Check out my blog from yesterday for more photos!

On those mornings when I’ve only been afforded two hours of sleep, the first thing I attempt, when the alarm goes off, is problem solving; there must be some way I can accomplish everything I need to accomplish, yet stay in this bed for at least another hour. Therefore, on a morning like this, I fail at my first task of the day.

On this particular morning, I needed to meet my cameraman, Chris Jackson, at our office in Jerusalem, load up the gear, get through the stringent security at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv and fly to Amman, Jordan to begin the ground trek to Beirut. The difficulty in making the trip points out the cantankerous folly of man. As the missile flies, the trip from Jerusalem to Beirut would take about 5 hours by car. With Rafiq Hariri international airport in Beirut shut down by Hezbollah, a long series of border crossings and paranoid customs inspectors ahead of me, I was ambitiously betting on 18 hours.

So, we hooked up with a driver in Amman and headed for the Syrian border. At the crossing I found many of my contemporaries in the foreign press, the BBC, Canadian Broadcast Company, Swedish radio and a handful of newspaper reporters. Since I was the only one in the bunch who speaks Arabic, I ended up the translator. It still took hours to get visas and get through customs. It’s Ironic that the Syrians made the border so time-consuming; none of us had any interest in Syria. All we wanted was to cross over Syrian land and get to Lebanon where Hezbollah was making swift work of dominating the forces loyal to the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

Word was out that a roadblock of burning tires had severed the road, connecting Damascus to Beirut. So, our plan was to drive all the way around to the North of Lebanon, cross the border there and drive down through Tripoli. But the drivers, through their remarkable cell-phone, buddy network, passed word that the road through Tripoli had been blocked as well. We changed our plan and crossed into Lebanon between Damascus and Beirut.

Before we got to the Lebanese passport control, we could see the black smoke of burning tires rising up from the roadblock. Our driver could not take us any further, so Chris and I had to hand carry the gear. The job was made easier by the eager hands of young Lebanese boys who were more than happy to snatch up our gear and carry it around the roadblock in exchange for a buck or two. The gear was snatched up so quickly (and without us asking for help) my immediate concern was that gear would walk away in the chaos. Chris and I ran alongside trying to keep track of each piece. In the end the kids were honest. They were happy to get a dollar and all our gear arrived at the car.

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My name is Adam Petlin — I’m the Operations Supervisor for FOX News Channel’s Chicago Bureau.

I’ve been commuting to work on my bike for the last year and wanted to give you a behind the scenes look.

The ride from my Wicker Park neighborhood to our downtown office is about 3.5 miles. Depending on the weather and traffic it takes between 15-20 minutes. I’m glad winter riding is over. Now it’s riding in Chicago’s other season, construction.

The song playing in the background is by Black Angels, called “Black Grease.”

We ask that question in tonight’s Fox Report w/ Shepard Smith.

Here in the Atlanta area, Fulton County school officials are experimenting with a pilot project that targets students struggling with math or science.

The “Learn & Earn” program is paying 40 public school students in the Atlanta suburb of Fairburn $8 an hour to attend remedial classes.

The privately funded project is being financed by Charles Loudermilk, the founder and CEO of Atlanta-based Aaron Rents, Inc., through the Learning Makes a Difference Foundation.
The non-profit group’s president, Jackie Cushman, says “Learn & Earn” is the brainchild of her father, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who became concerned after a 2001 congressional commission (Hart-Rudman) identified deficiencies in math and science education as a threat to national security.

Click on the video to see my entire interview with Cushman.

Mike Tobin in the mountains south of Beirut; Mike Tobin holds up the remains of a shell during a live shot

Mike Tobin going live from the hills above Beirut; Mike Tobin and field producer Marcia Biggs look at a rocket shell

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The special election to replace a Georgia legislator who pleaded guilty to money laundering appears headed for a runoff, pitting a national guardsman against a minister.

Dee Dawkins-Haigler, a political consultant who is also an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, received 164 votes in yesterday’s election.

