The Cheat Sheet

Frontpage: Friday, May 25th

1. Tony Blair to Testify Monday: Former British prime minister Tony Blair will testify Monday in Parliament’s Leveson Inquiry, the investigation into media ethics and standards at Rupert Murdoch’s News International. 
2. Morsi Leading Egypt Vote: Results of Egypt’s presidential elections are trickling in on Friday. The final results will not be released until Tuesday, but Egyptian newspapers say the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamad Morsi is emerging as the frontrunner. 
3. Patz Suspect Taken to Bellevue: Pedro Hernandez, the man who has been arrested in connection to the 1979 death of Etan Patz, was transferred Friday morning to Bellevue Hospital and has been placed under suicide watch. Hernandez had been scheduled to be arraigned on Friday morning—the 33rd anniversary of the day that Patz disappeared.
4. Spain’s Bankia Asks for $19B Bailout: Spanish lender Bankia will ask the country for a $19 billion bailout Friday, after it was partially nationalized and a new management team presents a restructuring plan. Bankia spells trouble for Spain’s already fragile economy, and loan losses from the 2008 property crash could make the country seek international aid. 
5. SpaceX’s Dragon Capsule Docks: The privately owned Dragon capsule has successfully docked at the International Space Station on Friday. This is the first time a private company has launched a spacecraft that has been snared by the robotic arm at the International Space Station. The unmanned craft, owned by the California-based SpaceX, was on track to deliver a half ton of supplies.

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Photo via discoverynews:

Station Crew Catches A Dragon by the Tail

After a painstakingly and careful approach to the space station, a cargo capsule built and operated by SpaceX, was captured by astronauts aboard the orbital outpost.

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WATCH IT ON NASA TV Live here

Frontpage: Thursday, May 24th

1. Inquiry Grills Murdoch Lobbyist: News Corp. lobbyist Frédéric Michel appeared before the Leveson Inquiry into the ethics of the British press on Thursday to answer allegations that he communicated with an adviser to the British culture minister, who was overseeing News Corp.’s $12 billion bid to take over the cable company BSkyB. Michel admitted to exchanging phone calls, texts, and email messages with Adam Smith, the government aide, though he denied knowledge that Smith was feeding his communications to the culture minister.
2. Egypt Votes for Second Day: Egyptians returned to the polls on Thursday for the second day of voting in the country’s first free election since ousting former President Hosni Mubarak last year. Lines at the polls were not as long as Wednesday, although Egyptian authorities proclaimed Thursday a holiday to allow public-sector employees access to vote.
3. Zimmerman Criticized Cops in 2011: George Zimmerman, the self-appointed neighborhood watch volunteer who has been charged with shooting and killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, apparently criticized Sanford police last year after he went on a 12-hour ride-along, according to recordings from an open city forum. “What I saw was disgusting,” Zimmerman told mayor-elect Jeff Triplett, who held the forum following a scandal that ousted former police chief Brian Tooley. 
4. Europe to Greece: Stay in the Euro: It’s been a tumultuous few weeks in Europe. And now that it looks like Greece might leave the euro zone, other European leaders are planning for what could be explosive markets to follow. Most countries agreed that they should issue bonds to help members in financial turmoil, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Greece would have to “uphold the commitments it has made.” 
5. Suspect Confesses to Strangling Etan Patz: A New Jersey man reportedly confessed to police that he strangled Etan Patz, the 6-year-old boy who disappeared in 1979, and hid his body in a box, officials told The New York Times on Thursday.

Photo via picturedept:

Jon Lowenstein

Photographer Jon Lowenstein took this wonderful photo of last weekend’s anti-NATO demonstrations in Chicago. Lowenstein, who recently received a Guggenheim fellowship, has spent a decade photographing the people and neighborhoods in the South Side of Chicago. Last month, on assignment for Newsweek/Daily Beast, he photographed South Side neighborhoods hit by a dramatic rise in crime and gang violence. View that work here. And you can see many more of Jon’s photographs here.

