President Barack Obama announced an initiative to reduce "wasteful" government spending in his weekly address on Saturday.

"Billions are squandered on programs that have outlived their usefulness, or exist solely because of the power of a lobbyist or interest group," Obama said.

An agenda topic at Monday's first full Cabinet meeting will be budget cut proposals from each federal department and agency.

In his Saturday address, Obama named two specific budget cuts recently made: firstly, the Department of Homeland Security is no longer spending $3 million on logo updates. The DHS was created less than 7 years ago and the reason that the logo needed a $3 million update so soon remains to be seen.

The second budget cut is the saving of an estimated "hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful spending and cost overruns" in the Department of Defense. According to the DoD's FY 2008 Agency Financial Report, the Department's available resources were $1.1 trillion, which primarily consisted of $736.4 billion in appropriations. The net cost of operations was $676 billion. A possible budget cut is no longer appropriating $736.4 billion to tally $1.1 trillion in resources when net operating costs are only $676 billion.

Obama pledged to announce "the elimination of dozens of government programs shown to be wasteful or ineffective. In this effort, there will be no sacred cows, and no pet projects."

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced a $13 billion high-speed American rail transit development project on Thursday.

The transportation project will be funded by an initial down payment of $8 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds and an additional $1 billion per year for five years, beginning with the 2010 budget.

Ten regional rail systems have been identified for the project: the California Corridor, the Pacific Northwest Corridor, the South Central Corridor, the Gulf Coast Corridor, the Chicago Hub Network, the Florida Corridor, the Southeast Corridor, the Keystone Corridor, the Empire Corridor and the Northern New England Corridor.

Amtrak, the passenger rail system founded in 1971, operates with revenue below expenses and receives an annually increasing federal subsidy reaching $6.3 million for fiscal year 2013, as mandated in the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

Additionally, Amtrak received $1.3 billion of the 2009 ARRA funds.

General Motors will conduct a massive recall of 1.5 million cars in May while preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Six models, among three makes under the GM brand, spanning seven years of manufacture are being recalled due to a risk of engine compartment fire, according to the National Highway Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation.

The models being recalled include the 1997-2003 Buick Regal, the 2000-2003 Chevrolet Impala, the 1998-1999 Chevrolet Lumina, the 1998-2003 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, the 1998-1999 Oldsmobile Intrigue and the 1997-2003 Pontiac Grand Prix.

The New York Times reported on Monday that the Treasury Department is urging GM to prepare to file for bankruptcy on June 1, rather than reorganizing out of court before its 60-day deadline extension on the provisional $13.4 billion federal loans granted in December.

In that Times article, former GM President and current GM CEO Fritz Henderson (pictured) has been giving "increasingly clear signals that bankruptcy is probable," since replacing former GM CEO Rick Wagoner, who was pressured out of office by the Obama Administration for failing to effectively restructure the company before the original March 31 deadline.

Two bank closings announced on Friday bring the tally of bank failures in 2009 up to 23 in just 15 weeks.

New Frontier Bank of Greeley, Colorado closed with $2.0 billion in assets and $1.5 billion in deposits. Cape Fear Bank of Wilmington, North Carolina closed with $492 million in assets and its $403 million deposits were absorbed by First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Charleston, South Carolina, according to FDIC Bank Failures and Assistance records.

The announcement of bank failures early in the second quarter of 2009 outpace those in 2008 five-fold. From January through May, 2008, four banks had failed. Throughout 2008, 24 banks closed nationwide, just one more than 2009 to date. In 2007, only three banks failed, according to FDIC records. There were no bank failures in either 2006 or 2005.

The results of recent bank stress tests are expected to be released by the end of April.

The basic FDIC insurance coverage limit for depositors is $250,000 per account, raised from the previous limit of $100,000 through December 31, 2009.

The FDIC provides a tool to help depositors of failed banks determine if their accounts are fully insured.

The Obama Administration pledged to buy thousands of cars from American automakers that have been practically insolvent for months, in a press release dated April 9.

"The General Services Administration will spend $285 million of Recovery Act Funds to purchase about 17,600 commercially available fuel efficient vehicles for the government fleet before June 1, 2009," the press release states. "All purchases will be made from manufacturers with an existing contract with the GSA, which are General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. This includes the purchase of 2,500 hybrid sedans that will be ordered by April 15. This is the largest one-time purchase of hybrid vehicles for the federal government fleet in history."

Chrysler and GM had already been collectively granted $17.4 billion worth of Troubled Asset Relief Program loans in December, with the obligation to present the Obama Administration with restructuring plans to avoid bankruptcy by March 31. Having missed the deadline, they were granted another 30 and 60 days, respectively.

White House National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers predicted that the U.S. economy's "free fall" will end mid-year, speaking at an Economic Club of Washington event on Thursday.

Summers' statements are in complete contrast with data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics within the past week.