With less than the required “50 percent plus one” majority, Dawkins-Haigler will likely face a June 10 runoff against her apparent runner-up, national guardsman and former police officer Malik Douglas, who received 99 votes.

The day before the election, Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel announced Douglas’s name would be allowed to remain on the official ballot.

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Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel has decided to allow a national guardsman to remain on the ballot of today’s special election to fill the District 93 state house seat.

Malik Douglas is one of six candidates vying to fill the unexpired term of State Representative Ron Sailor, Jr. who resigned in March after pleading guilty to money laundering.

Douglas was deployed in Iraq, when he learned that one of the other candidates, Colet Odenigbo, was challenging the legality of his seeking elected office while on active duty with the military.

The National Guard allowed Douglas to return to the U.S. to appear before an administrative law judge hearing the case. On May 7, Judge Michael Malihi dismissed the case, writing that Odenigbo “did not present any admissible evidence to support his legal argument.”

Late Monday, the day before the election, Secretary Handel formally adopted the judge’s decision, allowing Douglas to remain on the ballot, along with Odenigbo and three other candidates: Dee Dawkins-Haigler, Jim Sendelbach and Traci Waites. A sixth contender, KaTesha Sagers is running as a write-in candidate.

In a press release Handel said, “The State should not create higher hurdles for brave men and women serving in the Armed Forces who want and are otherwise eligible to stand for election here in Georgia.”

Odenigbo tells me he wants to see the outcome of today’s six-way contest before deciding whether to appeal the secretary of state’s decision.

We’re reporting from outside a polling location at Murphy Candler Elementary School in the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia. Click on the video for a look behind the scenes.

I have some great news to report. I promised to give an update on a story I wrote here on the blog March 3rd titled “Military Pen Pal Proposal” about my friend Jennifer Jones and her army soldier finance Scott Lee who has been deployed in Iraq. She has been anxiously waiting for Scott’s safe return to the U.S. for an agonizing 17 months total, and just last week, he came home.

Jones flew here to New York from San Francisco, and met Scott at Fort Dix in New Jersey, then the two of them came to stay with me in the city, and what a joy it was to see them together again.

Can you tell how happy she is? Just look at those dimples! We took a walk around the city when they got in, and checked out Carnegie Hall, Times Square, and a place Jones and I called our second home several years ago, the Sheraton Hotel on 7th Avenue.

We each were dispatched to New York during 9-11 from our California radio stations, and were both sent to this hotel. This is where we each built mini remote radio locations in our hotel rooms and did live reports day in and day out. It was raining when we walked up, but wanted to snap a picture anyway…

The very first thing Scott wanted to do in New York, was to get a slice of New York pizza, and after much debate with my friends and co-workers about where to take him(everyone in New York has a strong opinion about where to go for the best pizza in the city…) the decision was made to go to John’s pizza on Broadway.

I had never been there before, and I think it really might be the best slice of pizza around. Can you imagine what this must have tasted like for someone who has been eating MREs in Iraq for all those months?

The happy couple are now off visiting Scott’s family in the south, then they will soon start their new life together in the San Francisco area.

The wedding plans are full steam ahead….no word on if John’s Pizza will cater the event.

MONDAY: No storm clouds today. Just sun and lots of wind. But that wind is slowing the cleanup and recovery.

Homeowners and construction crews are battling to keep tarps from blowing off the roofs of damaged homes. And the winds are slowing utility crews in their efforts to restore electricity to tens of thousand of residents — in some cases knocking out power in neighborhoods unaffected by the Mother’s Day storm.

The National Weather Service has confirmed half a dozen tornadoes struck parts of Georgia yesterday, including the suburban Atlanta neighborhood in Clayton County from where we’ve been doing our live reports (click on the video for a look behind the scenes).

Meteorologists estimate these twisters carried winds between 120 and 130 miles per hour, which would categorize them as EF-2 on the Enhanced Fujita scale.

In Clayton County alone, the storm damaged 163 homes. Local authorities have deemed 45 of those homes uninhabitable.

