Jerry Curl

--> Los Angeles, CA : Democrat Barack Obama raised $32 million in the month of January alone for his presidential bid , CNN's Candy Crowley confirms. That total roughly equals his previous best three-month fundraising haul. The campaign would not divulge how much money it has on hand — a more accurate measure of a campaign's financial health going forward. --> Washington, D.C. : As many as 121 Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007, a jump of more than 20 percent over the year before , officials said Thursday. The rise came despite numerous efforts over the past year to improve the mental health of a force stressed by a longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the most deadly year yet in the now six-year-old conflict in Afghanistan. --> Asia : Large swathes of Asia, the Middle East and north Africa had their high-technology services crippled Thursday following a widespread Internet failure which brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope. ...

Dayle & Doyle Tonneson as featured on DNA .

By Eric Allie

--> U.S. : Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina is dropping out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, two sources inside his campaign said Wednesday. Edwards has told top advisers about his decision. It is expected he will announce it in a speech at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday in New Orleans, Louisiana. --> Florida : With 99 percent of Republican precincts reporting from Florida after Tuesday's voting, Senator John McCain held a five-point lead, 36 percent to 31 percent, over Mitt Romney , the former governor of Massachusetts. The win gives McCain all 57 Florida delegates at stake. On the Democratic side, with about 99 percent of Democratic precincts reporting, Sen. Hillary Clinton had 50 percent of the vote. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois placed second with 33 percent, and former Sen. John Edwards was in third with 14 percent. --> U.S. : The United States economy expanded by a disappointingly weak 0.6 percent during the last three months of 2007 , the gove...

Brent van Zant as featured on DNA .

Graphic designer and illustrator Shepard Fairey (you may know his from his "Obey Giant" sticker campaigns) has decided on his candidate for the Democratic party and has designed a gorgeous poster indicating his endorsement of Barack Obama . (Via Towleroad )

--> U.S. : President Bush gave his last State of the Union address last night. If you missed it, check it out here . --> Florida : Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts appear to be neck-and-neck in the Republican primary . If McCain wins in Florida, his status as the national front-runner will be cemented. If Romney comes out on top, the battle for the GOP presidential nomination will be up in the air. **Make sure to go out and vote Floridians!** --> Kenya : Mugabe Were, a freshman opposition leader in Parliament, was shot dead in his driveway on Tuesday. The news of his killing spread quickly and violently, with opposition supporters rioting across Nairobi, the capital, intensifying the clashes of the past weeks. More of the same . --> Los Angeles, CA : Hollywood's striking writers said on Monday they will grant an "interim agreement" to organizers of the Grammy awards allowing the ceremony honoring musicians to be writte...

Kerry Degman as featured on We Love Guys .

(Via PostSecret )

Weekend Top Five #1 Meet the Spartans ($18.7M) #2 Rambo ($18.1M) #3 27 Dresses ($13.6M) #4 Cloverfield ($12.7M) #5 Untraceable ($11.2M)

--> West Palm Beach, FL : The top Republican presidential contenders spent the day before Tuesday's Florida election flying from city to city, and letting the accusations fly as soon as they hit the ground. Mitt Romney says John McCain is a tax-and-spend buddy of the Democrats. McCain says Romney is a tax-and-spend liberal. --> U.S. : Senator Edward M. Kennedy, rejecting entreaties from the Clintons and their supporters, is set to endorse Senator Brack Obama’s presidential bid on Monday as part of an effort to lend Kennedy charisma and connections before the 22-state Feb. 5 showdown for the Democratic nomination. Meanwhile, author Toni Morrison, who famously labeled Bill Clinton as the "first black president" is also backing Obama to be the second. --> Washington, D.C. : President Bush's last State of the Union address is expected to be heavy on Iraq and the economy , but he also will say he is entering a congressional fray over earmarking taxpayer dollars...

Jason Muirbrook as featured on Queerty .

Serb Novak Djokovic pounced on Roger Federer last night in straight sets (7-5, 6-3, 7-6 ) to upset the world #1 and head into the Australian Open final against yesterdays' upset winner Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Like Tsonga , Djokovic did not deny the crowd a display of shirtless bravado. The only reason I blogged about this was for the above picture. More can be found over at Towleroad .

The editorial board of the Times said this about Clinton : "The early primaries produced two powerful main contenders: Hillary Clinton, the brilliant if at times harsh-sounding senator from New York; and Barack Obama, the incandescent if still undefined senator from Illinois. The remaining long shot, John Edwards, has enlivened the race with his own brand of raw populism. As Democrats look ahead to the primaries in the biggest states on Feb. 5, The Times’s editorial board strongly recommends that they select Hillary Clinton as their nominee for the 2008 presidential election." The board on McCain : "We have strong disagreements with all the Republicans running for president. The leading candidates have no plan for getting American troops out of Iraq. They are too wedded to discredited economic theories and unwilling even now to break with the legacy of President Bush. We disagree with them strongly on what makes a good Supreme Court justice. Still, there is a choice to b...

Nick Manzoni as featured on Queerty .

--> Kenya : While the political bickering continued in Kenya, so did the violence on Friday, with young men in gangs from opposing ethnic groups killing each other in the streets with machetes and bows and arrows . Nakuru, one of the biggest towns in the troubled Rift Valley, seems to be the new hot zone. Witnesses said the trouble there started late Thursday when mobs of Kikuyus, the ethnic group of Kenya’s president, mobilized to avenge attacks suffered at the hands of other ethnic groups. Witnesses said Kikuyu gangs built roadblocks to stop police officers from entering certain neighborhoods and then burned homes and businesses belonging to two other groups, Luos and Kalenjins. Those groups mobilized their young men to confront the attackers, and the result was a citywide melee with hundreds of homes burned, dozens of shops destroyed and as many as 10 people killed. --> Italy : Italy’s government finally fell Thursday, after Prime Minister Romano Prodi lost a confidence vote ...

Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gisele Bundchen, and Tina Fey in Peter Pan . Jessica Biel as Pocahontas . Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony in Aladdin .

David Gandy as featured on DNA .

"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will." - Chuck Palahniuk

Stark clutching those pearls, girls. Plans for the Grammys' blowout 50th-anniversary show are back in full swing, now that the striking writers have agreed not to picket the Feb. 10 broadcast. According to a well-placed source, the big "surprise" number will be a duet by Beyonce and Tina Turner. (Via Dlisted )

--> U.S. : Barack Obama leads rival Hillary Clinton 43 percent to 25 percent three days before South Carolina's presidential primary, aided by a huge edge among black voters, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll . --> New York, NY : Wall Street pulled back in volatile trading Wednesday, falling sharply yet again as dejected investors bet that a recession in the United States is inevitable. Each of the major indexes at times were down more than 2 percent, including the Dow Jones industrials, which fell more than 320 points before regaining some ground. The emergency interest rate cut Tuesday by the Federal Reserve appeared to have little salutary effect on the stock market, and Wall Street's latest flare-up of concern about where the economy is headed followed disappointing reports from big names like Motorola Inc. and Apple Inc. --> Kenya : Tear gas was fired Wednesday on people taking part in a prayer march sparking more post-election violence in the Kenyan capi...