The first-term senator and now the President-elect, Barack Obama, will get versed with the "burdens of office" on Thursday, when he will receive his first 'top secret briefing' from Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence. Vice-president elect, Joseph Biden, will receive a separate briefing from the CIA.
Intelligence officials told ABCNews. com that McConnell will be accompanied by the CIA's top intelligence analyst, Michael Morel, the Director for Intelligence, and two senior CIA briefers.
Making history, on 4th November Democrat Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States. History was again made the morning after when Elisabeth Hasselbeck, co-host, longtime panelist of 'The View' - a five-woman talk show and a vocal support of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, did not feel any outrage over Obama winning the election. When Joy Behar, her Democratic co-host asked: 'Are you saying I was right all along?', Hasselbeck not only smiled, she also gave Behar a fist bump. 
, 18, a New England Patriots cheerleader has been kicked off the squad after online pictures of her and another person covering a drunken person in profane words, pictures, anti-semitic verbiage, including swastikas surfaced. One wonders what she could have been thinking as the social circle of Bob and Myra Kraft who own the Patriots, also includes fellow leaders of the Anti-Defamation League. 
Jean-Claude Van Damme's new action comedy JCVD has the Muscles From Brussels playing a version of himself i. e. a Belgian actor caught up in a random bank robbery, in what one can only assume is a semi-autobiographical movie. There are some funny moments in the beginning, admittedly; however, soon as the movie begins to get serious, one finds them quickly tapering off. 
Approving a $10 billion bond to fund the country's most ambitious high-speed rail system's first phase, California voters have given the green light for work to start on the 
Barack Obama has little time to relax after he triumphed over Republican John McCain, and made history as the first African-American elected the US president - he has to grapple with two wars and a deepening financial crisis.
