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The international community may have finally come to an agreement about Iran’s nuclear program. Following talks in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency has provided a draft to Iran, the U.N., France, Russia and the U.S. that is meant to satisfy the world’s concerns over Iran’s ability to produce nuclear bombs. The world powers involved must agree to the plan by Friday. Unconfirmed details include Iran exporting the majority of its enriched uranium—around 1200 kg—to France and Russia before sending it back to Iran, meaning that Iran would maintain its ability to produce fuel, but have less time to create nuclear weapons. IAEA Director Mohammed ElBaradei says he is “optimistic” about the “very constructive” talks that provided the foundation for the draft. "Everybody at the meeting was trying to help, trying to look to the future and not to the past, trying to heal the wounds that existed for many years," said ElBaradei. "I have circulated a draft agreement that in my judgment reflects a balanced approach to how to move forward."
The Obama administration will order companies that received the largest share of federal aid to slash compensation of big-paycheck executives, an official told The New York Times on Wednesday. The seven companies that received the most from the bailout will have to cut the cash payouts to their top 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year. Most companies would replace lost pay with stock, which executives would be prevented from selling at first. The plan will be released by the Treasury Department in the next few days and targets Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, General Motors, and Chrysler, plus the financing divisions of the two car companies.
On the heels of the Shriver Report, President Barack Obama sat down with NBC to discuss the state of women in American life as part of a series called "A Woman's Nation." The prez cops to slacking on his parental duties while juggling his role in the Senate. '“The truth is,” Obama said, that Michelle “still had to make sacrifices... of the sort that I didn’t have to make,”' sacrifices such as taking time off work if a child was sick. Obama calls men clueless and says they “need to be knocked across the head every once in a while." But when called out for his recent participation in an all-male basketball game with male congressional leaders at the White House, Obama cried foul. “I think this is bunk,” he said.
Senator John Kerry may be moving up in the political world after reports Tuesday revealed that the Massachusetts delegate played an instrumental role in convincing Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff election. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reportedly went to the presidential palace—both accompanied by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and alone—to discuss Karzai’s concerns. “We had lot of hours together and talked about a lot of things,” Kerry told The Wall Street Journal. “I think it helped to put it into a certain framework.” Thanks to Kerry’s intervention, Obama’s visions for Afghanistan could be carried on as planned. The senator is reportedly a close confidant of the president and will meet with him Wednesday at the White House to discuss Afghanistan.
Giant hedge fund Galleon Group is closing its doors amid a huge insider-trading scandal whose seed was planted with a 2005 job inquiry by a California fund manager with financial troubles. Galleon co-founder Raj Rajaratnam is free on $100 million bail as investigators dig into information gathered from an informant referred to as “Tipper A,” and said to be Roomy Khan, who had worked for Galleon in the '90s. Allegedly, when Khan applied to the hedge fund, Rajaratnam asked her if she had inside information on any public companies. Khan said she could get info on Polycom, a maker of data-conferencing products. The SEC complaint says that Rajaratnam ordered a Polycom trade that earned Galleon $735,000. The government says the informant also gave Rajaratnam tips on Hilton Hotels, with resulting trades making Galleon $4 million, and Google, which brought in $9.3 million for the hedge fund.
The victim of a high-profile, racially charged assault case in West Virginia in 2007 is now coming clean and admitting that her story was fabricated. Megan Williams, who has since moved to Columbus, Ohio, told police that she had been stabbed, beaten, and sexually assaulted in a trailer. She claimed her six white assailants had forced her to eat feces while hailing racial slurs at her. At the time, Rev. Al Sharpton called for the case to be investigated as a hate crime. After guilty pleas from all six defenders, they were sentenced to 40 years in prison. Williams' attorney said that his client was coming forward out of remorse, and that she was not being pressured to recant her story.
In an unusual coup for Microsoft, the company announced today that it has struck deals with both Twitter and Facebook to integrate them into Microsoft's search engine Bing. The Twitter search function on Bing is already live, and its algorithm features the most recent and relevant tweets on a subject, as well as the most re-tweeted tweets. The Facebook integration will come at a later date and will include access only to publicly available information. While many have been speculating how the ad-free Twitter will manage to turn a profit to stay afloat, The New York Times reports that Microsoft paid Twitter for the rights to cull information from their service. Microsoft may not be used to besting Google, but the nonexclusive deal with Twitter likely means that the search-engine giant may not be far behind.
