Italy Disaster: A 66-foot boat loaded with African migrants caught fire and sank in the Mediterranean east of Tunisia yesterday. At least 94 people are dead and 250 missing. The boat was loaded with 500 Eritreans when it left Libya bound for Italy.

Non Essential: Day 3. A meeting with congressional leaders hosted by President Obama at The White House yesterday failed to produce a break in the shutdown deadlock. House speaker John Boehner said, “The president reiterated one more time tonight that he will not negotiate.”

  Earlier, President Obama told CNBC he’s trying to keep his cool but, “Absolutely, I’m exasperated.”

  Up on the hill, director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate committee that shutdown furloughs have hampered the spy game and, “This is a dreamland for foreign intelligence services.”

  And in front of the cameras, House Republicans are still pushing for a partial re-opening of federal facilities, including national parks and monuments.  Rep. Eric Cantor argued yesterday for the opening of the National WWII Memorial so elderly veterans from across the country could visit. For two days reporters have covered veterans crossing barriers to visit the memorial, but failed to point out that the press was tipped to the event staged with the help of Republican politicians. Otherwise, just how did all those cameras and reporters happen to be there when veterans spontaneously passed the barriers?

Blackboard Jungle: The Los Angeles school system is getting schooled in the hazards of the digital age. Just over a month after embarking on a $1 billion plan to equip all students with iPads, 71 of the $700 tablets are already missing. And, shocking but true, students are hacking through the system firewall to visit unauthorized websites.

Jackson Verdict: A Los Angeles Jury found the promotion company AEG Live not liable for the death of singer Michael Jackson. Jackson’s family sued for $290 million claiming AEG hired the doctor who propped Jackson up with drugs and caused his death administering the surgical anesthetic Propofol. Jurors said AEG didn’t tell the doctor what to do.

Practice, Practice: A big opening night event was cancelled last night after the stagehands at New York’s Carnegie Hall went on strike to fight for jurisdiction over a new educational wing next year. Carnegie Hall decided to draw the battle line with Local 1 of the stagehands, whose members make an average of $400,000 a year.

CC: An inadvertent email sent within the Washington Post has revealed an elite group of employees who were awarded stock options in the past few years while pretty much everyone else got a lump of coal for a raise. With the impending sale of the Post to Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, the options are worth about $630 a share, creating a divide between the haves and have-nots in the Post newsroom. They could have bought Starbucks.

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