The couple who allegedly attended a White House state dinner without an invitation last week have denied they were "party crashers."
In a nationally televised interview on NBC's Today Show Tuesday, Tareq Salahi and his wife, Michaele, said they have e-mails that prove they were invited to the White House event.  The Salahis declined to say who invited them, but Tareq Salahi said the public is going to be "extremely surprised" when the couple releases documentation about the incident.
The couple said they are cooperating with a Secret Service investigation into the alleged security breach.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs appeared separately on the same broadcast Tuesday.  He said the Salahis were told repeatedly before the event that they did not have an invitation.
The Washington Post describes the Salahis as socialites and aspiring reality television stars.  It has said the couple, who live in the neighboring state of Virginia, slipped through several layers of White House security to attend the dinner.
But the Secret Service has said they went through the same security screening for weapons as other dinner guests, and did not pose a danger.  The agency has indicated that a White House checkpoint did not follow proper procedures in letting the couple in.
Sources close to the investigation have said the Salahis exchanged e-mails with a Defense Department official about attending the dinner.  That official, Michelle Jones, said Monday she specifically told the Salahis they did not have tickets and that she did not have the authority to add them to the guest list.
The U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee has scheduled a hearing Thursday to investigate how the pair made their way into the high-security event honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The Salahis boasted about attending the dinner on a Facebook Web page, posting photographs of themselves posing with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Marines and others.

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Image via Wikipedia,Barack Obama, Sr. with Barack Obama in Hawaii

President Barack Obama says he took five minutes out of his busy overseas diplomatic schedule to meet a half-brother who lives in China.
Mr. Obama told a U.S. television network that he met Mark Ndesandjo and his Chinese wife briefly Monday in Beijing, where the U.S. president held meetings with Chinese leaders this week.
The president has the same Kenyan father as Ndesandjo, who recently published a book, Nairobi to Shenzhen, describing Barack Obama Sr. as abusive.
President Obama said he does not know his half-brother very well. He said it was not a secret that his father was a troubled person, noting that he wrote about his father's alcoholism in his own book, Dreams of My Father.
Obama Sr. married Ndesandjo's Jewish-American mother after divorcing Mr. Obama's American mother when the president was a child. Obama Sr. died in 1982.
President Obama said his time with his father was a sad part of his history and his background, but he does not spend a lot of time "brooding over it."
Ndesandjo traveled from his home in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen to meet his half-brother. The last time they were together was at the president's inauguration in Washington last January.

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World Series leftovers feeding families in Bronx, NY

Major sporting events and rock concerts generate thousands of kilograms of uneaten food which is often simply thrown away after the event is over. Now one charity is collecting that leftover food and distributing it to the needy. Rock and Wrap It Up provides 100,000 meals a week to the hungry - meals made up of leftover hot dogs, hamburgers, and other food from sporting events, rock concerts, political rallies, film shoots and other events.
There is a championship game tonight at New York's Yankee Stadium, but Syd Mandelbaum is happy to be outside.
As the game ends, Syd's job is just beginning. As the founder of Rock and Wrap It Up, he has an agreement with baseball's New York Yankees. All uneaten food from Yankee Stadium's concession stands goes to local people in need.
"They understand that they can help their local communities by partnering with us and ensuring that the food does go to those that are in need," he said.
Once the game is over, the food is wrapped up and sent out for delivery. Tonight's beneficiary is the nearby Woodycrest Church, just a few blocks from the Yankees new $1.5 billion stadium. Pastor Denise Pickett and church volunteers help get the job done.
"The need is great. The first time when Rock and Wrap It Up came up, we fed approximately 150 people," he explained.
The food from Yankee Stadium will feed many New Yorkers. A line quickly forms.
"We thank you, oh God for how the Yankees and Rock and Wrap It Up is reaching out to the communit," he added.
Many families in this New York neighborhood known as the Bronx have lived in poverty for generations.
WOMAN: "I moved here in 1954 and this is the first time that I have seen this outpouring to the community."
MAN: "I live down the street and it is a great blessing to have food from there being donated to us."
Rock and Wrap It Up was founded 18 years ago to feed hungry people and also provide them with necessities like toiletries donated by hotels.
Mandelbaum says he wants groups who help the poor to focus on other things besides food.
"They could hire tutors, they could hire job placement programs," he said.
This scene is in New York, but it could soon be in Barcelona, Birmingham or Budapest. Mandelbaum says he wants to take Rock and Wrap It Up across the Atlantic, where he says European football teams can help fight hunger and poverty in their own communities.

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"It's green-friendly, it's online, and it will have its own iPhone application"

DALLAS, PRNewswire -- The Centennial Edition of the Boy Scout Handbook unveiled by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) prepares the 21st century Scout for new technology while celebrating the organization's rich heritage. The 475-page paperback features nostalgic illustrations from the previous 11 editions alongside references to emerging technology and expanded online information.

Touted by some Scouts as the ultimate adventure manual, the 12th edition Handbook teaches preparedness and responsibility in both traditional and new ways: think compass and GPS devices, tying a knot as well as a necktie, and first aid and Internet safety. For the first time, the printed Handbook is accompanied by an online site, www.bsahandbook.org, which contains expanded content and illustrations on handbook topics and advancement requirements.

"The Handbook - like our organization - adopts new and modern methods while maintaining the message of preparedness, responsibility and self-reliance," said Boy Scouts of America Chief Scout Executive Robert Mazzuca. "Earlier Scouts earned merit badges in bee farming, blacksmithing, and signaling, but now our Scouts work on 21st century subjects like composite materials, nuclear science, and oceanography."

