Bush Makes Last Calls to World Leaders

...because cocaine may be behind turmoil

(NEWSER) - Are stock brokers trading under the influence? Carlo Giovanardi seems to think so. Giovanardi, an undersecretary to Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, intends to contact regulators and industry groups about a plan to drug test stockbrokers, lest families entrust their savings to someone “not capable of making decisions,” he tells Bloomberg , citing unspecified “US studies” suggesting that the financial crisis was exacerbated by “people who’ve lost touch with reality” due to drug use. He also noted that cocaine users can experience "brain meltdown." More»

Gordon Brown's wife recounts PM's antics at state dinner

(NEWSER) - As if things weren't bad enough for Silvio Berlusconi, now he's got the wife of a former world leader gossiping about him: Sarah Brown, missus to former British PM Gordon Brown, has a new book out in which she recounts the randy Italian chasing around after model Naomi Campbell's phone number ... at an official state dinner. Brown says that afterward she and JK Rowling giggled about the incident, reports the AP. Brown drops numerous other nuggets in an extensive interview with the Daily Mail . More»

Painful insults abound in leaked cables

(NEWSER) - The fallout from the WikiLeaks release of US embassy cables is only just beginning, but one thing is clear: there are going to be some seriously embarrassed diplomats. Some insults to world leaders, as collected by the Telegraph:

• Nicolas Sarkozy: The French president is an "emperor with no clothes," with a “thin-skinned” and “authoritarian” manner.
• Angela Merkel: The German chancellor "avoids risks and is rarely creative."
• Moammar Gadhafi: The Libyan leader can't travel without what one diplomat described as his “voluptuous blond” Ukrainian nurse.

Labour sources drop bomb ahead of Blair memoir

(NEWSER) - Tony Blair and George Bush plotted to have Blair stay on as prime minister because Bush wasn't sold on Gordon Brown, claims the Sunday Telegraph . Labour Party sources tell the Telegraph that Bush's team expressed doubts about Brown after he "harangued" Condi Rice in a private meeting. Rice subsequently “complained to the White House about the way he behaved," an unnamed source says. The revelation comes ahead of Blair's hotly anticipated memoir, A Journey, which is out this week. More»

(NEWSER) - All four living former presidents will attend Ted Kennedy’s invitation-only funeral, the Boston Herald reports. President Obama will also be there, breaking off his Martha’s Vineyard vacation to deliver a eulogy. Gordon Brown also plans to attend, as will Irish PM Brian Cowen. “Sen. Kennedy is being honored as though he were a former sitting president,” observed one political scientist. More»