Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check

Married:

sources including People magazine and the NY Daily News report actors MEGAN FOX and BRIAN AUSTIN GREEN were married in a hush-hush ceremony at the Four Seasons Hotel last week while vacationing on Hawaii's Big Island. It's the first marriage for both. She's 24; he's 36 and has an eight-year-old son with actress VANESSA MARCIL.

He's dead, Jim:

WV Sen ROBERT BYRD, the longest-serving Senator in US history, has died at the age of 92.
   Quotable: "...and AL FRANKEN continues his inexorable climb up the Senate seniority ladder." (In Washington, when a longtime member of Congress dies, we don't dwell on his accomplishments. We focus on 'what does this mean for Committee Chairmanships,' and 'who gets his hide-away office'? --Don Brownlee, Washington, DC)

Spy-vs-Spy:

The Justice Department has arrested 10 people believed to be deep cover agents for the Russian government. An 11th suspect is still at large.
   According to the indictment, several of the agents had lived in the U-S for up to 20 years, and were instructed to become "normal citizens" and "get in touch with 'influential' Americans --college professors, contractors, congressional staffers." The agents adopted Americanized names --"Cynthia Murphy," "Tracey Lee Ann Foley," and "Richard Murphy" were among those charged-- and eight of them posed as married couples. Some of the Americans were names of the deceased.
   The agents were allegedly trained by the KGB successor SVR, and are thought to be skilled in foreign languages and code-breaking.

Signs your neighbor is a Russian spy (Maiman):

   --Drinks Russian dressing like it's soda pop
   --Begins every conversation by saying, "Hey, you know any secrets?"
   --Every Halloween gives your kids plutonium
   --He's been driving around the last six months with the body of Leonid Brezhnev in the trunk of his Buick
   --You mention you're having problems in the bedroom, and he says, "Yeah, I know"
   --You spot Vladimir Putin doing cannonballs in his pool
   --Took sick day to tape Jerry Springer episode when topic was "I married a Russian spy"
   --Takes a lot of "souvenir photos" of classified documents
   --When that annoying kid comes on the radio, he says, "Comrade Bieber is good, no?"
   --You tell him you work for the government and the next thing you know you wake up nude in Switzerland
   --Knows hundreds of recipes for turnips

Sucking the life out of the wire services:

Forbes magazine is out with its annual list of the most powerful people in Hollywood and OPRAH WINFREY sits right at the top. The list includes salary and earnings of the most powerful people, along with the number of times a personality is mentioned in print, TV, radio and social media. The top-10:
10. Madonna, $58 million,
9. Johnny Depp, $75 million,
8. Sandra Bullock, $56 million,
7. U2, $130 million,
6. Britney Spears, $64 million,
5. Tiger Woods, $105 million,
4. Lady Gaga, $62 million,
3. James Cameron, $210 million,
2. Beyonce Knowles, $87 million,
1. Oprah Winfrey, $315 million
   FYI: Simon Cowell is 11th with $80 million; Taylor Swift 12th with $45 million; Miley Cyrus is 13th with $48 million. The full list is at www.forbes.com/celebs.