Moderator Jim Lehrer may not have declared a winner, but 46 percent of 500 uncommitted voters polled immediately after Wednesday night’s debate said Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama in their first presidential one-on-one. Thirty-two percent called it a tie and only 22 percent saw Obama as the winner. Not only did the Republican contender come out victorious, he also may have gained some new supporters. Fifty-six percent of the voters surveyed said they had a better impression of Mitt after seeing his performance in Wednesday night’s debate. Eleven percent now think less of him and 32 percent said their opinions were unchanged.

Things picked up speed Wednesday evening as time began to run out, with the two candidates rushing through closing remarks. Obama went first, saying he recognized his own imperfections, but has the drive to affect change. “Four years ago I said I’m not a perfect man and I won’t be a perfect president and that’s probably a promise Governor Romney thinks I’ve kept." Romney countered by warning that under a second Obama term there will be "dramatic cuts to the military." But the biggest hit of the debate was Big Bird: Romney proposed big cuts but promised to keep Sesame Street.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney butted heads over their plans to tackle the deficit, talking taxes, small business and government subsidies in Wednesday night’s debate. Romney had a quote-worthy moment when discussing cutting subsidies to government programs: “I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS,” he said. “And I like PBS. I love Big Bird!” (Big Bird later responded on Twitter “WTF Romney?”) Obama chided Romney’s definition of a small business, saying under it someone like Donald Trump would qualify “and I know Donald trump doesn’t like to think of himself as small anything.” Romney, typically unemotional, got heated at one point, telling Obama that his promises weren’t good enough: “You’ve been president for four years,” while Obama said Romney’s “big, bold idea is ‘nevermind.’

An anonymous Mexican Army officer says two suspects were arrested Wednesday in the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Nicholas Ivie, Reuters reports. Ivie was responding to a tripped ground sensor in the border area in Arizona. Another officer was injured and a third escaped what officials think may have been an ambush. The suspects are being held in a Mexican military facility just a few miles from the border, in Agua Prieta.

Turkish officials confirmed on Wednesday that their artillery had fired on Syrian targets after Syrian forces shelled a Turkish town earlier on Wednesday. NATO called for an urgent meeting, and urged Syria to immediately cease all aggression against Turkey, a key NATO ally. A statement by Turkish officials said the artillery fired "on points in Syria that were detected with radar, in line with the rules of engagement." At least three people in Turkey were killed, including a 6-year-old boy, when a shell fired from Syria landed on a home earlier on Wednesday.

President Obama preferred to capture Osama bin Laden and put him on trial, not assassinate him, according to The Finish, a new book by journalist Mark Bowden. Obama indicated that he would have hoped for a trial if bin Laden had surrendered, but that he expected him to die fighting. In an interview with Bowden, Obama said, “Frankly, my belief was if we had captured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al Qaeda, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr.”

It’s not exactly every woman’s dream for her husband to spend their 20th anniversary with another man, but Michelle Obama is used to being a good sport at this point. Oct. 3 doesn’t just mark the day of the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, it’s also the Obamas’ 20th wedding anniversary. The couple celebrated by eliciting a pair of awws—in 140 characters or less. “Twenty years ago today, I married the love of my life and my best friend. Happy anniversary, Michelle,” Barack tweeted. “Happy 20th anniversary, Barack. Thank you for being an incredible partner, friend, and father every day. I love you!” Michelle replied. Now the big question for tonight’s debates: will Mobama get a shout out? We hope it’s in song.

After generating a social-media frenzy, missing teenager Kara Alongi was found safe in New Jersey on Tuesday evening. Alongi was found walking on the New Jersey Turnpike near Exit 1 at 4:30 p.m. by state police, according to authorities in Clark, NJ, Alongi’s hometown. Using her Twitter handle @KaraAlongi, the 16-year-old tweeted on Sunday night  “there is someone in my hour ecall 911.” The tweet created a flood of activity, and even caused the topic #helpfindkara to trend on Twitter with more than 100,000 followers jumping to Kara’s account—and then the tweet was revealed to be a hoax. Alongi has been taken to a South Jersey hospital for evaluation and has been reunited with family on Tuesday night, while the investigation into her actions is ongoing.

