the 27-nation European Union as part of an international effort to get Iran to resume talks about its nuclear program. The U.N. Security Council imposed economic restrictions on Iran in early June, but with these measures the E.U. and Canada join the U.S. in instituting more strict controls. Tehran threatened retaliation, claiming the U.S. is forcing the issue. "Anybody who participates in the U.S. scenario will be considered a hostile country," said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday. British Foreign Secretary William Hague was undaunted, saying, “I hope Iran takes from this message that European nations are open to negotiations about the nuclear program, but if they don't respond, we will intensify the pressure."

Amending campaign-finance laws, a hot button issue in light of the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United v. FEC decision this year (one that allowed corporations, unions, and nonprofits to contribute to campaigns under free-speech rights), is stirring up debate yet again. The Senate is scheduled to vote on commencing debate on a new bill introduced by Charles Schumer (D-NY), called the DISCLOSE Act ("Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections"). Democrats contend that corporate spending in campaigns gives corporations and foreign influences a greater stake in the political sphere, while Republicans argue that campaign-finance laws infringe on political free speech. Obama blasted GOP dissenters, saying "We shouldn't be playing these political games," adding that "A vote to oppose these... reforms is nothing more than a vote to allow corporate interests to take over" elections. The legislation would require the disclosure of donor lists by unions, corporations, and nonprofits and force political ads to run disclaimers of ownership. The bill, however, exempts such lobbyist powerhouses as the NRA and the AARP—fine print that makes several Democratic senators, like California's Dianne Feinstein and New Jersey's Frank Lautenberg, unhappy.

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Monday that Michel Germaneau, a 78-year-old French aid worker kidnapped by al Qaeda in April, has been beheaded in the Sahara following a failed rescue attempt. The leader of al Qaeda’s North African branch said that Germaneau was killed in retaliation for the “treacherous operation” that left six militants dead. Al Qaeda had threatened to kill Germaneau by Monday if France didn’t free jailed members in the area. "Convinced he was condemned to a certain death, we had the duty to make this effort to pull him free from his captors," Sarkozy said in a public address in Paris on Monday. The same al Qaeda branch has been holding two Spanish aid workers hostage since November.

Among the many side effects of WikiLeaks’ exhaustive Afghanistan document leak, President Obama’s foreign-policy team is already facing scrutiny over their reaction to the incriminating revelations. Senator John Kerry, a top Democrat and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has already suggested a strategy review: “These policies are at a critical stage, and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent,” he said. The bright side, according to some administration officials, is that the leaks could be used as leverage to increase cooperation with Pakistan, whose role in aiding Afghan insurgents was illustrated to a shocking degree in many of the documents. Foremost, though, the White House must convince the electorate that the seemingly botched war is worth salvaging. “We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stressed on Monday.

They may not quite be sending him to Siberia, but it’s close. BP CEO Tony Hayward will step down in October, according to the BBC, but he won’t be leaving the company altogether: He’s going to take a non-executive position on the board of the firm’s Russian joint venture with TNK. Ironically enough, his replacement as BP’s CEO, American Robert Dudley, headed up the BP-TNK joint venture until 2008. Reuters says Hayward’s severance package will be worth at least $18 million.

Simon Cowell may not be the only American Idol vet on the outs. According to insiders, Nigel Lythgoe—who has not been secretive about his desire to recast the entire roster of judges—will revive his role as executive producer of American Idol. With Cowell's (voluntary) departure, top management has set its sights on shaking things up even further to resuscitate ratings. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Simon Fuller and Fox may do more than just bring in Lythgoe—they may do away with the entire judges’ panel. According to insiders, Lythgoe will continue to judge and executive produce Fox's So You Think You Can Dance.

Talk about standing by your client: Angry with a judge who'd imposed restrictions on his closing arguments, Rod Blagojevich's lawyer, Sam Adam, Jr., said he'd be "willing to go to jail" for contempt of court if it meant not following the judge's orders. Judge James B. Zagel dismissed the jury for the day after the clash, in which Adam complained that Zagel prohibited him from naming witnesses that prosecutors did not call in the defense's closing arguments—something the prosecution had been able to do. "Your honor, I have a man here that is fighting for his life," he said, to which the judge responded: "You will follow that order because if you don't follow that order, you will be in contempt of court." The judge has given Adam the evening to reconfigure his closing arguments in light of his "profound misunderstanding of legal rules." Adam said he is not sure whether he will issue closing for the defense.

