Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - Oct 26, 2011

The President at play:

PRESIDENT OBAMA rolled out a plan yesterday to help reduce the monthly payments for millions of Americans dealing with high student loan debt. Using an executive order, he'll bypass Congress and reduce the maximum percentage of income that 1.6 million current students will have to pay toward their student loans to 10 percent.
Those students will also be eligible for loan forgiveness in 20 years instead of 25.
The president will also give at least six-million others with different types of federal student loans a chance to roll them into one payment, while cutting their interest rate by one-half-point starting this January. (Pacelli)

Occupy Wall Street:

Occupying Wall Street and about to get thrown in jail? Now you can tell all your friends about your impending arrest with the touch of a button.
A Brooklyn software developer who sympathizes with the protests has built an “I'm Getting Arrested” app for "occcupiers" with Android phones. The user writes a text message in advance and enters a recipient list, and the app creates a button so the protester can send the blast just before the cuffs get slapped on.
The developer, named JASON VAN ANDEN, said he came up with the idea when a colleague lamented that his girlfriend was about to get busted but didn’t have an easy way to inform all her contacts.
As of Monday morning, some 9-thousand people had downloaded the app.
The way things have been going in Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Oakland yesterday and maybe again soon in New York --there figures to be quite a market for it. Van Anden is working on an iPhone version next. (Maiman)

Guilty Pleasures:

No winner in Saturday night's drawing for the Powerball Lottery. That means tonight's drawing is valued at $173 million ($105 million cash value). Powerball is played in 44 states, Washington DC and the U-S Virgin Islands. Chances of winning the grand prize (all five numbers plus the Powerball) are 1 in 195.2 million.

MICHAEL JACKSON has been dead for two years now, but he's still the top-earning dead celebrity, according to Forbes magazine's latest rankings. In fact, he's far and away the highest-earning dead celebrity, topping the number two dead celeb, ELVIS PRESLEY, by nearly three times. The full list:
13. (tie) painter Andy Warhol, pinup girl Bettie Page and former Beatle, George Harrison: $6 million
9. (tie) composer Richard Rodgers, movie star Steve McQueen, author Stieg Larsson and singer Jimi Hendrix: $7 million
8. Children's book author Theodor "Dr Suess" Geisel: $9 million
7. Physicist Albert Einstein, $10 million
5. (tie) actress Elizabeth Taylor and former Beatle John Lennon: $12 million
4. "Charlie Brown" artist Charles Schulz, $25 million
3. actress Marilyn Monroe, $27 million
2. singer Elvis Presley, $55 million
1. singer Michael Jackson, $170 million

Designer Update:

PAULA DEEN says she’s coming out with her own clothing line. She mentioned it during her appearance on "The Tonight Show" with JAY LENO. There are no more details yet, but if Paula’s clothes are anything like the butter-flavored lip balm we heard about last week, they’re sure to include aprons spattered with a whole lot of Southern-fried greasy goodness. (Bartha)

Grace notes from Vinny Marino:

The unbreakable STEVEN TYLER had yet another accident. He was with AEROSMITH in Paraguay and lost two of his teeth after slipping and falling while taking a shower in his hotel bathroom. Steven is OK, but he had to go through four hours of emergency dental work at a local hospital. Aerosmith had to cancel its concert in Paraguay, which is a stop on the band's tour of Latin America. (Marino)