After allegations erupted that the Secret Service was embroiled in a prostitution scandal in Colombia, three agents are now leaving the service. One has been fired, one was allowed to retire and the third resigned. Eight remain on administrative leave as officials sort out what happened last week, but it appears as though almost a dozen agents were involved in massive partying prior to the Summit of the Americas. At least a few of them are accused of bringing prostitutes back to their hotel. Separate investigations are underway in both the U.S. and Colombia.

A soldier from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne division has released photographs showing soldiers posing with the remains of Afghan suicide bombers. He told the Los Angeles Times he released the photos in order to bring attention to a breakdown in leadership and discipline. The photos show soldiers holding limbs and smiling after being sent to recover the remains of a suicide bomber.  The photos were taken in 2010. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta apologized on Wednesday on behalf of the Defense Department and the U.S. government, while President Obama called for a investigation of the photos.

India launched a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile Thursday morning local time. The missile, which can reach points as far away as China and Europe, is able to carry a nuclear warhead. Defense officials in India had delayed the missile’s Wednesday launch because of lightning, setting it for the next morning. The Agni-V missile has a range of 3,100 miles and is a “quantum leap in India’s strategic capability,” a Indian defense department spokesman said. The government confirmed that the launch was a success.

New Year's Eve will never be the same again. Longtime host of New Year's Rockin’ Eve, Dick Clark, died this morning, outlets are reporting, after suffering what was said to be a “massive heart attack.” Clark, who was 82, suffered a stroke in 2004, forcing him off the famous show he created in 1972. He has been a cohost of the show ever since. Clark had revealed in 2004, prior to his stroke, that he had Type 2 diabetes.

Mitt Romney isn’t afraid to get personal—about President Obama’s golf game. The presumptive GOP nominee took a verbal five-iron at the president Wednesday, criticizing him for playing golf and taking family vacations. “I would think you could kind of suck it up for four years, particularly when the American people are out of work,” Romney said of the president’s vacation schedule. Romney wondered why the Obamas have to go to Hawaii, where the president was born, so often. If elected president, Romney said that he and his family would make greater use of Camp David, close to D.C.

Democrats were up in arms Wednesday night in the state of Ohio as they claim that the Republican party there has made a move to block funding for Planned Parenthood in that state. State Sen. Nina Turner took to the steps of the state capitol to claim that language used in a budget-review bill is an effort to cut off “poor urban and rural areas” from accessing Planned Parenthood. But the bill’s author disagrees, countering that the language doesn’t mention Planned Parenthood, but instead funnels federal dollars to stand-alone, local agencies. 


The wives of European envoys to Syria are reaching out by video to Asma al-Assad, the Syrian first lady, asking her to intervene in the ongoing military crackdown in her country. The wives of the British and German ambassadors to the United Nations released the video Wednesday, calling on Mrs. al-Assad to “stop your husband” and “stop being a bystander.” Violence has hardly been quelled in Syria following a U.N.-brokered ceasefire plan last week. At least 16 people died on Tuesday in government strikes. “We want her to speak out for the end of violence,” Germany’s Huberta von Voss-Wittig says in the video.

Better known as the JetBlue pilot who freaked out during a five-hour cross country flight last month, Clayton Osbon will be pleading insanity at his upcoming trial. His lawyer, Dean Roper, filed federal court documents indicating that Osbon was insane at the time of the Mar. 27 incident. Osbon was piloting an Airbus 320 en route from New York to Las Vegas when he announced on the PA system that "things just don't matter" and "we're not going to Vegas!" He left the cockpit and began running up and down the aisle, but was subdued by passengers before he could return to the controls.

Pat Summitt won 1,098 games and eight NCAA titles as the head basketball coach for the Lady Vols, and now she is stepping down because of her fight with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Summitt, who spent 38 years at Tennessee and recorded the most wins in men’s or women’s college basketball, will retain the title of "head coach emeritus" and remain involved with the practices and games to the extent the NCAA allows. Holly Warlick, Summitt's longtime assistant, will take over as head coach. Warlick has been with the team for 27 years.