There’s some other baseball news other than Bobby Valentine’s possible demise. Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera achieved the prestigious Triple Crown, only the 15th in history and first since 1967. A Triple Crown is earned by a player leading the league in three statistical categories—batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. Commissioner Bud Selig congratulated Cabrera, saying it was “a remarkable achievement that places him amongst an elite few in all of baseball history.” Meanwhile, the Yankees clinched the American League East playoff title with a 14–2 win over Valentine’s troubled Red Sox while the Oakland A’s clinched the AL West with a 12–5 win over the Texas Rangers.

Call it a diva détente. It was reportedly all smiles on the set of American Idol Wednesday, after a video leaked Tuesday of Nicki Minaj cursing out fellow judge Mariah Carey. Sources tell TMZ that the American Idol judges were “embarrassed” and that the leaked video “shocked everyone back into place.” In the hidden-camera footage, Minaj was seen cussing and threatening to “knock out” Carey, saying, “I told them, I’m not f--kin’ putting up with her f--kin’ highness over there.” It may not be all-American, but keep it up, and it would be great television.

Law & Order star Richard Belzer may want to stick to prepared remarks from now on. In an interview this morning with New York’s Fox 5, the actor managed to work sodomy, molestation, and a “Heil Hitler” salute into the topics of conversation. Asked if one of the interviewers could play his brother on air, Belzer responded with: “If he gets molested and banged in the ass, maybe,” and then corrected himself, saying, “I meant banged against a piece of furniture.” He then lifted his arm into a Nazi salute and said, “Say ‘heil’ to all your colleagues at the other division.” His rep told TMZ the joke was supposed to be a satirical dig at Fox News.

The Institute for Supply Management released its survey of business activity in the service sector today and it showed an uptick to 55.1 from 53.7 in August. Any number higher than 50 indicates expansion. Economists surveyed by Reuters expected a drop to 53.2. Today’s services number follows Monday’s ISM manufacturing report that showed the manufacturing sector expanding for the first time since May.

Forget the latest polls, because 7-Eleven has it figured out: President Obama will be re-elected.  The convenience store chain is promoting its “7-Election” coffee campaign, which has correctly predicted the results of the last three elections. The premise for the poll is simple--customers pick either red or blue cups based on their candidate of choice, and 7-Eleven keeps track of the cup count. So far, Obama’s winning with 60 percent of customers choosing the blue cup to 40 percent opting for Mitt Romney red. “While we have never billed 7-Election as scientific or statistically valid, it is astounding just how accurate this simple count-the-cups poll has been — election after election," CEO Joe DePinto said.

An eye for an eye. After the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, left four Americans dead on Sept. 11, President Obama vowed that “justice will be done” to the killers responsible. Now, the first steps are being made toward retribution. According to senior counterterrorism officials, the military’s top-secret Joint Special Operations Command has begun collecting “target packages” on the suspected militants that could be used to either capture or kill those deemed complicit in the attacks. The report says that Obama’s options for retaliation include drone strikes, special ops raids, and joint missions with Libyan military. New prime minister Mustafa Abu Shagur recently told Al Jazeera he disagrees with unilateral American military action. “We will not accept anyone entering inside Libya,” Shagur said. “That would infringe on sovereignty and we will refuse.”

President Barack Obama is being sued by a Chinese-owned company over a wind-farm deal that was blocked by the White House. Obama put the presidential kibosh on the transaction—the first move to block a foreign investment in the U.S. in more than two decades—on the grounds that the privately owned Ralls Corp. “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States,” according to the White House. The company bought four wind-farm locations located near the Naval Weapons Systems Training Facility, a military installation in Oregon.

Is this the U.S. government, or the plot of Get Smart? Congressional investigators will release a report Wednesday citing regional intelligence-gathering offices called “fusion centers”—which together make up one of the country’s biggest domestic counterrorism programs—for being, arguably, useless. According to the report, the centers, which are financed by the Department of Homeland Security, “forwarded intelligence of uneven quality—oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.” Homeland Security officials are claiming the new report conducted by Senate investigators is “out of date, inaccurate and misleading.” 

The pope’s butler faced testimony from Vatican police on Wednesday as he stood trial for allegedly swiping sensitive documents from Pope Benedict. Some of the documents Paolo Gabriele is accused of taking were designated “to be destroyed,” police said. Gabriele has said that he has been mistreated as the Vatican pursues its case against him, and maintained that he leaked the papers to expose corruption among personnel surrounding the pope. “The situation inside the Vatican had become intolerable—not only to me,” Gabriele said in court. “There were many other people who felt the same way as I did.”

