• Obama told Chinese teenagers about the uncensored Internet, a mediocre collection of re-purposed AP articles and some videos that generally people only like when it’s not available.  [New York Times]
• Over at some United Nations summit, everyone bonded about how much they hate hunger but declined to throw any money at the problem. [AP]
• Starting in January, GM will start giving the US $1 billion per quarter to pay off the company’s debt. [Washington Post]
• Late Friday, when no one was paying attention, Robert Gates whispered in the Supreme Court’s ear that the Pentagon is forbidding the release of those US military-terror suspect photos. [CNN]
• Some Democrats are working on a bill that would compensate everyone whose hours were cut so their companies wouldn’t go out of business immediately. Wonkette Games: what will Democrats and Republicans do to convince everyone on Earth to hate this idea in just a few weeks? [The Hill]
• Palestinians might ask the UN for their own state because they are very frustrated with the US, Israel, and not having their own state. [WSJ]

• Last night the Yankees baseball team won the competition that determines the best baseball team of all the other baseball teams! [New York Times]
• 600 UN staffers in Afghanistan will leave the country for a few weeks while the UN works to find them housing that will be harder to blow up. [Washington Post]
• Hurricane Ida is currently in the midst of hitting Nicaragua. It’s expected to bring with it 25 inches of rain, mudslides, all the tradition hurricane accoutrement, etc. [CNN]
• Exxon Mobil and Shell have won the World Series of receiving the rights to oil fields in southern Iraq! The Phillies did not win this either. [WSJ]
• Cash bonuses on Wall Street will be up 40% this year. [Reuters]
• Later this week, Toyota will be sending out a drivers’ mat recall, as the acceleration pedal can get caught in drivers’ mats in certain models. [Los Angeles Times]

Ha ha ha ha ha hahha ahah, so good, but wait, where’s the… oh…OHHHH! The story itself is the punchline! And yet, what could the specific comedic mechanism be here? Maybe that it’s silly for the U.N. to do this when America is the richest and freest country in the world so obviously there couldn’t be any problems like this. DUH. More likely, though, Jonah just thinks the term “special rapporteur” is French and gay and made up. But it’s… the term they use? For these positions? Oh Jonah. One time he wrote a book about how American liberals are really Nazis! [The Corner via Gawker]

Mike Huckabee has a new (/old!) idea: get rid of the United Nations completely, because of those mean speeches the other day. This, however, is an improvement over recent years, when the actual U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, was the most prominent figure arguing for the destruction of the United Nations. But John Bolton never came up with a timely nickname like, “The international equivalent of ACORN,” did he? No, he didn’t. [Think Progress]

Libyan President Whatever-the-hell delivered a real barnburner at the United Nations today, in his first speech to the General Assembly. Here he is being like, “Little known fact about the Taliban: they’re pretty great!” In his allotted 15 minutes — which somehow became 60-plus minutes — he also demanded $7.7 trillion in reparations from the West for colonizing the African continent for centuries (a steal of a price, to be honest), blamed the UN for failing to stop or prevent 65 wars, and said he loved Barack Obama and wants him to be president for life, aww. [AP]

That gal with the lipstick is going to meet with Important World Leaders at the UN today, so naturally the McCain campaign did not want any reporters anywhere near that disaster. They said, “OK all you press organizations can get together and decide on ONE cameraperson to record the beginning of these meetings, before Sarah says something awkward about Hamid Karzai’s hat, but there will be no reporters to ask questions.” And for the first time in the history of ever, the press collectively told McCain to cram it. And then they took it back. MORE »

Well looky here at who’s getting too big for her lipsticks! It’s the most presumptuous celebrity in the world, Alaskan teleprompter fraud Sarah Palin. She’ll be meeting with various foreign dignitaries at the U.N. next week in order to show dubious Americans that she can, uh, sit down for crab cakes and fizzy water with the Sultan of Dubai. We are pretty sure this is tantamount to treason, meeting with all these people who can’t even vote in America. How nauseating to see somebody showboating around all glamorous-like with international superstars when there’s real work to do at home in the Real America (not New York). COUNTRY FIRST, PALIN. [Washington Wire]

United Nation Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has named famous starlet George Clooney as the social club’s ninth Messenger of Peace, because of his work doing something vaguely good for planet earth. Early reports indicate it was his phenomenal work in the film Ocean’s Thirteen that sealed the deal for Secretary-General Bat Shit-moon. MORE »

Colin Powell was right, motherfuckers, no matter how much he says he lied. When he told the United Nations that he totally knew for sure there were Weapons of Mass Destruction, his sole error was in claiming those evil weapons were in Iraq, when they were actually in the UN headquarters itself, only to be found by a cleaning crew four-and-a-half years later. MORE »

• A U.N.-brokered Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire went into effect this morning, yet few believe that the cessation of hostilities will last. [NYT, WP] MORE »

• As Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend urged Americans to remain calm and feel free to fly, British and American officials described the year-long probe that led to the arrest of two dozen alleged terrorists in Great Britain. [WP, AP]

• Liquid explosives: easy to make, more effective than dynamite, and impossible to screen for. [WP, NYT]
• Republicans, Democrats, and Joe Lieberman all claim terror helps their campaigns. [NYT, WP]
• Illegal immigration hasn’t hurt the US job market, a study finds. [WP]
• The UN is debating again an end to the month-long Israeli-Lebanese-Hezbollah war. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is heading to New York. [BBC]
• Elsewhere at the UN: “Feminists are trying to use the United Nations to impose a radical agenda — including legalized prostitution.” [WT]