Promises, Promises: The White House promised that problems with the Healthcare.gov website will be fixed by Nov. 30^th. One of the companies that designed the faulty system has been appointed to run the repairs. The government is under added pressure because insurance companies are cancelling hundreds of thousands of policies that don’t meet Obamacare standards.

Spy vs. Spy: Germany is sending its intelligence bosses to Washington to talk about US spying on its allies, including Germany. According to one German official quoted in the NY Times, “the balance between freedom and security has been lost.”

Backpedalling on behalf of the Administration, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, “We want to ensure that we collect information because we need it, and not just because we can.” Speaking in diplomatic subtleties, Psaki said that the accounts of spying released by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, “posed a moment of tension with some of our allies”.

Cold Case: A Colorado grand jury voted in 1999 to indict the parents of the murdered child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, according to a document released yesterday. The indictment does not say John and Patsy Ramsey killed their daughter in 1996, but rather they permitted their child to be “unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the child’s life or health, which resulted in the death of JonBenet Ramsey.” The vaguely worded indictment also claims the Ramseys helped someone cover up the murder of their daughter, but does not say who. The district attorney declined to prosecute. Patsy Ramsey died of cancer in 2006 and two years later a new district attorney cleared the Ramseys on the basis of DNA evidence.

World: About 60 Saudi Arabian women drove cars today in what has become an annual protest of the ban on women driving. Several videos of women driving were posted online. One woman drove to the store and quickly went home. Saudi women are not banned by law from driving, but they can’t get drivers licenses.

Playing Daze: Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre, who had his head knocked for 20 years, told a radio host he’s having memory problems. “This was a little shocking to me that I couldn’t remember my daughter playing youth soccer,” Favre said. The NFL recently settled a lawsuit with players over concussions, but the seriousness of concussion damage in long-term athletes is only beginning to be understood.

Social Pages: Orlando Bloom and his model wife Miranda Kerr have split after 6 years together; Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are negotiating a pre-nup … after having a baby; Irish actor Jamie Dornan … never heard of him … has agreed to play the role of dominator Christian Grey in the film version of mommy-porn Fifty Shades of Grey; Gwyneth Paltrow is worried about what Vanity Fair will say about her personal life in its upcoming profile; Singer Katharine McPhee was caught lip-smacking with a married television director. And the world turns.

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