National: Shortly after submitting his budget plan, President Obama signed an order imposing $91 billion in automatic cuts for 2014 if Congress doesn’t make a deal. So far Congress has done nothing to avert the $89 billion in cuts already in effect for this year. The President’s proposed budget of increased taxes, spending shifts and reductions in Social Security has angered members of both political parties.

• Heavy weather and tornadoes struck in the Midwest. A tornado in Botkinburg, Ark. smashed 30 homes and injured four people.
• The US Postal Service reversed itself and says it will continue Saturday deliveries indefinitely because Congress passed a spending bill requiring it. The USPS is in the red partly because Congress in 2006 required the service to pre-fund more than $40 billion in pension liabilities unlike any other business or government entity.

Con Man Convict: The famed impostor who claimed to be a member of the rich Rockefeller family was convicted of murder in Los Angeles. German-born Christian Gerhartsreiter was married in Boston as Clark Rockefeller. He was convicted yesterday of the 1985 murder of a man whose bones were found in a San Marino, Ca. back yard. Gerhartsreiter had lived in a guesthouse under the name Christopher Chichester. He mysteriously departed at the same time as the disappearance of newlyweds John and Linda Sohus who lived in the main house. Sohus’s remains were discovered nine years later, but his wife was never found.

Too Real: MTV shut down its reality show “Buckwild” following the death of 21-year-old cast member Shain Gandee. Another member was arrested on drug charges, and a third for DWI. Gandee and two other men died on a four-wheeling expedition known as “mudding”. Their truck was stuck in mud and the cab filled with carbon monoxide. MTV cancelled the show about the lives of West Virginia teenagers because that’s exactly what it turned out to be.

Moose Country: The mythical “North Pond Hermit” of Rome, Maine turned out to be real after 27 years as a local legend. Homeowners were certain that someone was breaking into local cabins but could never find a trace of the suspect. Finally, 47 year-old Christopher Knight was arrested after an investigator put an alarm and a camera in a local camp and caught him in the act. Police say Knight told them he went into the woods two years after high school and survived all those years by stealing food from local camps and cabins. Knight told police he spent his time reading and meditating. He had not spoken to another person since the mid-1990s.

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