Well this is welcome news: The Coast Guard has reversed an earlier report and now says that there is no oil sheen spreading from a platform that caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard now says it is unable to confirm the sheen and its earlier report was based on the owner of the platform, Mariner Energy; however, Mariner Energy also says that there is no sheen. The fire on the platform has been extinguished and all 13 crew members are safely ashore.

Is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg losing out to the Newt Gingriches and Sarah Palins? A New York Times poll finds two-thirds of New York City residents say that the Park51 Muslim community center should be moved to a location further from ground zero. Fifty percent opposed the project, with just 35 percent in favor. Also, one-fifth of New Yorkers admitted animosity toward Muslims. It’s also splitting the city along economic lines: 53 percent of New Yorkers making more than $100,000 support the center, while only 31 percent of those making less than $50,000 support it. Protestants are also evenly split, while a majority of Jews and Catholic oppose it.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton got down to business in Washington, D.C. on Thursday and inaugurated peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Emphasizing leadership and patience, Clinton’s effort appeared to pay off: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas agreed to meet again for another round of talks in two weeks. It's just the beginning of  what are expected to be year-long talks covering, among other things, the status of Jerusalem, the Palestinian state’s borders, and the right of Palestinians to return to homes inside Israel.

Hurricane Earl has arrived. The Category 2 storm blustered toward North Carolina Thursday night, battering the coast with thick rain and blasts of wind. Thousands in the Outer Banks have already evacuated—while in other East Coast towns, from Long Island to Nantucket, shop owners and tourists prepared for the worst. “Tonight is going to be a bad night,” Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center, told The New York Times. “It’s a big storm.” While the hurricane appears to be weakening as it approaches land, Earl could bring winds exceeding 100 miles per hour and four to eight inches of rain. “If the hurricane comes ashore, we could have extremely dangerous wind conditions causing significant damage,” said Ross Dickman, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. “Right now it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.”

Here’s one way not to start a political debate: silence. Unfortunately, this is exactly what Arizona Governor Jan Brewer did during a televised debate on Wednesday night. “We have, uh, did what was right for Arizona,” Brewer said after much fidgeting. Even Brewer herself, during an interview with a Phoenix radio station on Thursday, said she could have done better. “It certainly was the longest 16 seconds of my life,” she said. “I’m human, I’m human.” Not surprisingly, the pause—and the media’s post-debate about it—became an Internet sensation Thursday, with Brewer getting roasted on political blogs. Salon.com’s headline, for example: “Jan Brewer: Bumbling politician of the year.”  Brewer became governor when her Democratic predecessor resigned in January 2009; she’s since drawn national attention for signing the state’s controversial immigration law.

Oh, the irony: BP claims that if Congress passes legislation barring the oil giant from getting new offshore-drilling permits, it may not have enough money to pay for the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A ban would also stunt the company’s ambitious restoration efforts, they argue. “If we are unable to keep those fields going, that is going to have a substantial impact on our cash flow,” David Nagle, BP’s executive vice president for BP America, told The New York Times. Another overhaul bill, passed by the house July 30, concerns BP because of an amendment that would bar companies with 10 or more fatalities on onshore or offshore drilling facilities from Outer Continental Shelf drilling permits. “If BP needs to sell assets to meet its financial obligations, that’s a decision they have to make,” said Daniel Weiss, chief of staff for Rep. George Miller (D-CA), who wrote the provision. Meanwhile, BP announced Friday that the cost of the cleanup has risen by another $2 billion over the last month to a total of around $8 billion.

It’s good to see that this gigantic waste of everyone’s time is over: The Second Court of Appeals has thrown out the lawsuit of a self-proclaimed anti-feminist who argued that “Ladies Night” promotions at bars and nightclubs are illegal. "The guys are paying for girls to party. I don't think that's fair," the plaintiff, Roy Den Hollander, had argued. "It's a transfer of money from the wallets of guys to the pocketbooks of girls," the Manhattan-based lawyer said. The Court characterized Den Hollander’s views by saying "[He] paints a picture of a bleak future, where 'none other than what's left of the Wall Street moguls' will be able to afford to attend nightclubs."

Is Jennifer Lopez one step closer to becoming the new judge on the block? While it’s been rumored for weeks that she’s been in talks to sign on for American Idol’s tenth season, sources tell TMZ that a deal is now imminent. And contrary to earlier reports, negotiations between the pop star and Idol producers have been drama-free, according to the site. Unless a last-minute issue arises, Lopez will be sizing up contestants with Randy Jackson—the only remaining judge from the original panel—in a matter of weeks. Since Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell left the reality-television juggernaut, it’s struggled to find replacements with good chemistry. Sources tell TMZ that producers see Lopez as the "key to re-energizing the show."