Is Oliver Stone taking cues from the Mel Gibson school of self-sabotage? In an interview with the U.K.’s Times of London to promote his documentary South of the Border, Stone suggested that he was defending Adolf Hitler when he said, saying "Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein.” He continued, “German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support. Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people.” He also lambasted the “Jewish domination of the media,” and condemned Israel: "Israel has fucked up United States foreign policy for years." On Tuesday, after several Jewish organizations and the media branded Stone as an anti-Semite, Stone issued an apology that read, in part: “In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret. Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry."

Here’s a possible priority for the newly established Consumer Protection Bureau: A study released on Monday from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston confirms—and quantifies—that credit card-reward programs create, as the study states, “an implicit money transfer” to comparatively wealthy credit card users from those who pay with cash. In order to cope with consumers who rack up points by using plastic everywhere, merchants institute across-the-board price increases to cover the costs of accepting cards. As the researchers wrote in the report, “This retail price markup for all consumers results in credit card-paying consumers being subsidized by consumers who do not pay with credit cards.” The report concludes that households making less than $20,000 a year lose about $23 a year from the system, while those making $150,000 or more annually receive a subsidy of $756 every year. Put differently: The rich get $756 richer, the poor get $23 poorer.

The 92,000 classified documents about Afghanistan are just a drop in the bucket, if WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is to be believed. Giving his first speech since WikiLeaks published the documents on Sunday, Assange said the website has “several million files” that “concern every country in the world with a population over 1 million.” He also said that WikiLeaks would step up its publication of such materials, and wished for an “age of the whistleblower.” “Courage is contagious,” he said. “Sources are encouraged by the opportunities they see in front of them.”

Perhaps his song "If I Was President" was a harbinger of things to come: Singer and Croix-des-Bouquets native Wyclef Jean is considering a bid for Haiti's presidency to succeed René Préval, who cannot run for reelection. A statement signed by "the Jean family" emailed to reporters read, "Wyclef's commitment to his homeland and its youth is boundless, and he will remain its greatest supporter regardless of whether he is part of the government moving forward ... If and when a decision is made, media will be alerted immediately." While Jean has not been entirely explicit about his presidential ambitious, he has made it clear that he will be a part of Haiti's political life in attempting to galvanize its young voters. "Do I have political intentions? At this time no," he said in a recent interview. “But what I do have is a movement—it's called…'Face to Face'... The youth population... we are going to encourage them to vote." If he does run, he may have a tough time winning over voters' trust, in light of revelations this year that his Yele Haiti Foundation had been involved in shady financial dealings, and had even paid Jean to perform at fundraisers after the massive earthquake that devastated the poverty-stricken Caribbean nation.

Notorious “Bling Ring” member and star of E!’s Pretty Wild, Alexis Neiers, is talking about her recent stint behind bars next to inmate, Lindsay Lohan. Neiers was released from the Century Regional Correctional Facility in Lynwood, California on Friday after finishing up a 30-day term for burglarizing Orlando Bloom’s home. The reality TV star gave E! Online an exclusive interview and revealed how Lohan, who began her sentence at the jail last week, behaved upon entering. “Crying. She was crying,” Neiers said. “I could hear her.” Both Neiers and Lohan were in protective custody and therefore, didn’t interact directly; but Neiers said that Lohan appeared to be receiving special treatment. “She got to keep her extensions in and everything, which most people don’t, and the girls were like, ‘Ah, they had to take my weave out and cut it all out and,’ you know, stuff like that,” said Neiers. As for her own experience behind bars, Neiers said, “You feel violated and just uncomfortable… It’s scary.”

What do Lady Gaga, Eminem, and a reclusive order of Benedictine nuns have in common? They all share the same record label, Decca Records. The record company, which hopes to repeat the success it had after signing a group of Austrian monks in 2008, chose the French nuns out of 70 convents from around the world competing for the contract. Reportedly, the nuns are skilled in Gregorian chant, and the album's recording is to take place inside their convent in France. Of signing the deal, the Reverend Mother Abbess told The Independent, “At first we were worried it would affect out cloistered life, so we asked St. Joseph in prayer. Our prayers were answered, and we thought that this album would be a good thing if it touches people's lives and helps them find peace.”

Unable to get tickets to this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park production of The Merchant of Venice featuring Al Pacino? Cheer up: You’ll have a chance to see the play this fall and winter, when it moves to Broadway. The play will show at the Broadhurst Theater from October 19 through January 9.

