Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - May 3, 2011

Royalty report:

The royal wedding is finally over and some very romantic stories are making their way to the internet. AbsoluteNow.com reports PRINCE WILLIAM gave a breathtaking toast to his new bride at their wedding saying his mother --the late PRINCESS DIANA --would have been "very very proud" and believes she would think KATE MIDDLETON was her "little boy's soul mate."
Meanwhile, Kate and William are going to be spending a lot of time apart during their first year of marriage. The British tabloid the London Sun reports the new groom's military career is quite demanding --he'll be stationed in Falkland Islands for two-and-a-half months beginning in September. Friends of the Duchess of Cambridge say it was a "bitter blow" to the new royal and an "awful way" to start their life together. (Lee)

If you still can't get enough of the Royal Wedding, the Franklin Mint is now taking orders for the official KATE MIDDLETON Royal Bridal Doll.
The doll goes for the low, low price of $295, and no detail has been overlooked, says fashion website The Hairpin. The doll will have Kate's tiara, her satin train, her sapphire engagement ring and her wedding band.
But for all that, you'll have to wait. The dolls won't be ready to ship until this summer. (Bartha)

Deadline.com says the Royal Honeymoon could happen early this summer, since Royal Family watcher ANDREW MORTON says "Royal aides have penciled in a two-day visit to Hollywood at the end of their tour of Canada which takes place in late June and early July. It will be their first overseas visit as a married couple."

Osama Sidebar:

So who's being credited with breaking the news of OSAMA BIN LADEN's death? DWAYNE "The Rock" JOHNSON, one of the stars of the movie "Fast Five." EW.com says that The Rock scooped most journalists, posting a message to his Twitter feed a full eight minutes before a CBS reporter.
Johnson wasn't the only one who shared the news that way. Twitter set a record Sunday night for it's highest-ever rate of tweets.
As word spread about the bin Laden's death, Twitter recorded an average of three thousand tweets-per-second between 10:45 p.m. and 2:20 a.m., peaking at at 11 p.m. at more than five thousand tweets-per-second.
Compare those numbers to the Superbowl, which peaked at around four thousand tweets per second and the Royal Wedding (hey - remember that?) which peaked at about 39-hundred tweets per second.
The Rock's tweet, by the way: "Just got word that will shock the world --Land of the free...home of the brave DAMN PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!"
Some other celebrity tweets that made the rounds:
--SETH MACFARLANE: “I predict that Osama’s picture will get little more than a smattering of tepid applause on the next Emmy 'In Memoriam' reel.”
--ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: “I’m proud of our men and women in uniform. Wherever you are, take a minute to say thank you to one of the brave heroes who serve our country.”
--ADAM McKAY: “Does ELTON JOHN do a bin Laden version of ‘Candle in the Wind’... ‘Like a giant hellish fireball in the wind...’”
--JIMMY KIMMEL: “I really hope bin Laden didn’t get reincarnated as one of MARIAH CAREY's babies."
--BILL MAHER: “Somali pirates, Gaddafi’s son, now bin Laden --do NOT f*** with Obama, he’s Gangsta!!” (Bartha)

Broadcast, cable and video news:

Preliminary ratings from the coverage of OSAMA bin LADEN's death once again show that CNN thrives during a crisis. CNN beat both Fox News and MSNBC From 11:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (Eastern) on Sunday night when PRESIDENT OBAMA spoke.
Those ratings were the best for CNN since Election Night in 2008. For Fox News, they were the best Sunday night ratings since the U-S invasion of Baghdad in April of 2003. (Pacelli)