FBI Special Agent Steve Moore, who once claimed that Amanda Knox was guilty of murdering her British roommate, now says there’s no doubt she’s innocent. “When Amanda Knox gets out, if she needs a roommate, I’ll send my daughter over,” Moore told Good Morning America. “The evidence is completely conclusive.” After independently researching and analyzing Knox’s case for the past year, having obtained the crime scene video, autopsy photos, and legal documents, Moore said his opinion has quickly changed. “There is no DNA evidence. What they're saying is that whoever killed Meredith cleaned up in Amanda's bathroom. That's all they say,” Moore said. “They found Amanda’s DNA in her own bathroom? Astounding.” Since her November 2007 arrest, Knox has spent about three years in an Italian prison.

The Justice Department accused six people Thursday of luring 400 laborers from Thailand to the United States—and then forcing them to work. The bust is spelled out in a federal indictment, which the FBI calls the largest human-trafficking case charged in U.S. history. The indictment accuses four employees of Global Horizons Manpower Inc., a recruiting company, and two others of convincing workers of promising careers, taking their passports, and failing to honor their contracts. Once in the U.S., the laborers worked in states including Hawaii, Colorado, Florida, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas. Initially, many were taken to farms in Washington and Hawaii, where conditions were especially awful, according to Chancee Martorell, executive director for the Thai Community Development Center in L.A. “In the old days, they used to keep slaves in their places with whips and chains,” said FBI Special Agent Tom Simon. “Today it’s done with economic threats and intimidation.”

Burger King is selling itself to 3G Capital for $4 billion, taking itself private for the second time in eight years. 3G sees Burger King as a turnaround opportunity; the fast food chain has been struggling in the weakened economy, and could be hurt by changing prices of beef and wheat. Burger King took itself private in 2002 and went public again four years later, but still underperformed compared to McDonald’s. 3G plans to open 500 more Burger Kings in Latin America in the next five years.

France is eagerly awaiting “explosive revelations” about the love life of French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy as this month sees the release of a book so controversial publishers haven’t even leaked the title. Author Besma Lahouri is said to expose Bruni-Sarkozy’s secret lovers, plastic surgeons, and obsession with fame and money. Lahouri, author of a popular biography of French soccer player Zinedine Zidane, is in hiding while security guards protect the book. The first lady, whose ex-boyfriends are already known to include Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, declared just before her marriage to French President Nicolas Sarkozy that “monogamy bores me.”

Rebels have raped 240 women, girls, and babies in the Congolese town of Luvungi, the United Nations says. Earlier reports counted 150 rapes. The U.N. was unable to protect people as the Congolese Mai Mai and Rawandan FDLR seized the town for four days in July, even though it had peacekeepers just 20 miles away. The U.N. Security Council held an emergency session and a senior envoy has been sent to Congo to find out what happened. Peacekeepers say they didn’t know about the incident until 10 days after it happened. Some women were attacked in front of their families, and the Congo is the “rape capital of the world” despite an end to its five-year war in 2003.

Direct peace talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas begin Thursday as the leaders work with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to agree on a two-state solution. Both leaders expressed their commitment to peace Wednesday night. Netanyahu called Abbas his “partner in peace” while Abbas vowed to work hard despite certain difficulties. Analysts have been doubtful that the talks could be successful after decades of failure, but saw a good sign in the leaders’ agreeing to continue after four Hamas members shot four settlers to death in the West Bank Wednesday night. Usually, talks are quite easy to torpedo. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah II attended the ceremony, underscoring President Obama’s hope for a regional solution to the violence.

Democrats in Congress are on the verge of going against their president and supporting the extension of Bush era tax cuts, set to expire at the end of 2010. While Obama and congressional Democrats agree that the tax cuts should be extended to individuals earning less than $250,000 a year, the president would like to see those who make more start paying pre-2001 rates. But moderate Democrats are balking. The idea of raising taxes, even on America's richest individuals, is proving a tough sell at home. "The economy is very weak right now. Raising taxes will lower consumer demand at a time when we want people putting more money into the economy," said Departing Sen. Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana. Bayh is joined by fellow Democrats Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota in opposing what would be an increase on top-payers from 33 and 35 percent taxes to 36 and 39.6 percent.

