Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has been putting on a full-court press in the last 24 hours, making the case for his plan to shore-up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“I would rather not be in the position of asking for extraordinary authorities to support the GSEs,” Paulson said in a speech Tuesday in NYC.  “But I am playing the hand that I have been dealt. There is a need to support efforts that strengthen Fannie and Freddie’s ability to continue to play their important role in financing mortgages and in our capital markets more broadly.” Read more »

Tomorrow, CBS’s Katie Couric will interview Barack Obama from Jordan. On Wednesday, ABC’s Charlie Gibson will chat with him from Israel. And on Thursday, NBC’s Brian Williams will do the honors from Germany. Call it the presidential campaign equivalent of Shooting the Moon.

And to think, a few short months ago the Washington establishment was buzzing about the press’s pending dilemma: With Obama and John McCain looking like the all-but-certain nominees of their respective parties, how would the media choose between its new crush, Obama, and its long-time paramour, McCain? The Illinois senator has been a media darling since he burst onto the scene at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2004, and during the Democratic primary season, he bested Hillary Clinton in both quantity of coverage (he got more) and tenor (his was way more positive). But McCain has gotten so much favorable media attention over the years that he often joked that the press was his political base. In a head-to-head competition, who would win? Read more »

Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin, in the Tuesday edition of the Washington Examiner’s “Yeas & Nays” feature, reported that Helen Thomas gave a vehement denial of whether the media, and the White House press corps in particular, has a liberal bent. “Yeas & Nays got a sneak peak at Rory Kennedy’s new HBO documentary — ‘Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at The White House’ — which premieres next month, and Thomas is asked whether most White House reporters are liberal. ‘Hell no!’ she responds. ‘I’m dying to find another liberal open their mouths. Where are they!’ This is the second day in a row that Dufour and Gavin have reported on interesting quotations from members of the mainstream media. Read more »

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s lawyers said on Tuesday they had uncovered contradictions and discrepancies in the testimony of a key witness in a case that threatens to topple the Israeli leader.

Wrapping up five days of cross-examination of American fund raiser Morris Talansky who has alleged that he gave the Israeli leader cash-filled envelopes, they also revealed he had claimed to have had dealings with late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Olmert has pledged to resign if charged. Both Olmert and Talansky have denied any wrongdoing. Read more »

BELGRADE, Serbia - Serb nationalists skirmished with riot police in the capital Tuesday, lashing out against the new Western-leaning government that captured war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.

Karadzic’s lawyer vowed to appeal Serbia’s plan to extradite the former Bosnian Serb chief to a U.N. war crimes court.

Riot police deployed in downtown Belgrade to keep about 200 members of the extremist Obraz group under control. The demonstrators threw stones and clay pots at the officers, chanting “treason!” and trying to break through police cordons.   MORE>>>

A HIGH-RANKING commander who armed and led Janjaweed militiamen in attacks on hundreds of villages in Darfur has come forward to say he did so at the behest of the Sudanese Government.

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court are today expected to take a significant step towards putting Sudan’s leaders on trial by presenting evidence against the President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

As the lawyers pursue a case against the country’s rulers in Khartoum, some of the most damning evidence yet that the killing was directed by the Government has been provided by Arbab Idries, who was a commander between 2003 and 2007. Read more »

A jury found a 37-year-old San Francisco rap music figure guilty in the slaying of a Kansas City rival in what authorities called a West Coast versus Midwest rap war.

Andre “Mac Minister” Dow faces life in prison after being convicted Monday of first-degree murder in the May 2005 killings of 24-year-old Anthony “Fat Tone” Watkins of Kansas City, and Watkins’ friend, 22-year-old Jermaine Akins.

Dow is a promoter who has appeared on rap albums, made headlines several years ago when he brawled with another rapper at a nationally televised Source Awards show.  MORE>>>

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Wachovia Corp. reported a surprisingly large second-quarter loss Tuesday, deflating Wall Street’s hopes that the nation’s big banks are weathering the credit crisis well. The bank said it lost $8.86 billion, is slashing its dividend and eliminating 10,750 positions after losses tied to mortgages soared.

Even excluding one-time items, the results substantially missed analysts’ estimates.

But by the afternoon its stock joined a modest Wall Street rally and rose as much as 13 percent — after its shares sank to mid-1991 levels in premarket trading, and after Wachovia’s new CEO said he plans to cut $2 billion of expenses by the end of next year and sell parts of the fourth-biggest U.S. bank.   MORE>>>

VENTURA, Calif. —  A wedding reception brawl in Ventura involving more than 100 people has left three men facing charges and the mother of the groom with a knife wound.

Ventura police say several people still were fighting when officers arrived late Saturday night at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Figueroa Street.

It took about 15 officers to disperse the crowd. Several officers suffered minor cuts and bruises.

The mother of the groom, fifty-two-year-old Delphina Hernandez, was taken to a hospital with a knife cut to her face.   MORE>>>

 A San Francisco woman whose husband and two sons were gunned down last month — allegedly by an illegal immigrant who remained in the city despite previous crimes — is demanding the city do something about its sanctuary law.

Danielle Bologna was widowed on June 22 when Edwin Ramos, 21, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, allegedly gunned down her husband, Anthony, and two sons, Matthew and Michael, in a road rage incident when her family was returning from a picnic.

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