Frontpage: Wednesday, May 2nd

1. Chinese Dissident in Medical Facility: Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who fled house arrest last month, has left the U.S. embassy and is at a medical facility in Beijing, a U.S. official said Wednesday—the first public acknowledgment by the U.S. that his whereabouts are known. 
2. Hiring Slows in April: A monthly report from the payroll giant ADP said Wednesday that U.S. hiring slowed in April, marking the second straight month that job growth disappointed forecasters. Companies hired 119,000 people in April after hiring 201,000 in March. 
3. 11 Killed in Cairo Clash: At least 11 people were killed early Wednesday in Cairo and at least 160 injured in clashes when a group of armed “thugs” attacked protesters demanding an end to military rule. The violence comes just weeks ahead of Egypt’s first post-Mubarak campaign, and resulted in two Islamist candidates suspending their campaigns. “Where is the Army? Why are they not stopping these people?” cried one bystander during the violence.
4. Watson Defends hacking Report: British M.P. Tom Watson, the man who has led the investigation into hacking allegations at News Corp., fired back Wednesday at critics of the findings that Murdoch is not “fit and proper” to run the media conglomerate. While some Conservative members of the committee have claimed Watson “hijacked” the report and made it “partisan,” Watson dismissed the criticism, saying “that’s exactly what they said when we did the report in 2009.
5. Gingrich to Suspend Campaign: It’s not quite June, but Newt Gingrich is ready to call it quits. The onetime Republican hopeful will suspend his campaign on Wednesday, he announced in a video message on Tuesday. In his farewell video, Gingrich promised he will endorse presumptive nominee Mitt Romney. Tweet your idea for Newt’s next job with #NewtsNextAct.  

Photo: A trainer walks a horse off the track at Churchill Downs after a morning workout in preparation for the Kentucky Derby this weekend. (Charlie Riedel / AP Photo)

Frontpage: Wednesday, Feb. 15th

1. Fake Cancer Drug Hits U.S. Market: The pharmaceutical company Roche is telling hospitals that there’s a fake version of its cancer drug Avastin floating around American markets. This was discovered after counterfeit vials were shown to have none of the active ingredients that combat cancer. 
2. Iran to Reveal Nuke Steps: Uh oh. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will announce “key nuclear achievements” Wednesday. Iranian news reports that the progress will probably be that the uranium enrichment plant, Fordo, located inside a mountain, is “fully operational.” 
3. Romney Rushes to Defend Michigan: With Rick Santorum surging ahead of Mitt Romney in the polls, the former frontrunner is returning to defend his home state. Romney’s campaign bought nearly $1.3 mil in airtime. 
4. Biden Lectures Chinese VP: Leave it to Vice President Biden to give a straight-talking toast to China’s vice president, and likely future leader, Xi Jinping. “As Americans, we welcome competition,” Biden said during a State Department lunch. “But cooperation, as you and I have spoken about, can only be mutually beneficial if the game is fair.” 
5. Syria’s Assad Sets Referendum Date: President Bashar al-Assad says Syria will hold a referendum on a new constitution on Feb. 26, but even as he made this seeming concession, his forces increased their bombardment of opposition towns.

Photo: “Untitled” by Weaam El-Masry, a fiery Egyptian artist whose nudes are risqué by almost any standards. She says she is worried about the prospect of an Islamist-dominated government. “They don’t think. They don’t use logic,” she says. “They think art is forbidden.” See more of her work and read Ty McComrick’s piece on Egyptian artists and government censors. 

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uprisingsintranslation:

Peoples’ Ambulance

On a wall encircling the American University in Cairo’s downtown campus on Mohammed Mahmoud Street. Throughout clashes in Tahrir Square and surrounding streets, people on motorcycles have delivered wounded protesters to field hospitals for treatment. 

This Tumblr translates and explains graffiti and other protest art found in Egypt. Cool! (h/t @zoeschlanger, @annie_werner) 

Take a second and read this:

And Cairo unraveled with bravado. Every thread of that once tightly ordered pattern breaking loose: blue and green and red and black and every shade and texture, all sprung away from the tapestry, in disarray, tangled, knotted, vivid, sizzling, present. The city stayed awake longer, put more people on the streets. It threw up new haphazard districts, and when the government would not supply them with water or electricity, people stole them from the mains.

Small art galleries opened, and tiny performance spaces, and new bands formed across the musical spectrum. Mosques and cultural centers clutched at the derelict spaces under flyovers. Green spaces vanished, but every night the bridges would be crammed with Cairenes taking the air. We suffered a massive shortage of affordable housing, but every night you’d see a bride starring in her wedding procession in the street. Unemployment ran at 20 percent, and every evening there was singing and drumming from the cheap, bright, noisy little pleasure boats crisscrossing the river.