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Color Daily Extra

In 1987, Hartley cofounded the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and now counsels others who have lost loved ones to suicide. Suicide has a traumatic impact on the victim's family. The Hollywood actress Mariette Hartley lost three family members to suicide and is helping others cope with their loss. Mariette Hartley has been a familiar face on television for nearly 50 years, from her roles in the early Western Bonanza and the classic series Star Trek, to recent shows like Grey's Anatomy.
She comes from an accomplished family with a turbulent history. Her grandfather, John B. Watson, was a noted psychologist who is credited with founding behaviorism, the school of psychology that limits itself to the study of behavior and the environmental influences that shape it. Watson also wrote extensively on child-rearing. Based in part on his animal studies, he argued that children should be shaped through external stimuli, and shown few signs of affection, such as hugging or kissing.
Hartley blames that approach to child-rearing for some of the family's problems. And she says some family members have bipolar disease, a condition once known as manic depression. The family has faced the trauma of suicide, first by her uncle.

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Chocolate is as big a part of American culture as baseball and apple pie. But its roots run much deeper.


Made from the seed of the tropical cacao tree, chocolate dates back at least 3,000 years to the ancient civilizations of Central and South America, where the cacao tree is native. The Aztec people valued the tree's cocoa beans so much, they used them as currency.

In what is now Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, in the southwestern United States, new archaeological evidence shows that people were eating chocolate here more than 1,000 years ago. And they're still at it. Today, the average American eats almost 5 kilograms of chocolate each year.

Cheri Friedman knows how much America loves chocolate. She is co-owner of Kron Chocolatiers, a small, gourmet chocolate shop that opened 32 years ago in Washington, D.C.

Friedman believes chocolate is one of the best comfort foods there is. "It's easy to eat. It melts in your mouth. There's a warm sensation," she says.

Friedman says she takes pride in the fact that Kron's chocolates are made with the finest ingredients, right on the premises.
She says you can really taste the difference between something that's just been poured, hot off the presses, and something that has sat on the shelf for three to six months, as some chocolates made by larger corporations tend to do.

Friedman's partner and Kron's chief chocolate-maker, Trish Schutz, says the shop is doing well, with good reason. "Well, it's very good chocolate, and we have a large return client base that comes back and back."

Dan Melman is one of those clients. During a recent trip to the store, he raved about their cream truffles, calling them "decadent." "I remember reading about them years ago and tried them, and I've continued to come back again and again," he says.
Americans' love of chocolate has helped to make it a big business in this country. Mark Sesler is senior vice president of marketing at Russell Stover Candies, one of the largest manufacturers of chocolate in the United States.
Sesler says the industry got its start in the early 1900s with small-scale chocolatiers such as Steven Whitman, and Claire and Russell Stover. They started with small stores - much like Kron - but soon expanded their business into broader markets - thanks, Sesler notes, to an important technological advance.
"It's the advent of refrigeration that has really made the availability of chocolate very prevalent throughout the United States," he explains.

He believes chocolate has secured its place as a delectable treat in the United States and a number of societies and countries.

Americans crave chocolate - almost as much as Europeans

Susan Fussell is spokeswoman for the National Confectioner's Association, a trade group that represents virtually everyone who's involved in the production and sale of candy in the United States.

Fussell says that although the United States is the largest total consumer of chocolate, it is not first in terms of per-capita consumption. "In fact, we come in somewhere around No. 12, and that's because, of course, there are so many countries in Europe that have even more of an established culture around chocolate - if you can imagine - than we do in the United States."

And why does Fussell think chocolate is so universally popular?

"Well there's really nothing like chocolate... One of the main ingredients in chocolate is cocoa butter. And cocoa butter melts at body temperature," she says. "So when you put chocolate in your mouth, it has a mouth feel that's unlike any other food that you eat. It has that melt-in-your mouth sensation right there on your tongue, and it is very hard to approximate that with any other food."

Health benefits of dark chocolate gain recognition

But that melt-in-your-mouth sensation comes at a price. Chocolate as we know it today is made with lots of sugar and milk, both very high in calories. That's given chocolate a rather bad reputation among nutritionists.

In recent years, however, research has proved that chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, is also naturally rich in cancer-fighting antioxidants - a fact that chocolate manufacturers like Russell Stover are happily promoting.

Sesler believes that something like chocolate that creates such emotional bonds - and also actually can be good for you - is just another reason to enjoy chocolate throughout your day.

Kron's Cheri Friedman has noticed the trend toward dark chocolate. She says that in the last two years, partly due to media attention, sales of dark chocolate have picked up in her own shop.

But Friedman also has noticed something else. She says people are "really being selective" about what they put in their mouth.

The National Confectioner's Association's Susan Fussell agrees. "We do see a trend towards more gourmet and premium chocolates, and it's interesting. We see that trend really strengthening, even in a time of economic hardship."

Americans say 'I love you' with chocolate

But no matter the preference, Fussell says when it comes to holidays, chocolate is king, especially on Valentine's Day, February 14th. That's a day when people all across the country express their love for one another with gifts, flowers, cards and - more often than not - chocolates.

"Valentine's Day itself, February 14th, is the single largest sales day during the year for sales of boxed chocolates," she says.

On a recent afternoon at Kron Chocolatiers, Margaret McCarthy, a local resident, was one of several customers shopping for Valentine's Day treats. "I love having chocolate," she says. "It speaks to your senses more than any other kind of sweets."

While McCarthy was buying a packet of Kron's signature chocolate hearts, Elmer Mendez, a customer who works in the area, looked on approvingly. "It's good for your soul, and it's good for your stomach and makes you feel good, and there's nothing better when you are happy or depressed. Have a pound of chocolate."

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