The 2008 South Ossetian conflict between Russian and Georgia is being translated for the silver screen, with an anti-war message. Andy Garcia will take on the role of maverick Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Saakashvili launched an assault on the embroiled region of South Ossetia last year, which caused the Russians to retaliate with air strikes and military tanks. About 850 people died and more than 100,000 others were displaced. Director Renny Harlin says the film will be impartial.
Just when you thought Lady Gaga couldn’t go even further over the top, she’s revealed some outlandish details of her upcoming solo tour, called The Monster Ball, which will be a “beautiful, expensive-looking, delicious show.” In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gaga described the tour as a “pop-electro opera”: “Imagine if you could take the sets of an opera, which are very grand and very beautiful, and put them through a pop-electro lens.” The sets and costumes of the tour will be inspired by the demons the singer says she has battled through the years. Earlier this month, Gaga and Kanye West announced that they had decided to nix their joint Fame Kills tour as West opted to take some time off. (On her Twitter account, Gaga choreographer Lori Ann Gibson blamed “creative differences” for the cancellation.) Gaga’s solo adventure—which she says won’t contain anything she co-designed with West—kicks off in Montreal on November 27 and will make pit stops in 16 North American cities.
Was Wife Swap the gateway drug for Balloon Boy father Richard Heene? Jake Halpern, author of Fame Junkies, says that Heene may be a fame junkie, someone clinically addicted to the spotlight in a way that becomes destructive to a person's work, family, and friends. Like the high one gets from drugs, eating, or gambling, attention from others can also release dopamine and other opiates to the brain, flooding one with feelings of superiority. Then, in a biological feedback loop, we begin to crave the activities that elicit such chemical releases. In other words, fame can be like crack. Halpern suggests that Heene probably liked his taste of fame during his brief television stint, and was in search for it again when he allegedly plotted to trick an entire nation.
He's cried, he's called Obama a "racist," and now, Glenn Beck is traveling with some serious new muscle. Guests at the preview of the Broadway musical Memphis noticed that a bodyguard with a partially concealed gun under his jacket stuck close by Beck all evening, even accompanying him to the bathroom. Beck's representative declined to comment. Later, Beck tweeted, "Just got back from 'Memphis' on Broadway. Amazing cast & music. 2 songs abt Hope & Change. rlly? Only 2?"
As states nationwide are being forced to set free offenders due to overcrowding in prisons, the Death Penalty Information Center has released a study showing that death row is costing Americans millions of dollars. Most notably, cash-strapped California, on the verge of financial collapse, is spending $137 million a year on the death penalty, and hasn't executed anyone in more than three years. The tortuous legal process means that inmates end up sitting in prison while their cases await trial and go through various appeals. New York and New Jersey both spent more than $100 million on the death penalty without actually executing anyone. Police chiefs rate the measure as their least effective crime-fighting tool, and the report cites that most don't believe it's a deterrent to murder. The report also predicts that more states will eschew the draconian enforcement measure as the economic crisis continues.
Charles Gibson's retirement last month has triggered a cascading wave of personnel changes. With Diane Sawyer set to replace Gibson on World News, ABC executives have been scrambling to find a replacement for her on Good Morning America. Women such as Ashleigh Banfield and Suze Orman want the job but the top brass prefer to pair a man with co-host Robin Roberts in order to restore the show's traditional male-female balance. It's likely that ABC will promote internally--and the short list is thought to include World News Saturday anchor David Muir, GMA Weekend co-host Bill Weir, GMA news anchor Chris Cuomo, and This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos, who is set to fill in for Sawyer for the rest of the week. ABC staffers were bewildered that executives didn't have someone waiting in the wings.
When Christian Bale was looking for a muse for his depraved American Psycho character, he turned to none other than Tom Cruise, Hollywood megastar and Scientology fanatic, director Mary Harron said in an interview with Black Book. Bale reportedly came across Cruise doing a guest spot on Letterman one night and identified the Martian-like qualities he knew Patrick Bateman possessed. "[H]e just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes," said Harron, who may have found her wheelhouse in such horroresque films. Her next project is The Moth Diaries, a true fear flick about a young girl who strikes up a friendship with a strange, mysterious girl when she moves to boarding school. Harron's inspirations include David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Roman Polanski, who she says mastered psychological horror in his making of Rosemary's Baby.
Next Tuesday George W. Bush will join Terry Brandshaw, Zig Ziglar, and Rudy Giuliani as a featured speaker at a "Get Motivated!" business seminar in Fort Worth, Texas. Tickets to event are running at $19 per office. Bush will reprise his role as motivational speaker on December 2nd too. The organizers promise, "This motivational mega-show packs more inspirational firepower than a stick of dynamite!"
