Maya Angelou: Poet and memoirist Maya Angelou, whose 1969 bestseller “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” described growing up in the Jim Crow South, died yesterday at home in Winston-Salem, NC. She was 86. Angelou wrote about being raped at age 8 by her mother’s boyfriend. The boyfriend was killed. “I thought my voice had killed him, so it was better not to speak – so I simply stopped speaking,” she said. She didn’t speak for five years. Angelou later worked as a singer, waitress and even a prostitute before becoming a writer. She wrote, and read, a stirring poem “On the Pulse of the Morning” for the first inauguration of President Bill Clinton.

World: Speaking to West Point graduates this morning, President Obama said they were entering a military that would no longer stumble into foreign conflicts and adventures. “US military action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.”

Yesterday the president announced the US will keep just less than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after fully withdrawing from combat at the end of the year, Those remainders would slowly withdraw until 2016 when there would be only enough Americans left to guard the US embassy, train Afghan soldiers, and help with anti-terrorist operations. “We have to recognize that Afghanistan will not be a perfect place, and it is not America’s responsibility to make it one,” Obama said.

> Egypt kept its polls open an extra day to urge people to vote in an election many Egyptians believe has a fixed result. Former military chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, who ordered the removal of President Mohammed Morsi, is expected to win no matter who votes. The government extended the vote to make it look more legitimate, but the polling places remained empty.

Money, Money: The earning gap between people who have colleges degrees and people who don’t has reached a record high, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Americans with four-year degrees made 98 percent more an hour on average in 2013 than people with no college degree. In the early 1980s people with no degree earned 64 percent of what the graduates made.

Anther stat: Women are now 33 percent more likely than men to get a college degree, according numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Clogged Pipes:Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher, the common man raised to celebrity by vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, wrote an open letter defending gun rights to the parents who lost children in the UC Santa Barbara shooting spree. “As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights,” the plumber wrote. In particular he addressed Richard Martinez, who lost his only child, and made an emotional appeal for tighter gun laws. “Mr. Martinez and anyone calling for more restrictions on American’s rights need to back off and stop playing into the hands of the folks who merely capitalize on these horrific events for their own political ends,” Wurzelbacher wrote. We agree. Joe should shut up.

Box Office Bingo: Disney’s animated film “Frozen” has become the fifth largest grossing movie of all time, collecting $1.219 billion around the world. The movie was already the highest-earning animated flick of all time.

#Cash: Someone who goes by the handle @HiddenCash is hiding stashes of cash around the San Francisco area and posting clues on Twitter.

– “A couple new drops in SF today. Hint: Hope the sea lions don’t get it.”

– “New Drop: “Life is a beach…and I’m just playing in the sand.”

But this Tweet makes us suspicious: “Growing fast! HUGE giveaway coming when we reach 100K followers, so tweet about us and ask your friends to follow”

Sounds commercial.

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