Trees that were not cut down refused to die. They got dustier, some of their branches grew bare, but they grew. We looked out anxiously for the giant baobab in Sheikh Marsafy Street in Zamalek, for the Indian figs on the Garden City Corniche, for what my kids called the Jurassic Park trees by the zoo. If they cut a tree down, it grew shoots. If they hammered an iron fence into its roots, the tree would lean into the iron, lean on it. If a building crowded the side of a tree, the tree grew its other side bigger, lopsided. I knew trees that couldn’t manage leaves anymore but put all they had into a once-a-year burst of pink flowers. And once I saw a tree that seemed looked after, that had just been washed: it couldn’t stop dancing.

Cairo is unique. And her streets, her Nile, her buildings, and her monuments whisper to every Cairene who’s taking part in the events that are shaping our lives and our children’s futures as I write. The city puts her lips to our ears, she tucks her arm into ours and draws close so we can feel her heartbeat and smell her scent, and we fall in with her and measure our step to hers, and we fill our eyes with her beautiful, wounded face and whisper that her memories are our memories, her fate is our fate.

Whoa, right?

(Photo: Moises Saman / Magnum)

Frontpage: Jan. 30th

1. Romney Widens Lead: With one day left before the Florida primary, Mitt’s got a 12 point lead in the state, according to a Reuters poll on Sunday. 
2. Syrian Forces Seize Damascus Suburbs: The day after the Arab League said it was abandoning its monitoring mission, Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad on Monday raided Damascus suburbs that have been under the control of opposition fighters.
3. Occupy D.C. Faces Eviction: After a violent protest in Oakland and a solidarity march in New York where 12 were arrested, occupy protesters in DC have until noon today before police try to evict them. 
4. U.S. Embassy in Cairo Hides Expats: In a sign that the relationship between the United States and Egypt continues to worsen, the American Embassy in Cairo took the unusual step of opening its doors to U.S. citizens working for nongovernmental organizations. Can’t help but think of that scene in The Saint.
5. Bain Capital Raises $600M Fund: The venture capital wing of Bain Capital announced Monday that it had raised $600 million for a new fund—its largest to date. 

Photo: Novak Djokovic celebrated his victory over Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open men’s final. (Ryan Pierse, Pool, EPA / Landov)

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Cairo, Egypt: Parliament begins its first session since the revolution. (ASMAA WAGUIH)

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Frontpage: Jan. 5th

1. Candidates Descend on NH: The Republican circus packed up in Iowa and headed straight to New Hampshire Wednesday. Most significantly, Mitt Romney accepted the endorsement of John McCain. 
2. U.S. to Cut Thousands of Troops: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and President Obama will announce a new military budget that cuts troops by 10 to 15%. 
3. Death Penalty Sought for Mubarak: Egyptian prosecutors are seeking death by hanging for the former president Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, and some of his former aides. They are on trial for ordering the shooting deaths of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square last February. 
4. Herman Cain to Launch Bus Tour: Cain will begin a national bus tour touting his 9-9-9 tax plan, a tour he is calling “Cain’s Solutions Revolution.” 
5. Bombs Kill Dozen in Iraq: Four bombs killed at least 29 and wounded dozens more in Shiite areas of Baghdad, further raising the specter of civil war. 

Photo: Workers listen to Jon Huntsman give a speech in Pittsfield, N.H. (Matt Rourke)

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Frontpage: Jan. 4th (We slept in today!)

1. Obama to Make Big Recess Appointment: In defiance of Republican warnings, President Obama will appoint Richard Cordray, the former attorney general of Ohio, head the  Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 
2. Bachmann Drops Out: It’s over for Bachmann, to the tune of Train’s “Soul Sister.”
3. Perry: ‘Here We Come South Carolina’: While Bachmann has bowed out, Perry is pushing on after his loss in Iowa. Skipping New Hampshire, Perry is heading for the Palmetto State. 
4. Santorum Gets a Boost in NH Poll: Santorum’s support jumped from 5% to 10% in a recent poll of 554 likely Republican voters in New Hampshire.
5. U.S. Engages Muslim Brotherhood: As the Muslim Brotherhood looks like it may win a majority in Egypt’s Parliament, the Obama administration has begun to make diplomatic overtures, including through recent high-level meetings. 

Photo: Richard Cordray, center, will be named director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

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Cairo, Egypt: Egyptian women cast their votes on the second day of parliamentary elections. (Nov. 29, 2011)

Andre Pain, EPA / Landov

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