Apparently newspaper articles, magazine features, encyclopedia entries, blogs, images, and entire books aren’t enough. Next week, Google will begin offering free and paid songs on the main results page of search pages, The Wall Street Journal reports. Musical selections will be aggregated from four online services and consolidated into what Google describes as a “one box,” at the top of the page (like Google weather and stock results). Songs and samples will be provided by Lala.com, iLike, iTunes, and Amazon.com. Warner Music, EMI Group, Sony, and Vivendi—the four major record labels—are all on board, along with a variety of independent labels. Google considers the addition of music a way to optimize users’ experience rather than a profit-building enterprise, and sales will be split between the record labels and music services.
What do Sumner Redstone, Jack Kevorkian, and Helen Thomas have in common? They’re old, powerful, and have found their way onto Slate’s annual “80 over 80” list. The most powerful octogenarian in the land according to the online magazine is Thomas Monson, the 82-year-old president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The comes Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, and broadcaster Barbara Walters. Seventy-nine-year-olds who are itching to join the list next year? Buzz Aldrin, Warren Buffett, and Clint Eastwood, among other luminaries.
A spoonful of sugar may help the medicine go down, but why bother when you could just give patients chocolate? That's what Bill Gates wants to do. Through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he's given $100,000 in grants each to scientists who want to use candy to diagnose and treat malaria. UCLA doctoral candidate Andrew Fung received a grant to use gum to detect malaria indicators in saliva, making the test painless. Steven Maranz, a researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College will use his money to study the effects of chocolate, which binds to and removes the cholesterol the malaria parasite needs to survive from the bloodstream. Maranz thinks chocolate may be able to kill most parasites while leaving enough in the blood to help children develop a lifetime resistance. The five-year grants for malaria are part of the foundation's Grand Challenges Exploration program, which also gave $100,000 to 74 other unconventional approaches to world problems.
The FBI has arrested Tarek Mehanna, a 27-year-old from Sudbury, Massachusetts, and charged him with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists after it was discovered that he’d been allegedly plotting a shopping mall attack. Mehanna, a Massachusetts College of Pharmacy graduate who lived with his parents, was arrested at Logan International Airport a year ago and charged with lying to FBI agents in another terrorism investigation. But after a recent search of his home, further charges have been added. Mehanna allegedly had multiple conversations with his co-conspirators about randomly shooting people in a shopping mall with automatic weapons, including discussions of the logistics of obtaining the weapons and which mall entrances could be used. According to a lawyer, the conspirators also discussed attacking two members of the executive branch, though they no longer work there.
The way cancer is tackled in America may be changing. The American Cancer Society is shifting its official platform on cancer screening on the basis that it might pose just as many risks as benefits. “We don’t want people to panic,” said one expert. “American medicine has overpromised when it comes to screening. The advantages to screening have been exaggerated.” In a nutshell, the shift in policy is based on the concept that screening can come at the risk of over-treating insignificant cancers while overlooking deadly ones. The Society’s policy reassessment was influenced by a Journal of the American Medical Association report on Wednesday that claims breast cancer has risen 40 percent and early-stage cancers have almost doubled, while cancers that have spread to other places in the body have only declined 10 percent. The American Cancer Society and researchers are not necessarily recommending that patients opt out of cancer screenings, but rather that they receive information about the risks and benefits.
A man in Northern Virginia is standing up for his right to make coffee in his kitchen naked, reports WTKR. Two passers-by, a woman and a 7-year-old boy, called the police on 29-year-old Eric Williamson Monday morning when they walked by his front window and saw him in the buff. Fairfax County police arrested Williamson for indecent exposure and said they believe he wanted to be seen naked. Williamson, who was simply making coffee in his kitchen at 5:30 a.m., vehemently protested the charges. "I'm a loving dad, and anybody knows that. And there's not a chance on this planet that I would ever, ever do anything like that to a kid,” he said. If convicted, Williamson could spend a year in jail and face $2,000 in fines.
President Barack Obama has the Republican Party in his sights, and he intends to take it down. In private and in public, the White House has gone after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street executives, and Fox News. The administration's strategy is evidently to eject their adversaries from mainstream culture by dismissing their criticism as not even worth discussing. “They won—why don’t they act like it?” a former Bush press secretary said. “The more they fight, the more defensive they look. It’s only been 10 months, and they’re burning bridges in a lot of different places.” But the strategy could be working. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll found that only 20 percent of people surveyed identified themselves as Republican—a 26-year low—while 83 percent of independents said they didn't trust Republicans to make the right decisions.