President Obama’s promise of change doesn’t apply across the board: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, almost 10 percent above the Bush administration’s total for 2008. Company audits have risen even more sharply, quadrupling since Bush’s final year. The changes are the result of Obama’s attempt to walk an impossibly fine line: winning Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform while appeasing Democrats who voted for his campaign promise to help immigrants. There have also been changes in who is arrested and how. The administration has been performing employer audits rather than the workplace raids popular during the Bush administration, and targeting deportable immigrants who have unrelated criminal convictions while explicitly disregarding illegal immigrants who are pregnant, ill, or primary caretakers. According to ICE’s director, John Morton, nearly 50 percent of the people deported this fiscal year have a criminal conviction, from driving without a license and DUI to major felonies, an increase of over 36,000 from last year. But the right has been criticizing the administration for focusing only on immigrants with criminal records and leaving others unmolested, while the left says too many otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants are still being deported.

Here’s some shocking news for parents of young children: The Nap Nanny portable baby recliner, when used as a crib, reportedly led to the death of a 4-month-old girl in Royal Oak, Michigan, and now 30,000 units have been recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. According to the CPSC website, the baby was found strapped into her harness and was caught while hanging over the side of the recliner. The manufacturer, Baby Matters, and the commission know of other cases in which infants, mostly 5 months old and younger, have become trapped in the recliner, too. Consumers with a first-generation Nap Nanny, which sold for about $130, can receive an $80 coupon for a new Nap Nanny. What a deal!

Perhaps they admire his mendacity? The Republican National Committee has invited Andrew Breitbart, who was just caught last week disseminating the highly misleading footage of Shirley Sherrod that cost her her job, to a fundraising event in August. He’s not just any old guest, either: He and RNC Chairman Michael Steele are co-hosting the welcoming reception on August 12. The RNC confirmed to Talking Points Memo that the event is going on, but refused to comment on the guest list.

James Bond has a new challenge: Daniel Craig will star in David Fincher’s remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, based on the bestselling novel by Stieg Larsson. Craig will play journalist Mikael Blomkvist, and may reprise the role in sequels based on the other novels in the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. Lisbeth Salander, the female lead, has yet to be announced. Craig's filming schedule will be chock full, as he'll commence work on Tattoo on the heels of wrapping Cowboys and Aliens. Throw in the next Bond installment (filming TBD) and you've got one busy Brit.

A Spanish man who received the world’s first full-face transplant—it included jaw, nose, cheekbones, muscles, teeth, and eyelids—showed his new face for the first time on Monday. The 31-year-old man known as Oscar, who accidentally shot himself in the face five years ago, can eat soft foods, speak, and is expected to gain up to 90 percent of his facial functions. In fact, he had to shave a week after the operation due to beard growth. Earlier this month, French doctors performed a face transplant that included tear ducts.

It will be some time before we learn all there is to know from WikiLeaks’ dump of almost 92,000 classified documents about Afghanistan, but what have we learned so far? Joe Klein at Time says that the documents remind him of the Tet offensive—“the overall impact of this event is likely to make clear to a public, which has not been paying much attention, how futile the situation in Afghanistan is—and how utterly duplicitous our Pakistani ‘ally’ has been.” Amy Davidson at The New Yorker writes, “WikiLeaks has given us research materials for a history of the war in Afghanistan. To make full use of them, we will, again, have to think hard about what we are trying to learn: Is it what we are doing, day to day, on the ground in Afghanistan, and how we could do it better? Or what we are doing in Afghanistan at all?”

Brittany Murphy's mother, Sharon, is upset about reports saying the death of her daughter—and her daughter's husband, Simon Monjack—resulted from a toxic "black mold" found in the family's Hollywood home. "I have never been personally asked by the coroner or anyone from the Health Department to come and inspect my home for mold," Sharon Murphy told People magazine. "In the last eight months, I have been through the most unimaginable events, which no one could ever fathom. I have and will continue to be very cooperative and fully comply with any such request." A source at the Los Angeles County Health Department said that their office is not investigating, despite reports to the contrary. The official causes of Brittany Murphy and Simon Monjack's deaths—for now, at least—are pneumonia and anemia.

Sometimes the story is that there is no story. Trying to investigate Chelsea Clinton’s pre-wedding activities in Rhinebeck, New York, The New York Times was only met with stonewalling. Anyone involved in the wedding, from gift-bag suppliers to caterers, has signed a confidentiality agreement, The New York Times reports. This hasn’t kept journalists from descending on the town, and residents have been complaining to the police about trespassing reporters. Two Norwegian photographers have already been arrested for entering Astor Court, the presumed location of the wedding. Nevertheless, the Rhinebeck residents who aren’t sworn to secrecy have expressed excitement about the wedding and are optimistic that it will put the town in people’s minds as a possible wedding location or vacation destination. The Upstate New York town is dotted with farms and wineries and is the site of several celebrities’ weekend houses, including those of Liam Neeson and Annie Leibovitz.