The move by a judge in Pennsylvania on Tuesday to block a state voter ID law is just the latest in a series of moves within the legal system that have stopped or stalled legislation that would make it harder for people to vote by implementing strict identification guidelines. “Every voter restriction that has been challenged this year has been either enjoined, blocked, or weakened,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice. That includes laws in Texas, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Florida, Ohio, and New Hampshire. New restrictions remain in place, however, in Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Indiana.

The $20 billion weight-loss and diet-supplement industry is the target of a new government review that found that about a fifth of all supplements sold had labels that misrepresented their health benefits. Most of the products do not have to undergo a Food and Drug Administration scientific review of their health claims before being released on the market, and some of those reviewed in the report released on Wednesday went so far as to make the illegal claim that they could prevent HIV or cure cancer.

A group of eight senators—the Gang of Six plus two—is planning a secret getaway to hash out a bipartisan solution to the looming fiscal cliff, Politico reported on Wednesday. The legislators will be hosted by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia at an undisclosed location as they work to deal with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and federal spending cuts planned for the end of 2012. The Gang of Six originally convened in 2011 to work on an ultimately unsuccessful solution to the debt-ceiling crisis. “This group continues to meet and work toward a bipartisan solution,” said Kevin Hall, a Warner spokesman.

Obama’s 47 percent moment, this is not. After Fox News and the Drudge Report spent a day touting what they said was a revelatory Barack Obama speech captured on video, it turned out that the speech had actually been online since the then-senator gave it at Hampton University in 2007. In the speech, Obama gives a “special shout-out” to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his Chicago pastor who would come to national attention the following year. “He’s a friend and a great leader,” Obama said of Wright. “Not just in Chicago, but all across the country.”

Reserved and little known, Qassim Suleimani is the Iranian official behind much of his country’s policy in Iraq and Syria, a role that has sometimes put him on a collision course with American policy in the region. Recently unearthed classified documents provide new insight into the role Suleimani played as general in Iran’s armed forces, especially as the American military in Iraq faced Iranian operatives under his control. Described as “a truly evil figure” in a letter Gen. David H. Petraeus sent to then-Defense secretary Robert M. Gates, Suleimani remains a key figure in the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy as it seeks to further exert its influence in the region.

The race for the White House remains close as Republican nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama prepare to square off in their first debate on Wednesday evening. And while a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that Obama enjoys only a 3-point lead—within the poll’s margin of error—it is Romney who is feeling the most pressure to deliver an all-star performance. Bruised after a series of bad news cycles, a good showing at the University of Denver on Wednesday could reignite what even Republicans have said is a flagging campaign.

Twenty-five people are dead and at least 70 wounded after a series of explosions ripped through downtown Aleppo on Wednesday, according to a Syrian official. Syrian media reported “three terrorist explosions” in the city that has been the site of fighting between opposition forces and troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group based in Britain, reported that most of the victims in the explosion that went off in a central city square were members of the Syrian military.

ADP Employer Services released its monthly employment survey today and reported that businesses added 162,000 workers to their payrolls in September. ADP reported 10,000 net new construction jobs, 4,000 new factory jobs, and services adding 144,000 new workers. The private survey, released the day before the government jobs report, has missed the Labor Department report by an average of 66,000 over the past two years, according to Bloomberg. Last month, the Labor Department reported 96,000 new jobs were created in August, while ADP reported 201,000.

Thomas Mortimer, the Massachusetts man suspected of killing his wife, two young children, and mother-in-law, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to four counts of first-degree murder. Mortimer was arrested and had left a note on the kitchen table saying, “I did these horrible things. What I have done is extremely selfish and cowardly. I murdered my family,” according to District Attorney Gerry Leone. The victims were found in their home with their throats slashed and lying in pools of blood. Mortimer had confessed that he exploded into a homicidal rage after a $2,499 check to the IRS bounced—and then his 4-year-old son witnessed some of the murders before Mortimer killed him too. Mortimer was sentenced to life without parole.