Clayton is just one of 19 Georgia counties, from the northern part of the state to the coast, reporting damage from Sunday’s storm.

My colleague Marianne Silber continues our coverage today.

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SUNDAY: The Atlanta bureau is en-route to Ellenwood — a suburban Atlanta community hit hard this morning by a storm system that has spawned tornadoes and heavy winds across much of the Midwest and Southeastern United States.

A Georgia Power spokeswoman tells me 87,000 residents are still without electricity statewide, 11,000  of them here in Metro-Atlanta. But the vast majority of those without power, 63-thousand residents, are concentrated in the center of the state — near Macon.

Georgia Power says one of the biggest obstacles is fallen trees. Utility crews are having to cut their way through debris to get to affected areas.

Rescue crews complain of similar problems. According to Georgia Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Lisa Janak, 19 Georgia Counties are reporting damage.

This morning’s storm system struck Georgia barely two months after the EF-2 tornado that ripped through downtown Atlanta. The city still shows scars from that storm, with windows boarded up on some of the downtown skyscrapers.

Among the buildings damaged in that March tornado — the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Disaster Assistance. SBA spokesman Richard Daigle compares it to “when the firehouse catches fire,” but insists it did not slow the agency down in processing grants and low-interest loans for businesses and individuals who sustained uninsured losses.

Good thing. His office will, no doubt, find itself busy once again as this active tornado season continues to unleash its fury.

Atlanta field technician Jeff Burton is putting the finishing touches on our story about the One Laptop Per Child program, before we feed it to New York for tonight’s Fox Report w/ Shepard Smith.

One Laptop Per Child is a non-profit organization that designs low-cost computers, primarily for children in developing countries.

However, the City of Birmingham, AL has purchased 15,000 of the $200 “XO” laptops for use in public schools.

The story has multiple angles — technology, education, world poverty and business.

In fact, we will be turning separate versions of the story — one for tonight’s Fox Report, which focuses on why a “Third World” program has attracted the attention of educators and city officials in Birmingham. The other version of this story, which we are turning for Fox Business Network on Monday, focuses on One Laptop Per Child’s impact on the computer industry and the global economy.

For both stories, we interviewed Nicholas Negroponte, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist who founded One Laptop Per Child. Click on the video to watch an extended version of his comments.

FRIDAY UPDATE

Bonds for those arrested in the big San Diego State drug sting range from $10,000 to $150,000, many accused have already pled not guilty. This comes as a professor at San Diego State tells the Union-Tribune newspaper that she’s concerned the school’s president Stephen Weber “unilaterally authorized” the Drug Enforcement Administration to conduct the operation. According to reports, “Now it’s drugs,” says Carole Kennedy, a political science professor who heads the faculty union. “Maybe next time it’s about political dissent … What happens when you have students talking about federal income tax policy, saying they’re not going to pay their taxes? Are they going to bring in IRS agents?”

WEDNESDAY NIGHT

We are getting ready for Greta’s show and we’ll be talking beforehand with Deputy District Attorney Damon Mosler. He’s appearing right after our report as our live is slated for about 10:06pm (7:06pm Pacific). Damon tells me about the strong cooperation between the DA, DEA and campus police. He explains the DA in San Diego County was approached last September to get involved in this investigation, one he believes is the largest bust ever on any college campus. He like the DEA believes that more arrests could come as all the avenues are followed.

WEDNESDAY LATE UPDATE

Just got off the phone with a contact at the DEA. They are obviously swamped with the ongoing investigation and the background parts of the case. They say more arrests are very possible, nothing like the magnitude we just saw with this bust, but groups of a couple here, four there etc. could go down as the pieces of the drug puzzle are put together.

They are looking at the connections with the Mexican drug cartels. At this point it looks like the gang banger from LA was the connection into the states.

They can’t comment about any investigations that may or may not be ongoing at other colleges. So far this drug web has not spread to other schools.

The DEA agent I spoke with says they hope this bust reminds people about the dangers of drugs and that parents need to communicate and stay informed of what their children are doing even when they are in college. Keep Reading …