Ted Nugent is set to meet with the Secret Service Thursday, and if his outspoken ways of recent past are any indicator, he will have a lot to say. Nugent made eyebrow-raising comments at last weekend’s NRA gathering, saying if Obama was elected in November, Nugent would be “either dead or in jail by this time next year.” The comments sparked online outrage and caught the attention of the Secret Service, which scheduled a meeting with the musician. Nugent defended his actions Wednesday, saying: “I’ve never threatened anybody’s life in my life. I’ve never threatened. I don’t waste breath threatening.”

Anders Behring Breivik told the court that he is part of an international right-wing network called the Knights Templar, but prosecutors are trying to show that the network doesn’t exist. Breivik, who killed 77 people last July, most of them teens, says he met with a Serb nationalist in Liberia and that he had an English “mentor” named Richard the Lionheart. But when the prosecutor asked him about the network, Breivik said he hoped she would “ridicule me less and stick to the events.” Yesterday Breivik showed no remorse, saying he’d do it all again. The court is trying to determine whether he is sane and can be jailed.

Judge Jessica Recksiedler is expected to hand over control of the George Zimmerman trial to another felony judge on Wednesday after admitting to a potential conflict of interest. Recksiedler told attorneys last Friday that her husband is a partner at the firm of reputable Orlando lawyer Mark NeJame, whom CNN hired as a legal analyst to comment on the Trayvon Martin case. Zimmerman’s lawyer then called for a new judge on Monday. Recksiedler will be replaced by one of three remaining felony judges in Seminole County.

He may be the black sheep of his family, but one day Nelson the parrot will most likely be an attractive Kea parrot with olive-green feathers and an orange flash under his wings. But for now, Nelson is in the running to win the title of ugliest bird in the world, and is described as a cross between a roast chicken and an alien. (Could you do better?) Nelson’s parents abandoned him after his birth, leaving zookeepers at Bergzoo in Germany to care for him around the clock. He spent the first four weeks of his life in an incubator.

Warren Buffett, 81, announced Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with stage I prostate cancer, but that doctors say his condition is not life-threatening. In a letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Buffett wrote that he will undergo two months of daily radiation for treatment starting in mid-July, which will “restrict my travel during that period but will not otherwise change my daily routine.” Buffett added, “I feel great” and that he would let shareholders know if his health took a turn for the worse, but for now believes “that day is a long way off.”

Citigroup shareholders sounded a bit like Occupy Wall Street yesterday when they rejected a pay package for its chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, who was set to receive $15 million. “C.E.O.’s deserve good pay but there’s good pay and there’s obscene pay,” said a principal at a money-management company that voted against the package. About 55 percent of shareholders voted against the plan. The vote is nonbinding, part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform that requires public companies let shareholders voice their opinion about compensation, but Citigroup’s chairman says he takes the vote seriously. Last year Pandit got $1.67 million in salary, a $5.3 million cash bonus, and a retention package valued at $40 million.

Osama bin Laden’s widows’ deportation from Pakistan has been delayed due to a missing passport, a lawyer for the family said on Wednesday—but they are still expected to leave for Saudi Arabia and Yemen later Wednesday. The wives, along with nine children, have not been deported yet because a brother of one of the wives was missing a passport. Although U.S. officials got to question the wives only once after the raid that killed bin Laden, Pakistani officials detained them and later learned details about bin Laden’s life in Pakistan. Pakistan decided last week to deport the wives, claiming they were in the country illegally.

Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi plans to visit Norway and the U.K. this summer, her first trip out of the country in 24 years. She spent almost 20 years under house arrest in Burma, and refused to leave the country lest the military government refuse to let her back in. She was unable to go to Oslo in 1991 to receive her Nobel Peace Prize, or to visit the U.K. to see her dying husband in 1999. She was released from house arrest in November 2010 and elected to Parliament last month.