There’s more bad news for Mitt Romney heading into tonight's debate. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll shows President Obama has a commanding 50-point lead among Latino voters. Seventy percent of respondents said they are backing the president as opposed to 20 percent who are behind Romney. Obama now has a 73 percent approval rating with this key demographic, up 11 points since August. Fifty-three percent view Romney unfavorably. Obama has enjoyed broad support from Hispanics for most of the election cycle, but the data shows that the Romney campaign’s efforts to chip away Latino votes aren’t gaining traction.

Looks like Jesse Jackson Jr. won’t be hitting the campaign trail this year. The Illinois congressman’s wife said on Wednesday that her husband is seeing a doctor two or three times a week, and the doctor will decide when Jackson can return to work—which might not be until after Election Day. Jackson took a leave of absence about three months ago and was being treated at the Mayo Clinic  for depression until the beginning of September, when he was released. Jackson’s wife, Sandi, confirmed on Tuesday that while the family’s Washington-area home is no longer on the market, they are trying to sell it privately.

Your cat could take this dinosaur. Scientists published a report on Wednesday announcing the discovery of a new dinosaur that they say is among the smallest ever discovered, and have dubbed the minute terror Pegomastax africanus. The discovery is the result of decades of research. The jaw and skull of the creature, which probably measures about two feet in length at maturity, were found in a rock specimen that scientists unearthed while working in South Africa in the 1960s. Researchers said that the dinosaur’s beaklike jaws may have been used to pluck fruit.

Forget Mount Everest. Nepalese Maoist insurgency leader Prachanda has opened a new “Guerrilla trail” to give tourists an insight into the civil war. Accompanied by a guide book, the trek lasts four weeks and stretches across several districts of central and western Nepal, giving walkers an opportunity to see the roads and hideouts used by guerrillas. Prachanda, who remains chairman of the main Maoist party in Nepal, said he hopes the trail will attract more tourists to the poverty-stricken Himalayan nation. Some 16,000 people died in the 10-year war, which ended when the Maoists won a 2008 election, forcing the king to abandon his throne in June of that year.

Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey are proving to be as combustible of a pair as many bloggers feared—or more likely, hoped. The divas, who will both be judges on the upcoming season of American Idol, were captured arguing in hidden-camera footage posted by TMZ Tuesday. Minaj is shown flying into an expletive-ridden tirade that could’ve been lifted from one of her Parental Advisory–required raps during auditions Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C. “I told them, I’m not f--kin’ putting up with her f--kin’ highness over there,” Minaj shouts, before apparently threatening to “knock out” Carey, who can’t seem to get a word in edgewise. (Watch the video here.) Keith Urban, who joins the duo and Randy Jackson at the judges table, fidgets appropriately uncomfortably between the arguing pop stars.

Fed up with austerity, Italian restaurateur Marcello di Finizio is staging one of the most spectacular protests yet against backbreaking budget cuts. The 46-year-old climbed to the top of St. Peter’s dome with regular tourists and then jumped the railing and slid down to a ledge from which he hung a banner directed at Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti: “Help!!! Enough Monti. Enough Europe, Enough multinationals. You are killing us all. Development??? This is simply social butchery.”

The game of political chicken continues. Dan Cathy, CEO of fast-food pollo peddler Chick-fil-A, first ignited national uproar this summer when he took an anti-gay-marriage stance in an interview, sparking a boycott, a counterboycott, and ceaseless debate about religion, politics, and chicken. Now, in his first interview since the controversy, Cathy voiced his support of “biblical families” while sidestepping direct comment about the gay-marriage debate. “Families are very important to our country,” he told Atlanta’s NBC 11. “And they’re very important to those of us who are concerned about being able to hang on to our heritage.” Yes, our fried-chicken heritage.

Iranian riot police clashed with money changers in Tehran on Wednesday as the country’s law enforcement cracked down on the trade in foreign currency. The black-market exchange has long been tolerated by the government. The Iranian government’s sudden interest in the money changers’ under-the-table dealings comes as the country’s currency, the rial, has seen a steep drop in value. The rial’s value against the dollar has plummeted 40 percent against the dollar in the past week. Witnesses in the Iranian capital on Wednesday said that police armed with riot gear and tear gas chased money changers around the district of Tehran where they operated.

Looks like President Obama got the first advantage. The president won the coin toss for the first question at the first presidential debate on Wednesday night. Obama’s team said earlier this week that Obama will not be launching into personal attacks on Mitt Romney. Maybe it’s an advantage for Romney: his team said earlier this week they were prepping “zingers.”

