Here are the big stories on the agenda today:
- A happy homecoming. The crew of the Maersk Alabama – the U.S.-flagged cargo ship hijacked by Somali pirates last week – arrived in the United States early Thursday. There were smiles and hugs and “welcome home’s.” Now the crew awaits their skipper, Captain Rich Phillips. He was detoured when the Navy was called to help another ship shake the pirates, but could be in the air any moment.
- President Obama heads to Mexico City today to meet with President Felipe Calderon, before traveling to Trinidad and Tobago for the fifth Summit of the Americas, with the border plagued by drug violence, and U.S. immigration reform on the shelf. Homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano is making her 2nd visit of the month to Mexico. She is meeting with government officials to discuss southwest border violence. We’ll ask her how the U.S. can assist and should respond. We are also continuing our special series “Drug Nation.” Today: Should we legalize pot? Many of you blog watchers say yes and the war on drugs is not working. We look at the pros and cons.
- Impulse Buying… and Selling: Can the personalities of stock traders be behind the wild swings in the markets the past few years? At least one researcher at MIT thinks the way traders react to bubbles and crashes has in part, magnified gains and losses.
- Beer Wars...
Encouraging the growth of small business has been an economic cornerstone of every politician’s plan for recovery. Yet, in one of America’s most beloved industries, beer, many say it’s nearly impossible for the “small guy” to break in. A new blistering Michael Moore-Like documentary, “Beer Wars” investigates, what some consider the “dirty tricks” used by the massive beer corporations in order to suppress any competition. The film investigates allegations that Budweiser, Coors and Miller have created a huge number of container shapes in order to take up a disproportionate amount of space on store shelves, that they spend tens of millions wining and dining Washington law makers in order to keep archaic distribution laws on the books.