Home alone at the White House, Barack Obama headed on an impromptu Christmas shopping trip with first dog Bo today – making the most of his free time as Congress remained in stalemate over payroll tax cuts for next year. The President’s wife and daughters are already on the family’s annual vacation in Hawaii – a trip which has attracted scathing criticism for its estimated cost of $4million, funded by the American taxpayer.  Obama is expected to fly to Hawaii in the next few days for his luxury vacation in a private beachfront villa. The alone time gave him the chance to pick up some cost-saving items in front of the cameras at PetSmart and Best Buy in Alexandria, Virginia – before indulging in pizza for lunch.

A contestant on the ‘Next Great Baker’ reality show committed suicide after being eliminated from the show.  But viewers were only told months after his death, on Monday, after his elimination had aired. Sergeant Wesley Durden, 28, an army paratrooper who had completed two tours in Iraq, died from a single self-influicted gunshot wound on October 24, according to the Jacksonville Daily News.  Durden of Jacksonville, North Carolina was the fourth contestant of 13 to be eliminated on the second season of the show hosted by Buddy Valastro of ‘Cake Boss’.  Durden’s elimination aired Monday evening. But in a shocking postscript to the show viewers were told that the army veteran had since committed suicide.

Miami’s new police chief was officially sworn in during a Tuesday morning ceremony. Manuel Orosa, who has served as interim chief since September, became the city’s permanent chief during the swearing in at the Miami Police College. “I grew up in the police department, we have made changes to bring stability to the department,” Orosa said at the ceremony, attended by Mayor Tomas Regalado, most of the city commission and community members. “Now we can get the politics out of the police chief’s office and get down to the work of protecting the citizens,” Regalado said. Orosa, a 31-year veteran of the department, held numerous command positions before he was selected the city’s top cop earlier this month. He is Miami’s 35th police chief. NBC Miami

A former co-star of Sean Penn has told how she had a stand up row with the activist actor and ended up calling him a ‘communist a**hole’. Maria Conchita Alonso said she confronted Penn during a chance meeting at LAX airport to talk to him about his support for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. While she branded him a communist she claimed he humiliated her in front of other passengers by calling her a ‘pig’. The actress, who represented her native Venezuela in the Miss World Pageant and finished runner up, said she walked up to Penn to say she was ‘appalled’ by his support for Chavez. The pair had starred together in the 1988 film ‘Colors’ about gang violence in Los Angeles and Alonso said she had written an open letter to the actor to express her anger at his support for the Chavez regime. Alonso said:’I said, ‘I would like to talk to you.’ ‘He said, “I have nothing to say to you . . . You have been saying a lot of things about me in the press.” I said, “How can you defend Chavez?”‘ Penn, who was travelling from Haiti where he is heavily involved in charity work, admitted her had a row with Alonso while in the lost luggage area. He told the New York Post: ‘I only knew that a hostile woman was nonsensically berating me. I didn’t realize it was that actress.

A man who persuaded his brother to eat an ounce of cocaine after they were arrested is to be charged with causing his death. Wayne Joshua Mitchell, 20, collapsed and died an hour after ingesting the drug as he sat in the back of a police car. His 23-year-old brother, who was captured on a police video cameras urging his brother to eat the drug, has been charged with his death.  Deangelo Rashard Mitchell is heard on the police film telling his younger brother that if he is caught with the drug he will spend the rest of his life in prison. At his urging his younger brother swallows the drug. ‘I love you, bro,’ Wayne Mitchell says. An hour later he was dead . A toxicology test revealed the cause of death was from ingesting cocaine. Mail Online

BlackBerry has been ordered to a summit meeting with Ofcom to explain why children are still able to download pornography on its phones. Young people are able to download pornography through the popular handset even if their phone operator has installed a filter because data flows through the BlackBerry’s own server. Research In Motion, the company behind the BlackBerry, will be joined by other leading phone networks at the meeting called by the telecommunications regulator. An Ofcom spokesman told The Telegraph: ‘It was brought to our attention that there is a problem. It is to do with the way the operating system works. We are very concerned and want to get this resolved as quickly as possible.’ Mobile phone networks have been able to apply filters to other handsets, such as the iPhone, but because of data flows through the BlackBerry’s own services leading operators have been unable to block pornography on the popular phone.

Facebook and its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg have been warned that they risk being sued by anyone from celebrities to ordinary citizens over one of the site’s most recognisable features – the ‘Like’ button. The site currently reveals any products or interests that users ‘like’ to their friends. This could be illegal under Californian law – which forbids unauthorised use of people’s likenesses for commercial purposes.. A judge in San Jose has thrown out the company’s bid to dismiss the first case against Facebook – where users allege they have been ‘economically injured’ by the site’s use of the ‘Like’ button for advertising.Facebook first introduced ‘promotions’ in January of this year – where users opt to ‘Like’ products, often in conjunction with prizes or even bonuses in online games -  with Zuckerberg insisting that ‘a trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.’However, US District judge Lucy Koh has insisted that users should be entitled to some gain from commercial endorsements that stem if someone chooses to ‘like’ a certain product or interest on the site. Mail Online

Kim Jong-il’s death at the age of 69 ended an era of profligacy and harshness that included reports of both his wild living in his many mansions and stories from defectors of extreme cruelty in a gulag system to which 200,000 people were constantly consigned.

The report of the demise of the man known as North Korea’s “dear leader” – who reportedly imported cognac along with Swedish hostesses and dined on fine food dished up by a Japanese chef who dedicated a special brand of sushi to him – confirmed speculation that he had been seriously ill for awhile.

Kim Jong-il was born in 1941 or 1942 near the Soviet Siberian city of Khabarosk while his father, the long-ruling Kim Il-sung, was an officer in the Red Army. However, most North Koreans never heard the truth about Kim Jong-il’s origins. They were told that he was born in a cabin on Mount Paektu, the highest peak on the Korean peninsula, straddling the North Korean-Chinese border. As he was born, rainbows appeared in the heavens, according to the story put out by the propaganda machine that his father built over the years after he was sent by the Russians to Korea on a merchant ship following the Japanese surrender in August 1945.

Kim Jong-il was widely reported to have suffered a stroke in August 2008 and afterward disappeared from public view for several months while recovering. In the past two years his health appeared to greatly improve, and he went on regular inspection tours of military installations, factories, farms, and markets, generally accompanied by his son Kim Jong-un, who is poised to succeed him. - csmonitor.com