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Just a day after Katie Couric announced she’ll leave NBC’s Today Show to host the CBS Evening News, CBS chairman Les Moonves said he’s close to a deal to replace 60 Minutes reporter Mike Wallace with Wheel of Fortune’s Vanna White. The world-famous letter-turner said, “I’m not really a journalist by training, but I might give it a spin.”

The number of New York City residents on welfare fell to about 402,000 last month, the lowest level since 1964 — down sharply from the peak of 1.2 million people in 1995. Upon hearing the news of growing employment and shrinking dependency on government, New York Democrats called an emergency summit to deal with the crisis.

Scientists have discovered a fossil near the Arctic circle which they say provides a missing link between sea-dwellers and land-based animals. The creature, with a head like an alligator and a body like a fish, may have been able to breathe air and even waddle across land for short distances. The journal Nature says the find is the most important evidence for evolution since the discovery of the jack-a-lope.

In an attempt to break the Senate deadlock on immigration reform, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel and Florida Sen. Mel Martinez proposed a bill today that would crack down on recent illegal immigrants, yet offer a path to citizenship for those who violated U.S. immigration law before January 2001. Under the terms of the measure, roughly six million undocumented workers living in the U.S. for five years or more would be granted guest worker visas and then hired to work for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. With the INS, they would try to find and deport six million others who broke U.S. law more recently. Sen. Hagel, reportedly a Republican, said “putting our illegal amigos on the federal payroll, will help us keep track of them. As federal bureaucrats, their high pay and excellent government health insurance will keep them from becoming a burden on American taxpayers.”

In related news, Sen. Hillary Clinton, of New York, said yesterday that under the immigration reform bill, already passed by the House, she could be jailed for giving assistance to undocumented workers who live among her constituents. It was not immediately clear if the senator would serve time in the same correctional facility as the Good Samaritan and Jesus of Nazareth.

The 2006 Congressional Pig Book hit the stores yesterday, with a list of $3.4 billion in Congressional spending for pork-barrel projects. A coalition of senators from the south immediately earmarked $14 million for a study to determine if next year’s Congressional Pig Book could be printed on domestically-grown tobacco leaves.

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