It’s obvious by now that Jeffrey E. Neely was not running the tightest ship over at the General Services Administration. Not only did he organize a lavish $823,000 Las Vegas retreat that has mired his organization in scandal, he brought along his wife on official trips at taxpayer expense. Neely’s wife, Deborah, also handled party arrangements and directed event planners to spend government money. An investigator called her the “first lady of Region 9,” the region Neely covered. The Justice Department is investigating the GSA’s alleged misconduct. On Monday Neely invoked the Fifth Amendment in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Three-day-old Keegan Schuchardt had been abducted from the parking lot of a pediatric clinic in Houston after his mother was shot dead during an altercation. But the boy has been found and police have taken into custody a “person of interest” in the crime. Keegan’s mother, 28-year-old Kala Marie Golden, had taken her son to the clinic for a checkup when she was approached by a woman who began to argue with her. The woman repeatedly shot Golden and then put Keegan in her car and drove off.

Republicans chose Jesse Kelly to go against Gabrielle Giffords’s former aide Ron Barber in what will likely be a closely contested special election for the congresswoman’s vacated seat. Kelly, an Iraq War veteran and Tea Party favorite, lost to Giffords by only 4,000 votes in 2010. Giffords chose Barber to run for her seat, and he’s already going after his new Republican opponent, accusing him of hurting the middle class and planning to do away with Medicare and Social Security. Kelly proposes a flat tax of 10 percent.

Mitt Romney will never live down the story of how he transported his family dog atop the car during a road trip. It’s been used against him by everyone from animal-rights groups to President Obama’s reelection campaign. Now the Daily Caller is here to remind the public that the president didn’t always treat dogs as nicely as he does his pet Bo. A passage from Obama’s book Dreams From My Father, reveals that as a child growing up in Indonesia, young Barack Obama ate dog meat. “Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth,” writes the DC. 

Investigators have identified ground zero of the Secret Service scandal: a Colombian prostitute who got angry when two agents demanded she split her fee between the two of them. It amounted to a dispute over $40–$60, a government source tells NBC. All 11 men implicated in the scandal brought women back to their hotel rooms in Cartagena while on a trip with President Obama, and officials are still investigating whether there were other prostitutes involved. U.S. officials say the agents’ conduct could have resulted in a potential security breach. Sen. Joseph Lieberman said if found guilty, those involved in the Colombia scandal could be “severely punished.”

A new CBS News/New York Times poll released Wednesday has President Obama and Mitt Romney in a dead heat, with each receiving 46 percent of registered voters. The poll was conducted between last Friday and Tuesday, just days after Rick Santorum dropped out of the race—proving that the party has rallied around Romney. Fifty-four percent of Republican primary voters said they want Romney to be the nominee, up from 30 percent in March. Although Romney is the all-but-certain nominee, Newt Gingrich is still preferred among 20 percent of Republican primary voters, and Ron Paul has the support of 12 percent.

Demi Moore returned to Twitter this week while also appearing on the red carpet Tuesday night at the premiere of the new Lifetime interview show, The Conversation. Moore, once an active Twitter user, asked her 5 million followers to help her pick a new handle to replace @mrskutcher, in light of her impending divorce from actor Ashton Kutcher.

Facebook’s purchase of Instagram for $1 billion took everyone by surprise—including Facebook's board. Mark Zuckerberg told his board the day before the deal was publicly announced that they were buying the photo-sharing app. He’d worked out the deal himself, in three days of negotiations with Instagram founder Kevin Systrom in Zuckerberg’s home. Sources tell The Wall Street Journal that Systrom initially asked for $2 billion, but Zuckerberg told him to imagine a day when Facebook was worth $200 billion or more, in which case 1 percent of the company would meet his price. Systrom was apparently convinced, and the deal was done. The board, a source says, “was told, not consulted.”

