The buzz saw is spinning, just not all day long. At Shell Lumber in Miami, the whiff in the air isn’t just the sawdust; it’s also about business starting to regain some traction. Shell is a construction supply depot, selling anything and everything you would need to build a home, remodel a kitchen or just turn an old house into a modernized marvel.

Back in ’05 and ’06, when new homes and condo towers were being built all up and down south Florida, this place would have a line of pickup trucks waiting for the store to open every morning at 5:30 a.m. That’s not the case these days, but owner Adam Haase says, optimistically, perhaps the swing of the economic pendulum is heading back up towards good times again.

In the past week, he’s hired 3 new employees to work the floor, helping customers who are coming in to buy the supplies for new projects and new contracts. Sales are happening, he says, just not the high-end sales, like the expensive Brazilian lumber for Amozonesque backyard decks.

“People are opening their wallets, but they’re not emptying their wallets,” he says. But the more business he gets at Shell Lumber, he says that’s a direct link to what’s happening in the construction economy at large. This, on a day when Florida’s Labor Department just announced that the Sunshine State’s unemployment level has now hit 11%, the highest since 1975.

The White House “beer summit” will take place Thursday evening at a picnic table outside the Oval Office on Thursday, weather permitting.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says that’s when President Barack Obama will share a beer with Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and Police Sergeant James Crowley and discuss the fallout from Gates’ arrest at his Cambridge home earlier this month. It happened after a woman called 911 to report what she thought was a break-in at a home just off Harvard Square.

It turned out to be Gates, who is black, trying to get into his home after returning from a trip to China. Crowley, who is white, arrested Gates for disorderly conduct following an alleged verbal tirade. The charge was eventually dropped.

Obama got involved when he was asked about it at a news conference and responded that police had acted “stupidly.” On Friday, the president went into the White House briefing room and told reporters he wished he had used different language.

Glenn shares his view on “The Beer Summit”!

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Everyone seems to know the signature drink of the Kentucky Derby is the Mint Julep. But did you know the Belmont Stakes has its own cocktail too?  No? Perhaps that’s because the recipe was too complex.  Last year, while covering the the triple crown race with Correspondent Laura Ingle we had to keep triple checking the ingredients: a shot of this, a jigger of that…
This year it was  pared down to just three ingredients: bourbon, lemonade and pomegranate juice … making the “Breeze” … well, a breeze! Celebrity chef and mixologist John Ashton showed Senior Correspondent Rick Leventhal how to make them on Saturday. It’s pretty much a third of each.  So catch a “Breeze” while relaxing this summer at the racetrack!

As the sun rises over Tijuana, I start to think about all the changes we’ve seen along this border in the last seven years. We didn’t think twice about heading south to cover immigration issues or other stories, but now, that’s almost out of the question because of the ongoing and brutal drug war. Just two days ago, two more headless bodies were dumped in Tijuana and another bunch of police were arrested for corruption. President Calderon’s office tells me that they’re doing everything they can and by most accounts here on the border, they are making some progress. However, there is still widespread corruption in government and law enforcement south of our border, which makes the job of our border agents that much more difficult and imperative. As we report on the nearly 40 billion in illegal drug profits flowing from the US into Mexico (compared with an estimated 25 billion sent home by immigrant workers), Customs and Border Protection passes along this release and photos:

SAN DIEGO – U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at San Diego area ports of entry have noticed a disturbing new trend in the past several months involving an upswing in the use of boys and young adult males to smuggle narcotics taped to their bodies as they enter the U.S. on foot.
Since late August 2008, when CBP officers first noted the upswing, until the end of last month CBP officers at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa passenger ports apprehended 157 teen and adult pedestrians entering the United States from Mexico carrying a total of 285 pounds of marijuana, 1.2 pounds of heroin, 4.7 pounds of cocaine and over nine pounds of methamphetamine concealed under their clothing.
The majority of the border crossers were young U.S. citizens while the rest were Mexican males. They ranged in age from 15 to 56, with the majority being in their teens or early 20’s. Almost 75 percent of the males were under 29 years of age and 25 percent were under age 18. Most of the males caught smuggling narcotics were wearing loose, multiple layers of clothing to hide the bulging packages taped to their bodies.

Although strapping narcotics to a traveler’s torso is not a new smuggling technique, apprehensions since last August have burgeoned 811 percent at San Ysidro and 316 percent at Otay Mesa compared to the same period the previous year when officers discovered a total of 23 pedestrians entering local ports with concealed narcotics. The trend has continued into this month with the apprehension on March 2 of three 14-year old U.S. citizen boys caught smuggling a total of  over 11 pounds of marijuana as they entered the San Ysidro port pedestrian facility from Mexico.