Adam Lambert may not be a straight guy, but he plays one in the current issue of Details magazine: the American Idol runner-up is pictured making out with a mostly-nude female model. In the accompanying Details interview, Lambert drops some gossip fodder, such as: "I am gay, but I like kissing women sometimes. Women are pretty. It doesn't mean I'm necessarily sleeping with them." He also reveals that he likes his boyfriends "smaller and younger," and lets lose about his acid-fueled "spiritual epiphany" at Nevada's Burning Man Festival.
Swiss police arrested director Roman Polanski after tipping off the U.S., documents have revealed. Previously, it was assumed that the Swiss police arrested Polanski, who fled justice after pleading guilty to a 1997 statutory rape, at the behest of the U.S., but evidently emails from the Swiss federal office of justice show that they alerted the U.S. to the fact that Polanski was the favorite to win an award at the Zurich film festival, and asked if the U.S. wanted him arrested. Federal officials told the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, which drafted a warrant, and four days later Polanski was in custody in Switzerland. The U.S. has until Nov. 25 to file extradition papers to get Polanski into the U.S.
Pakistani authorities have closed schools and universities across the country after suicide bombers at the International Islamic University killed four people and wounded 18 in Islamabad. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said that violence would continue until the Pakistani army ended its offensive into South Waziristan. It was the first such attack since the army began its charge into the border region where Taliban leaders have made their home. Attacks on Pakistani cities have claimed 180 lives in the month of October.
Two weeks after being named host of the 2016 Olympics, Rio de Janeiro is confronting an outburst in violence. This weekend, police say drug traffickers wielding a large-caliber weapon shot down a police helicopter, a mere mile from the stadium where opening ceremonies for the games will be held. The violence comes at completely the wrong time for Brazilian leaders, as they tour the world looking for investors and the spotlight shines brightly on their troubled city. “We never hid our problems during the candidacy process,” Rio’s mayor said. “We always said to people that we were still facing problems."
President Obama took a few digs at Wall Street even as he raked in as much as $3 million at a Manhattan fundraiser for the Democratic Party on Tuesday night. There was tension in the room as Obama spoke, because many of the guests—who paid $30,400 per couple to attend the event—work on Wall Street. Nonetheless, the president did not hold back criticism of the financial industry, saying the country should not have to face calamity because of “reckless speculation and deceptive practices and short sightedness and self-interestedness from a few.” He continued, amid audience chuckles: “So if there are members of the financial industry in the audience today, I would ask that you join us in passing what are necessary reforms. Don’t fight them.” Obama also urged Congress to pass health-care reform, and for Democrats to not let “intramural battles” get in the way of pushing through the legislation.
With Wall Street expected to hand out billions in bonuses this year, one Goldman Sachs adviser defended the gap between the paychecks in finance and those elsewhere Tuesday by saying that the discrepancy helps the economy. "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher and currently an adviser for Goldman Sachs International, said at a panel discussion in London. The investment bank set aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first 9 months of 2009, a jump of 46 percent from last year.
This was supposed to be Barbie’s year. After celebrating her 50th birthday this spring, Mattel heavily marketed its new line of “Fashionista” Barbies, in a play to reestablish doll-aisle dominance. Though Barbie remains the bestselling doll in the world, her sales peaked in 2002, a year after the Bratz dolls first challenged her hegemony. The new Fashionista Barbies have 12 movable joints, meant for runway-esque posing in their high-fashion clothes, but the toy’s debut was beat by two sassier rivals. Spin Master Ltd. is offering Liv Dolls, which have bendable ankles and changeable wigs. And MGA Entertainment, which was pummeling Barbie with pouty Bratz until Mattel wrested the rights away, unveiled its huge-eyed Moxie Girlz, whose hairstyles can be changed by swapping out heads (an unsettling image for those who’ve seen Return to Oz). The stakes are high for Mattel, which sees one-fifth of its sales via Barbie, though competitors have little sympathy. "Barbie has been so many different things," a Spin Master co-founder says. "Liv is now."