The longtime drummer of The Band and multiple Grammy winner Levon Helm is in the “final stages” of cancer, his wife said in a message posted on his website. Don Imus, Jane Fonda, and other friends made comments Wednesday remembering Helm’s life and paying tribute to his career. Helm overcame throat cancer to make three late-career albums that all won Grammys before the cancer returned.

A federal court is scheduled to hear arguments in a civil lawsuit against author and humanitarian Greg Mortenson over allegations that he fabricated parts of his bestselling memoirs Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools. The plaintiffs accuse Mortenson, publisher Penguin Group, coauthor David Oliver Relin, and the Central Asia Institute, of racketeering, fraud, deceit, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment. Mortenson has been accused of fabricating parts of his memoir, in which he claimed he had stumbled upon a tiny Pakistani village during a failed attempt to climb K2, and after being nursed back to health by the villagers, he alleged he was kidnapped by the Taliban.

The Federal Communications Commission asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to review its $550,000 fine given CBS after Janet Jackson’s halftime “wardrobe malfunction” during the halftime show of the 2004 Super Bowl. The Second Circuit threw out the fine as arbitrary and capricious, as well as another FCC fine against Fox for profanity during an awards show. The FCC asked the Supreme Court to hold its petition in abeyance until it had ruled on the Fox case; the high court is expected to deliver a decision in a couple of months.

It doesn’t get much juicier than this. The Colombian escort whose reported fight over payment spiraled into a scandal involving up to 20 Secret Service agents, saying the agents never told her they were with Obama.  “They were very discreet,” the woman, 24, told the New York Times. The whole alleged affair came to light when the agent only offered to pay her $30 and she said they had agreed to a price 25 times that, and they argued in the hotel lobby. She said she was upset by reports that she is a prostitute, saying instead that she is a high-priced escort, and that she is worried about the repercussions of coming forward.

Is President Obama going to ditch Joe Biden and ask Hillary Clinton to be his running mate this fall? Not if she has anything to say about it. "That is not going to happen," the secretary of State told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Wednesday. "That's like saying if the Olympic Committee called you up and said are you ready to run the marathon, would you accept. Well, it's not going to happen." While noting that she is removed from politics, she said "I am very supportive of the team we have in the White House going forward."

GSA official Jeffrey Neely is really in the dog house now. Congress has released a report detailing the extent of his personal travels and vacations paid for with government money. According to the report, Neely made two four-day visits to Hawaii and Napa, California in March— days before he was placed on leave at the General Services Administration. He also spent $823,000 during a four-day 2010 GSA training conference in Las Vegas. Neely reportedly took five trips totaling 44 days, including a 17-day adventure to Hawaii, Guam and Saipan.

The catfight between Nicolette Sheridan and Desperate Housewives isn’t over yet. A judge overseeing Sheridan’s $5.7 million wrongful-termination lawsuit against ABC and the show’s creation has set a retrial for September. The judge had declared a mistrial in March after the jury—which was deadlocked at 8-4 in favor of Sheridan—didn’t have enough evidence to conclude that her character was killed off on the show due to personal differences with creator Marc Cherry. Cherry’s lawyers argued that ABC had discussed killing off Sheridan’s character before her feud with Cherry.

Nearly two years after a massive explosion brought down the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and created one of the largest oil spills in history, BP has announced it has settled a class-action lawsuit with thousands of businesses and individuals affected by the tragedy. A federal judge has to approve the settlement, but BP officials estimate that they will be paying out about $7.8 billion in compensation. Roughly $2.3 billion of that will go to the seafood industry. The money will come from the $20 billion trust fund set up to help revive the area.

British prosecutors said Wednesday that they are considering criminal charges against 11 people in the phone-hacking scandal that shook News Corp.’s U.K. newspaper News of the World last year. Police have recommended 11 names to the Crown Prosecution Service, including four journalists, a police officer, and six other people. The CPS said it will not name the individuals, and it remains unclear how closely related the charges will be to the phone-hacking scandal.