Cheat Sheet

At least one person was killed and five more wounded after a shooting at an office building in Orlando, Florida. (All are in stable condition and one is believed to have suffered a heart attack.) Police have arrested Jason Rodriguez, 40, a former employee at Reynolds, Smith, and Hills engineering and architecture firm who was let go from his job in 2007. He was found at his mother's apartment—apparently, she is the one who tipped off cops to his location. The attack took place at 11 a.m. at 1000 Legion Place. As he was escorted into the police station, a reporter asked him why he did it. "Cause they left me to rot," he said. 

On Thursday morning, Major Nidal Malik Hasan gave most of his belongings to his neighbor. Awhile later, a security-camera video showed him at a convenience store on Thursday morning buying snacks in a white robe and skullcap—traditional Muslim garb. Now, investigators are looking into the motive of the alleged Fort Hood shooter. The son of Palestinian immigrants, Hasan reportedly resented other soldiers who harassed him for being a Muslim and was distraught about his upcoming six-month deployment to Afghanistan. The death toll of his rampage rose to 13 on Friday, after a hospitalized victim died.

The U.S. Treasury prevented Fannie Mae from selling nearly $3 billion in low-income housing tax credits Friday because it concluded the sale would be too expensive for taxpayers. Fannie had made a deal to sell about half it’s $5.2 billion worth of tax credits to Goldman Sachs and Berkshire Hathaway and had gotten the go-ahead from its federal regulator. Because Fannie doesn’t have taxable income to offset, the credits are worthless to the company, and every quarter it must write them down as they lose value. A day earlier, Fannie had announced $520 million in losses related to the credits in the third quarter, and that more were coming unless the credits were sold. But Treasury concluded that the government would lose more tax dollars than it saved if the sale went through.

Words you don’t hear every day from a banker: “I’m sorry,” said John S. Reed, who served as the CEO of Citigroup when it was created in 1998, for his role in building the financial behemoth. “These are people I love and care about. You could imagine emotionally it’s not easy to see what’s happened.” Asked what he would do to fix the financial sector, Reed said “I would compartmentalize the industry for the same reason you compartmentalize a ship. If you have a leak, the leak doesn’t spread and sink the whole vessel. So generally speaking you’d have consumer banking separate from trading bonds and equity.” Reed also said lawmakers were wrong to overturn the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, a move that he supported at the time.

Girls Gone Wild Founder Joe Francis was sentenced by a federal judge Friday to 301 days already served and a year of probation after Francis pleaded guilty to filing false income tax returns and bribing jail workers. Francis, who turned his simple idea of filming drunken ladies on spring break into a soft-core empire, was also ordered to pay the IRS $250,000 in restitution. The judge accepted Francis’s deal on the grounds that an important witness withheld information from prosecutors.

While a crowd of people looked on, Abas Hussein Abdirahman was stoned to death for having confessed to adultery in Islamic court in Southern Somalia. An eyewitness told the BBC that the 33-year-old “was screaming and blood was pouring from his head during the stoning. After seven minutes he stopped moving." His pregnant girlfriend will not be killed until she gives birth. A 13-year-old girl was killed for adultery further south last year. Human rights groups said she’d been raped. It’s been 18 years since Somalia has had a functioning government.

Chris Miller / AP Photo

Sarah Palin may believe in a right to life, but she does not, apparently, think there is a right to cellphones: Attendees of Sarah Palin’s speech on Friday night to the Wisconsin Right to Life will be unable to carry cellphones, cameras, laptops, or recording devices. The press will also be barred from attendance. Tickets to the event cost $30. “You know, for someone who claims to be a rogue and isn’t afraid of what other people think, it really is sort of hypocritical to not let the media, the press cover your event,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate. The state’s Republican chairman said he was excited for Palin’s visit, but stressed his party has nothing to do with the limitations.

Sgt. Kimberley Munley put a quick end to the shooting at Fort Hood in Texas yesterday, gunning down suspected shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan in spite of her own injuries. Friends of the police officer are saying that this kind of bravery is standard for Munley. "She was born and bred to be a police officer. If you were ever to be in a fight, she'd be the first person to stand up next to you and back you up,” said a longtime friend of Munley’s. “She's a tough cookie." Munley arrived within four minutes of being called in to respond to the shooting. She fired at Hasan from close range in what officials are calling “an amazing and an aggressive performance,” which friends credit to her training as a former member of the armed services. Munley is in stable condition and spent the rest of Thursday checking in with family and fellow police officers. She is married with two daughters. "I live a good life....a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully @ night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone's life," Munley wrote on her Twitter page.

Los Angeles police say a con man has stolen thousands of dollars in cash from traveling bands and sports teams by posing as a member of their entourage. Investigators say the man used websites and social media to dig up information on the whereabouts of the visiting athletes and artists and then smooth-talked his way into their hotel rooms. In August, the man convinced a hotel desk clerk to give him keys to the rooms of salsa musicians, from whom he stole $9,000. The next month, wearing a Chivas soccer jersey, he used the same scam to steal $10,000 from the soccer team. And in October, he snuck into a locker room and made off with $26,000 in cash and jewelry from an Israeli basketball team playing the Clippers. The man may also be the “office creeper,” who absconds with laptops from office buildings. He is still at large.

One Japanese and two Canadian reporters covering anti-government protests have been arrested in Iran on charges of “unauthorized reporting,” along with the detention of a number of other journalists. The protests came on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. embassy takeover, an occasion for which Iranian authorities also temporarily blocked use of Gmail and Yahoo to prevent news and images of the protests from spreading. Iran has made a habit of blaming foreign media for inciting riots, and journalists were for the most part banned after riots during elections last June—journalists this week were told to limit their reporting to the official demonstration. According to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency, claims of the arrests are “under investigation.”

Despite previous public appearances on Larry King Live and a sit-down interview with MTV on Monday, Chris Brown responded to the 20/20 appearance of Rihanna, the pop star ex-girlfriend he brutally beat, with a statement saying, "All of the details should remain a private matter between us." (In the statement released Friday, Brown apologizes to his ex and fans, saying, "I do appreciate her support and wish her the best.") But with the Monday MTV special, airing Friday and called, "Chris Brown: The Interview," it seems Brown doesn’t object to press so much as he objects to bad press. The pop star says it's tough to take mean comments—"woman beater" stings especially bad. "I'm human, so when I hear certain things that they say or if I go somewhere and I hear somebody be rude about it, it's just like, ‘Man, it’s a mistake,'" Brown explained. "I made a big mistake, I'm learning from it."