President Obama unveils US budget plan to trim deficit, with $4 trillion in cuts over 12 years, keeping Medicare and Medicaid, and curbs on charity write-offs. The 2012 race in mind, Barack and Michelle Obama also plan to appear on Oprah's May 2nd show.

Apple's iPhone 5 said to be coming this summer, while do-not-track tool added to new Safari browser. Sony, meanwhile, lands top spot for consumer electronics in latest Harris Poll.

Barry Bonds found guilty of osbtruction of justice.

LeBron James bumps Kobe Bryant for the bestselling NBA jersey, as Bryant accused of anti-gay slur.

BP cleanup funds come under scrutiny.Continue reading...

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama took to Facebook this week, not just as the President and First Lady of the United States, but as parents.

They released the above PSA on the White House's Facebook page to invite Facebookers to attend a first of its kind event — the March 10th White House conference on bullying, and particularly cyberbullying and digital bullying.

Check out the meeting, along with answers to questions posted on Facebook, below.Continue reading...

If Ronald McDonald could ever have wiped that perpetual smile off his face, he could have seen his demise coming a mile away.

Ronald – the iconic clown used by McDonalds to appeal to kids for decades – isn’t dead yet, but the chain seems to be benching him.

After 48 years, Bloomberg reports, McDonalds has been distancing itself from the clown mascot that got its start when eventual TV weatherman Willard Scott morphed his Bozo character into a brand-specific cousin in a promotion for Washington, D.C. area McDonald's.

Rumors of his demise have been around for a while; indeed, some "video artists" have taken it upon themselves to hold the character hostage (warning: it doesn't end well for Ronald.)

A few years ago, the company essentially sidelined Ronald’s friends in McDonaldland, such as Mayor McCheese and the Hamburglar.

Now, the US war on Happy Meals and marketing with toys in an era when there's national outcry from the White House on down about childhood obesity seem to have dealt Ronald a blow that eventually will indeed prove fateful.Continue reading...

Michelle Obama is teaming up with the first couple of tennis, Andre Agassi and Stefanie Graf, in a partnership between the United States Tennis Association and the first lady's Let’s Move campaign to fight childhood obesity.

In a new public service announcement debuting tonight on ESPN, Obama, Agassi and Graf are shown as ballpersons in a PSA that will air during telecast of the BNP Paribas Showdown at Madison Square Garden.

Let's Move celebrated its first anniversary earlier this month, while Agassi and Graf — parents themselves — have long been active with Agassi's Las Vegas-based foundation to help kids. Agassi, the eight-time grand slam champion and former #1 men's tennis player, is being inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame on July 9th.

AP catches up with Kate Betts, author of a new book on Michelle Obama, at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. Betts explains what the First Lady's personal brand and style means to fashion, politics and more.

New research showing that eating your vegetables (and fruit) also makes you more attractive should come as good news to PETA, which once again got barred from the Super Bowl for its latest frisky "veggie love" campaign — and, to a lesser extent, to the First Lady, whose kid-centric Let's Move campaign turned one yesterday, and Oprah, who recently put her staff on a weeklong vegan diet.

Today is the first anniversary of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative, the government's program to combat childhood obesity.

To mark the occasion, the First Lady unveiled a new series of public service announcements that will run on-air and online.

Created by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Ad Council, the PSAs aim to provide parents and caregivers throughout the country with information to help them make healthy food choices and increase physical activity.

Check them out after the jump and let us know in the comments if you think they're effective.Continue reading...

American food and beverage manufacturers and retailers finally launched their new system for front-of-package nutritional labeling this week, declaring with political point-scoring in mind that it all had to do with prompting by First Lady Michelle Obama and her anti-obesity initiative.

But the reality is more complicated:

• The industry doesn’t like the system favored by Mrs. Obama and the Food & Drug Administration, which is still devising its own new “voluntary” standards for nutritional labeling – and so the group launched a scheme that the feds won’t completely endorse.

• While crediting Mrs. Obama’s efforts from the bully pulpit, some manufacturers already were using essentially the same system they have now settled upon — even before the First Lady embraced the childhood-obesity platform and urged them to change their labels.Continue reading...