No more summer lovin’ for designer Marc Jacobs and his longtime boyfriend Lorenzo Martone, who have called off their reported engagement. Martone, who had been dating Jacobs since 2008, announced the split on Twitter. “Thanks for t notes. yes, I saw t press today,” he tweeted. “We are not together, haven’t been in 2 months. And we will not comment on it. Sorry. We r fine.” Last week, Jacobs led many to speculate about the couple’s break up, when he told Vogue.com, in response to rumored future nuptials, “No, I am not getting married.”

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, get your cue cards ready. President Barack Obama will appear on The View on Thursday, the same day co-host Barbara Walters will return after having heart-valve replacement surgery in May. Obama appeared on the show during the '08 campaign—as did his wife, Michelle Obama, and his challenger, Sen. John McCain—but the show said in a statement this is the first time a sitting president will appear on a daytime talk show. Producers said the president and the hosts will address jobs, the economy, the disaster in the Gulf, and Obama’s family life at the White House. The show will tape Wednesday and air Thursday.

Get ready to hear one more take on the financial crisis: Britain's embattled former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is writing a book about the financial crash. "In writing my analysis of the financial crisis, I wanted to help explain how we got here, but more importantly to offer some recommendations as to how the next stage of globalization can be managed so that the economy works for people and not the other way around," Brown said. Meanwhile, Simon and Schuster's U.K. managing director and chief executive, Ian Chapman, said Brown's book will be "controversial." Brown reportedly has been writing thousands of words per day since leaving Number 10 Downing Street in May. The book has a reported release date of November, just two months after his predecessor, Tony Blair, publishes his own tome in September. Former Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has also written a book about Brown and Blair's duels over the economy.

Can we still call it a gas-guzzler? Ford debuted a new look for its Explorer today—a recession-friendly, fuel-efficient version of the first SUV. The new Explorer is built lower to the ground on a car platform instead of a truck one, making it more fuel efficient. It also boasts a V-6 engine (similar to a Toyota Camry), can get more miles per gas gallon, and has more safety features. Although the Explorer was the breakthrough SUV at its inception, sales have fallen by nearly 100,000 per year since 2000, and Ford hopes the new model will revitalize its brand. They’re certainly catering to a new kind of customer—the Explorer was first unveiled today on Facebook.

When BP meets Monday to formally decide its CEO's future, the company is expected to give Americans one of their own: BP’s managing director Bob Dudley is set to become the first Yankee to run the company when CEO Tony Hayward steps down later this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. Dudley, who joined the BP board in 2009 after working in Russia, is already experienced in cleaning up Hayward’s messes, as he was chosen to lead the Gulf cleanup after Hayward’s many gaffes. “Dudley's ascension underscores the critical importance of the U.S. to BP,” The Journal writes. The country represents up to 40 percent of BP’s business and much of its growth potential. The company hopes that an American CEO will be able to deal better with both the U.S. government and the local people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the spill.

Could a country as crazy as North Korea also soon have nuclear weapons? Weapons experts are claiming that Burma is developing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. The evidence includes hundreds of documents smuggled out of the country and photographs of machinery that can be used to build the weapons. The country is suspected of being part of a clandestine nuclear network that includes North Korea, Syria, Pakistan, and Iran. The U.S. State Department demanded last week that Burma disclose its nuclear inventory.

WikiLeaks published a government document earlier this year in which the United States government said it wanted to destroy the website’s “center of gravity” by attacking its credibility. Based on the website’s disclosure of nearly 92,000 classified documents in conjunction with The New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel, we think it’s safe to say the government’s effort failed. The big scoops appear to be that Pakistan’s spy services are aiding the Afghan insurgency; the Taliban has obtained heat-seeking missiles for shooting down aircraft; and secret U.S. commandos are working with a “capture/kill” list of 70 Taliban leaders. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange also said there appears to be evidence of war crimes in the documents. The leaks are believed to have come from Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was arrested in conjunction with an earlier leak. The New York Times says “Investigators now believe that Private Manning exploited a loophole in Defense Department security to copy thousands of files onto compact discs over a six-month period.” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange then made the documents accessible to the newspapers by giving them access to a password-protected tranche online. National Security Adviser James Jones has called the publication of the documents “irresponsible.”

