A UN Security Council vote is expected to pass any moment, with 10 of 15 votes, authorizing the set-up of a no-fly zone and other intervention powers in Libya. Targeted military strikes could begin with hours.

Branded as a revelatory scoop uncovering previously unknown donations from George Soros to NPR, James O'Keefe's latest sting on NPR was debunked as a non-story within hours of its release.

Professional pollsters are just being mean to Sarah Palin now. Public Policy Polling finds that Charlie Sheen — "one of the most unpopular figures we've ever polled on" — tops Sarah Palin among independents in a presidential poll, 41-36.

Donald Trump is still a couple of months from his self-imposed deadline — during sweeps week — on making a presidential candidacy decision. So let's keep humoring him! Today, he pretended to be a birther.

After Bahrain's security forces entered the capital's Pearl roundabout to "cleanse" it of antimonarchy protesters and attacked hospitals yesterday, the country's rulers today arrested at least six prominent opposition members. According to the AP:

Oh, the poor Transportation Security Administration. There was the uproar over full body nudie scanners, which culminated when a TSA worker beat the shit out of a colleague over some small penis jokes. Then came the bro who sparked the ridiculous nationwide "don't touch my junk" thing. And just when TSA workers thought they were in the clear, a Post EXCLUSIVE chronicles some more recent failures.

It seems so long ago that America was enthralled with the misadventures of 19-year-old Colton Harris-Moore, the "Barefoot Bandit" who became famous for stealing airplanes, boats and cars — many times without wearing any shoes. But the public eventually turned on him, and he was arrested in the Bahamas last summer shortly after ditching a stolen airplane on Great Abaco Island.

There aren't many options left for the nuclear crisis at Japan's Fukushima plant. There may be no more water to cool the no. 4 reactor, leaving the rods indefinitely exposed and certain to melt down. The Japanese emperor, who is "deeply concerned," has made a rare address to the public. Meanwhile, bankers are hogging all the planes out of the country. Here are the latest updates from the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown disaster.

In your enlightening Wednesday media column: Bob Woodward hates the internet, Newark has a friend in Arianna, magazine editors return to magazines, I Want Media gets purchased, and Lester Holt is irradiated.

Two New York Times reporters and two photographers have been missing in Libya for more than 24 hours, according to the Times.

We wouldn't want to give the top conservative intellectuals too much credit, but the establishment Republicans' endless trashing of Sarah Palin may be doing the trick. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that her usually astronomical favorability rating among Republicans is crashing. Even Mitt Romney has a higher rating. And literally no one on Earth likes Mitt Romney!

In New York City, the WSJ reports, prescriptions for (generic Oxycontin) have doubled in the past three years. Doubled! There are a million prescriptions in the city now, one for every eight people.

Alleged Italian sex fiend Silvio Berlusconi, in an interview with opposition newspaper La Repubblica, says charges filed against him claiming that he had sex with 33 prostitutes at his legendary "bunga bunga" parties are "without sense." Why is that? Because, he told the paper, "even though I am a little brat ... 33 girls in two months seems like too much even for a 30 year old." But having sex 13 times with an underage prostitute, well, that's a different story.

Ray Davis, the CIA and Blackwater contractor who shot dead two Pakistani men in what he claims was an attempted robbery, was indicted for murder today. A "blood money" deal is said to be in the works for his release.

President Obama is seriously wearing on the patience of America's most war-loving war lovers, the Washington neoconservatives. Why won't Obama be reasonable and just let them have their endless War in Libya? Muammar Qaddafi is strengthening his grip and moving east, so the window of opportunity for invading another decentralized tribal country and then spending a dozen years there while alienating everyone in the region is closing. And so the neocons have banded together to write Obama a sternly worded letter asking for their war, please, now.

The clean-up from Japan's earthquake and tsunami will take forever. Cars, boats, and heavy debris are strewn about the grid of flattened houses and stripped buildings. These photos from the past 24 hours show the true scale of this mess.

Maybe you news junkies have been paying so much attention to the actual major news events in Japan, North Africa, the Middle East and various state governments that you forgot about the incompetent dumpheads in Washington, who haven't been able to accomplish anything beyond funding the government every couple of weeks after days of serial posturing about nothing. So let's get this update out of the way and then return to the news: The federal government will probably get funded for another three weeks. Thank your members of Congress!

Running easily purchased American guns to Mexican gangs is all the rage these days in the Great American Southwest, so you know it couldn't be long until a border town's mayor, sheriff, and city council got in on the fun.

The good news, which is not really "good" news much at all, is that Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactors didn't all fully melt down in the last 12 hours. That may sound cynical, but if you were following the fast developments in last night's news, a total nuclear catastrophe really did seem imminent. It's still unclear, though, how much radiation is leaking into the air, and another mid-size (6.1 magnitude) earthquake did strike southwest of Tokyo overnight. Meanwhile, U.S. Treasuries are soaring! Here's the latest news.

Just when you thought he was too busy to deal with anything else, especially something with annoying culture-war implications, Barack Obama went and published an op-ed in this past Sunday's Arizona Daily Star to start a conversation on gun reforms. That does not mean, as he anxiously rushed to note in his column, that he wants to take everyone's guns and repeal the Second Amendment. He just wants "commonsense" reforms, of some sort. Unfortunately, this political process starts by reaching out to the NRA, and guess what? The NRA does not give a fuck about Barack Obama.