"Labor market conditions continued to deteriorate in March," Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Keith Hall announced to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress on April 3. "Total non-farm payroll employment decreased by 663,000, and the unemployment rate increased from 8.1 to 8.5 percent."

"Since the beginning of the recession in December 2007," Hall continued, "job losses have totaled 5.1 million, 3.3 million of which occurred in just the past 5 months. These declines have been widespread across industry sectors, but particularly sharp in manufacturing, construction, and temporary help services. Together, these industries have accounted for nearly two-thirds of the job loss during the recession."

In fact, the last time that unemployment did not increase, month-over-month, was a year ago when there were 145,000 fewer unemployment claims in April than there were in March. From April 2008's trough at 5.0 percent unemployment, the rate has risen to 8.5 percent. Hall added that the employment-to-population ratio in March reached the lowest point since July 1985.

Again, in spite of the BLS report, White House National Economic Director Lawrence Summer stated "I think we can be reasonably confident that [economic trends are] going to end within the next few months and you will no longer have that sense of free fall."

The world's most frequent intragalactic tourist returned to Earth on Wednesday.

Charles Simonyi (pictured, left), who became the fifth commercial passenger of a space flight in 2007, is the first commercial passenger to have taken two trips to the International Space Station.

Simonyi, 60, formerly a prominent software engineer who contributed to the development of Microsoft Word and Excel, paid $25 million for the roundtrip flights and 10 days he spent on the ISS in April of 2007 and $35 million for the roundtrip flights and his 11 days' visit this year from March 26 to April 8.

Simonyi, a native Hungarian who immigrated to the U.S. in 1968 at age 20, was a passenger on Russia's Roskosmos Soyuz spacecraft for both flights. Multimillion-dollar commercial passenger seats will be temporarily unavailable while flights will serve to increase the ISS's long-term crew from three to six astronauts and/or cosmonauts and/or other types of whatever-nauts.

A federal grand jury indicted former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and five co-defendants on 16 felony counts, 19 total on Thursday. The felony counts include racketeering, conspiracy, wire fraud, and extortion conspiracy. If convicted, Blagojevich faces more than 300 years in prison and $4 million in fines.

Blagojevich is accused of having attempted to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama upon his election as the 44th President of the United States.

Milorad "Rod" Blagojevich's co-defendants are his brother, Robert, two former chiefs of staff, Alonzo Monk and John Harris, fundraiser Christopher G. Kelly, and William F. Cellini, Sr., a former casino owner and Illinois' first Secretary of Transportation.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Blagojevich was vacationing in Disney World with his family at the time of his indictment. Also vacationing in Disney World was his co-defendant brother's lawyer, with his family. It's a small world, after all.

According to the criminal complaint against Blagojevich, on November 5, 2008, within 24 hours of Obama's electoral victory, he told a person named only as Adviser A "I've got this (vacant Senate seat to appoint) and it's f***ing golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for f***in' nothing. I'm not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can always parachute me there." Always?

Two American journalists face five to ten years' detention in a North Korean labor camp after being seized by border guards and charged with "illegal entry" and carrying out "hostile" activities, according to a Reporters Sans Frontièrs (Reporters Without Borders) report dated March 31.

RSF, an international organization advocating and monitoring freedom of the press, reports that the journalists were near the Chinese border with North Korea investigating the smuggling of North Korean women into China for sale. RSF cites multiple anonymous sources that suspect that the American journalists were on the Chinese side of the Tumen River when North Korean border guards crossed into China to capture them on March 17, which contradicts North Korea's assertion and refutes their jurisdiction.

Euna Lee (pictured, left) and Laura Ling (pictured, right), of the San Francisco-based Current TV Web site, a media outlet chaired by former Vice President Al Gore, are detained in North Korea while their guide, an ethnic Korean with Chinese citizenship, is detained in China. A fourth member of the group arrested in the incident, cameraman Mitch Koss, was detained in China then deported.

RSF calls the detention of the two American journalists by North Korea "diplomatic blackmail," timed conspicuously around the scheduled missile launch to send a satellite into orbit, which some -- including Japan and the United States -- are concerned will be a test of long-range missiles capable of carrying warheads.

A Dallas man faces 20 years in prison after being arrested and charged with stealing more than 600 pieces of luggage from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport and Tulsa International Airport.

Patrick Brown, 39, a former worker at D/FW Airport, stole an average of three bags per day from baggage claims between July 2008 and January 2009, according to D/FW Airport Public Safety. Luggage theft at D/FW Airport has tripled in the past five years.

Brown kept the stolen luggage in a storage unit and sold the contents and bags separately at the Traders Village flea market in Grand Prairie, about 15 miles south of D/FW Airport, according to police in a story by Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA.

"This guy accounts for probably more than half of our baggage thefts we've had out here," D/FW Airport Public Safety Vice President Alan Black said in the WFAA report. "It's a mini-crime wave that's come to an end."