So much for bouncing back from “legitimate rape.” The skeletons in Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin’s closet came back to haunt him Wednesday when a 2008 a video of him railing against “terrorist” abortion doctors and suggesting that it was “common practice” for these evil, evil physicians to be “giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant.” Akin’s critics were recirculating the video on the Internet Wednesday while he raised money in Washington for his campaign against incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. In the same speech, Akin said abortion was more “un-American” than slavery. Akin caused a firestorm in August when he said a woman would not get pregnant after a “legitimate rape.”

The first presidential debate of election season got off to a light-hearted start with a shout-out by Obama to his wife on their 20th wedding anniversary: “A year from now we will not be celebrating it in front of 40 million people.” Romney quipped back when it was his turn, congratulating the couple and saying, “This is the most romantic place you could imagine, here with me!” The two quickly got down to business, outlining the major differences between their economy and jobs plans. Obama stressed the middle class set the tone for the country as a whole, while Romney blamed him for burying the mid-earners. Romney was quick to jump on allegations that he would cut taxes, saying, “I don’t have a five-trillion-dollar tax cut.” Obama shot back, saying Romney’s tax plan will benefit those on the top tier.

The candidates dove into the controversial issue of Medicare Wednesday night. Obama started with the personal story of his grandmother, who used the program and cites it as the reason she could be independent. In a possible nod to Romney’s 47 percent gaffe, the president attacked Romney’s use of the word “entitlements” which he said “implies some sense of dependency on the part of these folks… like my grandmother.” Romney retorted with his plan for more competition within the medical field, and giving consumers choice to pick the plan best suited for them. Obama shot back, giving a plug to Obamacare—a term he’s “become fond of.” Romney replied that his program, which would operate through private companies, is taking an idea “that came from Bill Clinton’s chief of staff.”

The candidates might both think some regulation of the economy is important, but anything more specific, and they seem to disagree. “Regulation is essential. You can’t have a free-market work if you don’t have regulation,” Romney said at the debate Wednesday night. “You couldn’t have people opening up banks in their garage and making loans.” Romney said he would replace the Dodd-Frank banking-reform law, arguing it’s “the biggest kiss that’s been given to New York banks, that I’ve ever seen.” Obama responded saying Romney’s approach would enable the “reckless behavior” that led to the 2008 crisis. “Does anybody out there think that the big problem we had is there was too much oversight and regulation of Wall Street? Because if you do, then Governor Romney is your candidate,” Obama said.

Obama outlined the points of Obamacare at Wednesday night’s debate, saying his policy “doesn’t mean a government takeover.” The president then shot a backhanded compliment at Romney, who passed similar legislation in Massachusetts when he was governor. “I’ve seen this model work good and well in Massachusetts,” Obama said, calling the two plans “identical.” The two almost seemed to agree for a moment when Romney replied, “I like the way we did it in Massachusetts,” but then pointed out their plans’ differences, saying his was a bipartisan deal, while “you pushed through something that you and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid thought was the best thing.” In a moment of peace, Romney agreed that “the key task we have in health care is to get the cost down so it’s more affordable for families.”

This is not Bobby Valentine’s week. After a disappointing season, the Red Sox manager will reportedly be fired just after the season ends this week, according to sources that told CBS Sports. He told a radio station this week that he felt his staff undermines his authority and the coaches haven’t been loyal. And on Tuesday, he injured his knees and hips after losing control of his bike while texting a player. Valentine had been responding to Dustin Pedroia, the second baseman, who said he would play in the game even with his broken finger.

Obama pointed out a number of things he and Romney share in common Wednesday night, and education was no exception. “Governor Romney, I genuinely believe, cares about education,” he said. Romney validated the president’s hunch, saying “I love great schools,” and boasting that Massachusetts has top education system in the country. President Obama attacked the lack of specifics to any of Romney’s plans, education or otherwise. “When Gov. Romney says that he’ll replace [a policy] with something but can’t detail [what] … [is he] keeping all these plans secret because they’re too good? Is it because somehow middle-class families are gonna benefit too much from them?” Obama asked. Romney shot back at accusations: “Mr. President, you’re entitled to your own airplane and house, but not your own facts.”