The China Play: The Obama administration today announced it reached a deal with China to eliminate tariffs on information and technology products ranging from video-game consoles and computer software to medical equipment and semiconductors. It could be the single best thing President Obama gets out of a three-day visit to China.

Recall Motors: Emails reveal that General Motors made an urgent order for half a million new ignition switches six weeks before it announced a recall of cars now blamed for at least 32 deaths. One of the Emails refers to an “urgent Field Action,” presumably replacing switches that sometimes turned off the car while it was in motion. Federal investigators are trying to determine whether GM was fully forthcoming about potentially fatal problems with its cars when they learned about it themselves.
Weather Report: An early winter storm that dumped up to a foot and a half of snow in nine upper Midwest states is tapering off and moving east. A mass of cold air has filled in behind the storm, dropping the temperature to 12 in Bismarck, ND, and 36 in Amarillo, Tex.
Surfing: President Obama yesterday urged the Federal Communications Commission to keep the Internet open and free and to avoid favoritism and fast lanes for paid content. The FCC has been weighing a decision for months on so-called “net neutrality,” which would prevent anyone frm paying for priority on the information highway.
Ebola: New York doctor Craig Spencer, who was infected with Ebola in West Africa, has been declared free of the virus and is set to be released from the hospital today. Kaci Hickox, the nurse from Maine, has been released from monitoring and says she might move out of the state that restricted her movements despite testing negative.
World: The South Korean ferry captain whose ship capsized, killing 304 people, most of them high school students, has been sentenced to 36 years in prison for deserting his ship and passengers. The 69-year-old captain, Lee Jun-seok, was acquitted of the most serious charge of murder, a decision that outraged many families of the dead.
> Alibaba, the Chinese Amazon, sold an estimated $8 billion worth of goods on its annual “Singles Day” sales event. The origins of “Singles Day” are uncertain, but it appears to be a created event in which single people were encouraged to buy themselves a consoling gift. Now the world’s biggest communist country is home to the largest one-day capitalist-consumer orgy.
God and Man: The Mormon Church has revealed that Joseph Smith, the church’s founder and prophet, had as many as 40 wives, one as young as 14 when he married her. The news came in an essay published by the church. Although this was an open secret, some members of the Latter-day Saints, which now disapproves of polygamy, are shocked and disappointed to hear it. Some people actually didn’t know. The essay says Smith’s decision to take on many wives came after prayer and a revelation from God.
Freedom Isn’t Free: Oklahoma oil executive Harold Hamm has been ordered to pay his ex wife Sue Ann a divorce settlement just short of $1 billion, making it one of the biggest divorce judgments in US history. It comes to $995.5 million. Hamm founded Continental Resources, one of the leading drillers in the Bakken Shale of North Dakota and Montana. Hamm is believed to own more underground oil than anyone else in America so the judgment won’t kill him, but it makes Sue Ann Hamm one of the richest women in America.
Gotta Have Art: Forty-three works of art from the collection of the late “Bunny” Mellon sold at auction yesterday for 158.7 million dollars. The sale included works by Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn. A simple white barn painted by Georgia O’Keefe went for $3.1 million. It used to hang over Bunny’s dining table.
Small Screen: Right wing talk host Glenn Beck has revealed that he’s been living with a secret illness that includes autoimmune disorder and adrenal fatigue. The important thing here is that he’s not admitting mental illness.

-30-