An anticipated report announcing changes in elementary school curriculum in England will add the study of Wikipedia and Twitter while allowing schools to opt out of teaching the Victorian era or World War II, which are taught extensively in secondary education.

Former Office for Standards in Education chief Sir Jim Rose assessed the existing British primary education curriculum and prioritized the study of blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as "sources of information and forms of communication," according to The Guardian, which the BBC cites as breaking the story.

In The Guardian's article, head of education of Britain's National Union of Teachers, John Bangs, comments that "computer skills and keyboard skills seem to be as important as handwriting in [Rose's report]. Traditional books and written texts are downplayed in response to web-based learning."

President Barack Obama will respond to policy critiques from former Vice President Dick Cheney in televised interviews aired a week apart.

During Cheney's March 15 appearance on CNN's State of the Nation he stated that "When you go back to the law enforcement mode, which I sense is what [the Obama administration is] doing, closing Guantanamo and so forth... they are very much giving up that center of attention and focus that's required, that concept of military threat that is essential if you're going to successfully defend the nation against further attacks."

During Obama's Sunday night appearance on CBS' 60 Minutes he will respond to Cheney's criticism: "How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment," according to a CBS release from Saturday.

Regarding the changing of anti-American sentiment through policy, Hamas Chairman Khaled Mashal told Italy's La Repubblica newspaper that "a new language toward [the Middle East region] is coming from President Obama. The challenge for everybody is for this to be the prelude for a genuine change in U.S. and European policies. Regarding an official opening toward Hamas, it's a matter of time," as reported by Reuters on Sunday.

An American nuclear submarine collided with another U.S. Navy vessel which spilled 25,000 gallons of oil into a strait in the Persian Gulf before dawn on Friday.

Fifteen of the 110 sailors aboard the USS Hartford, the Los Angeles class attack submarine, were injured. The Hartford also made international headlines in 2003 when it ran aground near Italy. Aside from the ruptured fuel tank, no injuries were reported aboard the USS New Orleans (pictured), the transport vessel struck by the Hartford, which was submerged at the time of the collision.

This is the second collision in the Strait of Hormuz involving an American nuclear submarine in the past two years. In January of 2007, the USS Newport News, another Los Angeles class attack submarine, collided with a Japanese oil tanker, causing a hull breach. Although there were no injuries in that collision, the commander of the Newport News was relieved of duty.

The Strait of Hormuz is 34 miles wide at its narrowest point. The New Orleans, the larger of the two vessels involved in the recent collision, is only 684 feet long.

Friday's collision occurred just six weeks after British and French nuclear submarines collided in the Atlantic Ocean in early February.

The Obama administration is finalizing a new focus in the continuing war on terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan: civility.

While increasing the military personnel deployed in Afghanistan by 17,000 to 55,000 in 2009, the United States also plans to increase the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and other provincial reconstruction teams, or PRTs, by nearly 300, a policy that the Washington Post has called a "civilian surge." Few of the 1,055 existing members of PRTs to date are civilians.

Rather than continuing simply to saturate Afghanistan with U.S. soldiers, the focus on its civil development will include policy reform and instruction from specialists in federal departments of Agriculture and Justice, among others, in effect utilizing the United States government as a public global consulting firm, nation-building the third world, one nation at a time, on U.S. taxpayers' dollars.

This is an attempt to stave off Afghanistan's digression toward the status of a "failed state," as the U.N. has warned in the last few years (pictured: U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, left, and Afghanistani President Hamid Karzai).

Afghanistan ranked seventh on 2008's failed state index, having continued to rise since coming in at 11th in 2005.

Former TV news journalist Mauricio Funes (pictured) of the Social-Democrat FMLN party defeated rival presidential candidate Rodrigo Ávila in the first ruling party change in El Salvador in nearly two decades during Sunday's election. Sitting Salvadoran president Antonia Saca of the rival conservative ARENA party was also a former journalist. Incumbent presidents may not run for re-election.

Note: one out of two former journalists to become president of El Salvador in the past decade is conservative.

Would "a rose by any other name still smell so" rebellious?

Fox News' syndicated AP story ran with the headline "Leftist Ex-CNN Reporter Wins El Salvador Presidency."

The Huffington Post's syndication of a Washington Post story ran with the headline "Mauricio Funes Wins El Salvador Election In A First For Leftist Ex-Rebels," while the original Washington Post story ran with the headline "Leftist Declares Victory In El Salvador Election.

Even the BBC ran their story with the headline "Left-Winger Wins El Salvador Poll."

Although Funes represented the FMLN party, which was founded by Marxist guerillas in the Salvadoran civil war that ended in 1991, the AP story states that he is "a moderate plucked from outside the ranks of the rebel-group-turned-political-party," who won with 51 to 49 percent of the votes. How left-of-center can a two percent popular vote victor in a country that hasn't had a non-conservative ruler in nearly two decades be?