The disappearance of two U.S. Navy sailors who got lost and drove into Taliban terrirtory on Friday appears to have ended very badly: A Taliban spokesman said they ambushed two sailors on Friday, killing one and capturing the other, when the two drove into a militant-controlled area outside Kabul. The spokesman said that a meeting of Taliban leaders will soon be called “to discuss the fate of the captured soldier." Meanwhile, though senior NATO officials are waiting to say what’s happened to the soldiers until they’ve figured out the details, they’ve dispatched troops by air, vehicle, and foot to search for the missing sailors and offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to their return. "We will do all we can, everything we can" to find the missing sailors, said U.S. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We have a large number of forces focused on the return of these two individuals." If the Taliban does indeed have the soldier captured, they’ll likely tout him as proof that the insurgency is winning, as they’ve done with Spc. Bergadahl, whom the Taliban captured last June.

Not all publicity is good publicity, apparently. Confronted with a New York Times profile of the Jersey Shore’s Snooki on ABC’s This Week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie slammed the MTV show, saying it "takes a bunch of New Yorkers, drops them at the Jersey shore, and tries to make America feel like this is New Jersey." The second season of the show begins this week. Thankfully for Christie, it takes place in Miami Beach.

Mad Men is back: Season Four premiered on Sunday night. The new season kicks off one year after where the previous one ended, with the employees of the new advertising firm Sterling Cooper Draper Price ensconced in a new office in the Time Life building. The episode was about the fallout from a disastrous interview Don Draper gives to AdvertisingAge, and his more broad struggles in the wake of his divorce from Betty. New York Magazine writes, “At the office, he looks the part, talking the talk — but he's not really getting new accounts. Being the face of the company adds new responsibilities. And as you may recall from last season, Bert Cooper wondered if Don had 'the stomach for the realities' of starting his own business. It seems like Don, despite his radical rhetoric, is still playing things "safe and comfortable" at the episode's outset, without the nerve to get "risky and rich." By the end, it seems like he's got nothing left to lose—and that could make him dangerous.”

One day, Lake Delhi was filled with summer revelers swimming and tubing. The next, it was a mere fraction of what it used to be, after a privately owned dam that had created the Iowa lake in the 1920s broke down from heavy rain, sending its water cascading away. Witnesses estimate that the lake receded at a pace of six inches per minute, almost emptying overnight. “It just makes your jaw drop,” said one local resident. “The lake’s gone.” Denizens are hoping to seek aid from FEMA to rebuild the dam and deal with flooding costs, though a majority of the properties around the nine-mile-long lake are vacation homes, which don’t always qualify for rebuilding funds. Without the dam, whose return is uncertain, Iowans are robbed not only of a lake that has been providing summer entertainment for almost a century, but also a significant source of property values.

A job we're glad we don't have: Irving Picard, the trustee in charge of recovering money for Bernard Madoff’s victims, is preparing to sue those investors who withdrew more money from Madoff’s accounts than they deposited, according to The Wall Street Journal. Picard predicts that he could end up suing half of the 2,000 investors. "The people who made money, who got more, have made money at the expense of the people who didn't,” he says. The investors are, unsurprisingly, fighting the effort. "This is my money that I need now, and if he comes after me, I will be penniless," says one 87-year-old former school teacher. Picard must file any clawback lawsuits by December.

Martin Wolf has a must-read piece on the state of American politics on the Financial Times’ website: He calls the invention of supply-side economics “the most politically brilliant (albeit economically unconvincing) idea in the history of fiscal policy" because it allowed Republicans to promise a “free lunch”—lower taxes, lower deficits, and essentially unchanged spending. The theory was bunk—the federal-debt-to-GDP ratios ballooned under Presidents Reagan, H.W. Bush, and W. Bush—but Wolf says the adoption of supply-side economics as a party platform “transformed Republicans from a minority party into a majority party.” But now it seems the reckoning of such illogic is nigh. With Republicans indifferent to deficits so long as they’re brought on by tax cuts, “U.S. fiscal policy is paralyzed.” Wolf says some Republicans seem to want to force the U.S. government into default, which “would surely create the biggest financial crisis in world economic history,” and signal “the end of the U.S. era of global dominance.

Let the porn floodgates open: New government rules will allow iPhone owners to jailbreak their phones so that they can download applications that have not been approved by Apple. Other new rules will allow people to break access controls on their phones so they can use them with other carriers; and for professors, film students, and documentary filmmakers to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can use clips for educational purposes and criticism.