The fameball stops here. Citing the scandal surrounding Richard and Mayumi Heene's alleged balloon boy hoax, Lifetime has opted to remove a rerun of the Heene family's Wife Swap episode from Thursday's afternoon lineup. A spokesperson for Lifetime explained that, "Once we found out" about the alleged attempt to turn Falcon Heene into a publicity prop, "we decided to pull it off the air. At this time, we don't have any plans to air it in the near future." The episode in question depicted the Heene boys running wild and dive-bombing over the living room banister, while Richard Heene berated his substitute wife.
Despite protests from Hamid Karzai and his camp until as late as yesterday, the disputed leader of Afghanistan has agreed to an election runoff—and pressure from U.S. heavyweights may be why he did it. CNN reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wooed Karzai by arguing a second election would only strengthen him; she pointed to predictions she made in televised interviews that he would win the runoff anyway. Clinton also orchestrated operations by phone with Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who played a crucial role in strategic talks with Karzai. Kerry—who told The Wall Street Journal "He and I are friends"—spent the weekend in Kabul, even forgoing his scheduled return trip to Washington to spend time with both Karzai and his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. Sources say that Karzai's main objection stemmed from his concern for his large body of Pashtun supporters, who he feared would feel disenfranchised if the results of the previous election were nullified.
It's not looking good for the Angels. On Monday, the underdogs pulled out a 5-4 win against the Yankees in game three of the American League Championship Series, but during game four last night the Yankees made a comeback and stomped their opponents 10-1 at Angel Stadium, giving the Yankees a 3-1 lead in the best-of-7 series game. C.C. Sabathia pitched what the New York Post called "eight brilliant innings" with only three days of rest. Game 5 of the series is Thursday night; if the Yankee's win they'll head to the World Series for the first time since 2003.
Watch out, Blago! A longtime friend and former chief of staff has pled guilty to wire fraud and is promising to help the feds in their investigation into the corruption case against the former governor. The aide, Alonzo Monk, said that he has witnessed Rod Blagojevich shake down a host of businessmen. Monk said that even before being elected the Illinois governor was plotting how to split up potential funds among friends. According to the Associated Press, Monk's testimony against Blagojevich could destroy the former governor's defense.
The retail giant Barnes & Noble is taking on Amazon.com by releasing an e-reader of its own. The wireless electronic device will hit stores by the end of November and could challenge the Kindle's dominance of the marketplace. The reader will be called, Nook, and cost $259—the same amount that the Kindle sells for. Unlike the Kindle, Nook users will be able to lend digital books to their friends for up to 14 days.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the U.S. can't wait for the results of a Nov. 7 presidential run-off to decide whether or not to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan. Gates told reporters Tuesday that the results of the election will not dramatically alter the situation in the country. "I see this as a process, not something that's going to happen all of the sudden," Gates said. The secretary said that the president won't make a decision about sending more troops until after next week when cabinet members return from various parts of the world.
Bernie Madoff's life may have been even wilder than previously imagined. New additions to a lawsuit against Madoff filed Tuesday night in Manhattan Supreme Court allege that Madoff presided over an office so inundated with cocaine that it was known as the "North Pole." The suit also alleges that as far back as 1975, Madoff employed two street toughs to set up a pipeline for blow into the Madoff Securities offices and that the firm's headquarters enjoyed "a culture of sexual deviance" that included parties featuring topless waitresses. The suit, originally filed in June, has added additional corporate defendants, including JPMorgan Chase, KPMG, the Bank of New York, Oppenheimer, and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance.
With Angelina Jolie, looks could kill. At least that's what director Ridley Scott is hoping. He's tapped Jolie to play a femme fatale in his new drama about the murder of Maurizio Gucci and general decadence of the Gucci clan. The movie currently has a 2010 start date. Jolie would play Patrizia Reggiano, who was sentenced to 29 years for plotting the 1995 murder of ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, the grandson of founder Guccio Gucci, who won the power struggle to run the family fashion business. Jolie is likely to have a busy year or two—she's also slated to play medical examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta in an adaption of the Patricia Cornwell novel series, and will star opposite Sam Worthington in the thriller The Tourist.
Former “car czar” Steve Rattner has written a lengthy piece for Fortune discussing how, without any experience in the auto industry or government, he led the largest restructuring in American history. Rattner recalls being “unnerved” by his appointment, admitting he “closed my eyes and jumped.” He cites General Motors as having “the weakest finance operation any of us had ever seen” and its then-chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner as friendly though arrogant—which is why he had to be fired. Wagner’s resistance to change did not sit well with Rattner. According to Rattner, the president told him: “I want you to be tough, and I want you to be commercial.”
