I’ve covered enough high profile search and rescues to know that if the missing would have had some kind of a GPS locator beacon they probably would still be alive. James Kim, the San Francisco techie who got stuck in the Oregon mountains during a snowstorm could have been saved by technology. He left his family in the car while he went for help only to die of hypothermia while teams looked for him. Cases like that, led many people to buy the latest locator gadget. And now authorities are starting to see some abuse of the products by people who have little experience in the back country. They call it Yuppie 9-1-1.

Mostly it’s people hitting the S.O.S. when they’re tired or cold and don’t want to work to get out of the woods. Another abuse takes the cake. A father and son were camping in Arizona. They initiated a search three days in a row. The last time was because they drank water from a stream that tasted salty. Irritated rescuers finally yanked them out of the woods. Over a 15 year period search and rescues in national parks alone cost taxpayers more than $58-million. Beacons can actually reduce the cost of legitimate emergencies by giving rescuers an exact location to pinpoint the search. But abuses are frustrating sheriff’s departments and the many volunteers who conduct these operations. There’s no substitute for preparation. And if these novice outdoorsmen continue to be the ‘hiker who cried wolf’ they could end up getting charged for their ‘rescue’. Currently New Hampshire is the only state that allows for a rescue bill, but if the Yuppie 9-1-1 trend accelerates look for other states to follow.

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!