Former Lehman Brothers head Dick Fuld said the Federal Reserve should not have let his bank fail in September 2008, saying that as the financial crisis began, the Fed expanded access to its credit facilities to other banks but excluded Lehman.  In his testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Fuld blamed other banks for insisting on billions of dollars in cash against loans to Lehman, and that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs would have collapsed without the aid of the federal government. The Fed countered that it knew Lehman could never repay if it provided emergency funds. The congressional commission released thousands of pages of documents, including an email written by Jim Wilkinson, chief of staff to then-Treasury secretary Hank Paulson, saying, “I just can’t stomach us bailing out Lehman. Will be horrible in the press.”

Is it possible there’s such a thing as a reverse gender gap? A new study says that young, single, and childless women under 30—who live in cities—make more money than their male counterparts. But if any one of those factors changes—for instance, married women, or women who don’t live in a city—they end up earning less money than men. James Chung of Research Advisers, who spent more than a year analyzing Census data, said education is the reason for salary increases for women. Those with college degrees tend to earn more than those without, and more degrees are awarded to women than men. Even though some cities did not hold true on the trend, those cities tended to have industries that were based more on male-dominated industries, such as software development or military-technology contracting.

The suspected hostage-taker at the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, Maryland, was shot and killed by authorities after a four-hour standoff. Police aimed and shot when the gunman, James J. Lee, pointed his handgun at one of the three hostages. Lee, a radical environmentalist, had a long history of conflict with the Discovery Channel, and a manifesto he posted to a website proclaimed that "Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what's left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture." Lee was arrested in 2008 for creating a disturbance outside Discovery and evaluated by state psychiatrists at the time, though they "couldn't find anything wrong with me," Lee said at the time. Lee walked into the Discovery Communications building around 1 p.m. waving a handgun, wearing what appeared to metallic canisters on his chest and back, and was carrying two boxes and two backpacks that police said could have contained explosives. The three hostages escaped unharmed.

From its acclaimed director to its salacious girl-on-girl kiss, Black Swan has been the buzz of Hollywood. Darren Aronofsky's ballet thriller made waves overseas Tuesday night, premiering at the Venice Film Festival and seemingly, the film is living up to its hype. Natalie Portman plays Nina, a virginal ballerina obsessed with dance and striving for perfection. Her world crashes in on her when Lily (Mila Kunis) is introduced to her ballet company. Variety calls Portman's performance “courageous," adding that she "lays bare the myriad insecurities genuinely dedicated performers face when testing their limits, revealing shades of the actress never before seen on film.” The Hollywood Reporter, however, was less impressed with Portman’s showing, saying: “You sense she has bravely ventured out of her comfort zone to play a character slowly losing sight of herself. It’s a bravura performance.” Still, on a whole, the bizarre, dark ballerina film, piqued the reviewer’s interest. The “instant guilty pleasure… is so damn out-there in every way that you can't help admiring Aronofsky for daring to be so very, very absurd.”

The Senate is bracing for the arrival of more than six Tea Party candidates if the anti-incumbent headwinds continue to blow until November. There's fear that the new members will bring an end to any shot of comity continuing in the world's greatest deliberative body, according to the Wall Street Journal. "What I'm encouraged about most is that I don't have to be the contentious person all by myself any longer," said the famously irascible Sen. Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina. Possible new arrival, Wisconsin businessman Ron Johnson summed up the attitude of candidates in Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Florida when he said at a Senate Republican Conference luncheon, "I'm coming here to join the fight, not the club." For centuries, the Senate has arrived on unanimous consent to go about its business. With candidates like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, or Ken Buck coming to Washington—but refusing to join the club—that consent may become harder to come by, bringing the Senate to a screeching halt.

An airstrike Thursday killed 10 Afghan workers parliamentary election campaign workers, Reuters reports. NATO says it’s investigating the incident, which happened in the more peaceful northern part of the country, near Tajikistan, in Takhar province. Candidate Abdul Wahid and several of his staffers were wounded in the strike, carried out by two helicopters and two planes of some sort, the provincial governor said. There are no foreign troops stationed in Takhar. Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections will be held September 18 and will test the country’s political stability.

Government officials in Chile have instructed family members to keep bad news out of any letters they write to the 33 miners trapped there. The officials have also decided to censor the news reaching the men, cutting out crime stories which might disturb them. Hot food arrived Wednesday for the first time for men who have been stuck thousands of feet under ground for nearly a month. Not everyone agrees with the decision to censor the information reaching the miners. Said one psychiatrist, "I would not screen anything; if you start to do that you are setting up a base for mistrust. The miners will then ask, 'What else are they hiding from me?'" Others worry that announcing that five of the men are suffering from depression may have been a bad idea. Many also say that the best interests of the men may be at odds  with the desire of the Chilean government to bolster its image.

