news ... follow the money

-- Exxon Mobil, Baghdad, the Kurds, the Turks and others are jockeying for the oil and its implications in territory claimed by the much-ignored Kurds.

-- The U.S. government, which bailed out big business using the too-big-to-fail argument, once claimed that the government would recoup the outlays of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Now, as if you couldn't have guessed it from the get-go, a watchdog report suggests that taxpayers will probably be on the hook for $27 billion. No word on whether the taxpayers will receive a bailout.

-- Mexican authorities raided and supposedly broke up the "Defenders of Christ," a group or "cult" led by a man claiming to be a reincarnation of Jesus that allegedly ran a sex-slave ring along the U.S.-Mexican border. Police are still trying to sort out who are the victims and who are the abusers.

-- In the Bronx, N.Y., a seven-year-old school boy was taken away in police handcuffs and held/interrogated for 10 hours in a dispute over a missing $5, according to the boy's family.

-- In Indonesia, a mob of monkeys, usually known for shying from human beings, attacked a village and its inhabitants, injuring several, one critically. The ten or so monkeys scared the hell out of the villagers. Authorities are trying to determine what caused the monkeys to go on the offensive. Maybe they too were looking for money?