Andy Roddick failed to make it out of the second round at the U.S. Open as the American tennis star fell to the 44th-rank Janko Tipsarevic in four sets. At times, Roddick seemed to come undone during the raucous night match at Arthur Ashe Stadium Wednesday, pacing the baseline after being called for a third-set foot fault. "In the moment, I was just stupefied," Roddick said of the linesman's call. The moment recalled a worse meltdown when Serena Williams threatened a lineswoman at last year's U.S. Open. Thursday's matches include second-seeded Roger Federer and the 14th-seeded Maria Sharapova.

President Obama has pretty much no relationship with his predecessor, George W. Bush. Obama called Bush a few hours before he gave his Oval Office address Tuesday about the end of combat operations in Iraq. It had been seven months since the two talked and the conversation was short and perfunctory. 43 and 44 sat together for a briefing on Haiti after the current president asked the former one to work with Bill Clinton to raise aid for the earthquake-ravaged country. They didn’t even speak at Sen. Ted Kennedy’s funeral in August 2009. The icy relations are likely caused by the tough politics of the moment, with Obama warning voters that electing Republicans would bring back the policies of the Bush years. Obama doesn’t mention Bush’s name, but the dig is clear when the president says he inherited two wars and a battered economy. Other presidents have become the best of friends—Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, Clinton and George H.W. Bush—but aides say those relationships don’t develop until late in a presidency, when office-holders realize a veteran might be able to help them.

We’ll believe it when we hear it from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Israeli Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak tells Haaretz that his government is willing to split Jerusalem, a reversal for a regime that had previously insisted that Jerusalem “remain the undivided capital of Israel.” Barak says, "West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 residents will be ours. The Arab neighborhoods, in which close to a quarter million Palestinians live, will be theirs. There will be a special regime in place along with agreed upon arrangements in the Old City, the Mount of Olives and the City of David."

News that a gunman had broken into Discovery Channel offices in Silver Spring, Maryland, and taken hostages first broke not on cable news or online, but via Twitter. Within minutes of the attack, an office worker used Twitpic to post a photo of James Lee dressed in shorts and carrying a rifle through an office courtyard. Later, another person at the scene posted shots of a SWAT team using their armored vehicle for cover, and then another of emergency responders sending in a robot to find bombs. Helpless friends and relatives asked for prayers, and strangers responded. Lee’s strange manifesto was tweeted; twitter users drew attention to the gunman’s YouTube videos and MySpace page. When it comes to raw speed, mainstream reporters can’t compete with Twitter. It now serves as an “early alert system” for newsrooms.

Rapper T.I. was arrested on Wednesday with his wife Tameka Cottle for drug possession. They were nabbed in West Hollywood when cops smelled marijuana coming from their car—TMZ says a controlled substance was found of the class that includes methamphetamines and ecstasy and that there’s evidence it was Sizzurp, or “purple drank,” which is a codeine syrup. T.I. has done time in prison before for drugs and is currently on probation for illegally buying machine guns. He and Cottle are free after they each posted $10,000 bail.

Could Harvey Keitel replace Steve Carell when he leaves The Office? Executive Producer Paul Lieberstein sure hopes so: “He’s probably the only guy who can do it, and he’s doing TV now,” he tells E! Online. He’s already written a backstory for Keitel’s character: “He’s an old salesman who thought he could retire and the stock market went down, and he has to come out of retirement to work for a few years.” Other people mentioned as potential replacements include Danny McBride and Rhys Darby.

Discovery Channel gunman James Lee may have called immigrants “disgusting filth” in his list of demands of the network, but he didn’t apparently always feel that way: He was once arrested and imprisoned for smuggling illegal immigrants into the country from Mexico. Lee told a judge in 2003 that he became a human trafficker after he was choked and robbed in Tijuana and then offered the job by his assailants. "For one brief moment in my whole worthless life I felt good about myself,” he told the judge. “I felt like I was really helping people.” He was arrested when he was caught trying to smuggle a woman into the U.S. at a border crossing in Southern California.

We take it he’ll be watching Leno: Robert “Joe” Halderman, the man who was jailed  for blackmailing David Letterman, was released on Thursday after four months in jail. He was originally sentenced to six months in Rikers Island, but was released early for good behavior. He will still have to complete 1,000 hours of community service and serve five years of probation.