Mark Memmott

It's Day 5 of the renewed protests in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt.

Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was an adviser and fundraiser for convicted former Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) and also raised money for then-state Sen. Barack Obama before Obama's election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, was sentenced today to serve seven more years in prison.

A small group of Occupy Wall Street supporters who have taken two weeks to walk from New York to Washington, D.C., arrived in the nation's capital today, The Washington Post reports. They're hoping to temporarily occupy a patch of land on the National Mall.

That's one bit of Occupy-related news today. Others:

"I have requested PM Gilani to accept my resignation as Pakistan Ambasssador to US," Husain Haqqani just wrote on his Twitter page.

And he followed that with this statement: "I have much to contribute to building a new Pakistan free of bigotry & intolerance. Will focus energies on that."

Who would want to play "4.74 Degrees of Kevin Bacon?"

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Crowd Gathering Again In Cairo, But Outside Square Life Is Normal

-- Economy Grew Less Than Previously Thought In Third Quarter.

The U.S. economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis just reported.

That's a downward revision from BEA's original estimate of 2.5 percent growth. The agency will issue one more estimate for the quarter on Dec. 22.

Three young Americans are among those who have been detained by authorities in Cairo during the last few days of protests there, according to reports from The Washington Post, CNN and other news outlets.

"A visibly shaken" Chancellor Linda Katehi, as The Davis Enterprise says, apologized publicly Monday for the now-infamous pepper-spraying of Occupy UC Davis protesters by campus police last Friday.

Now that it's official and the so-called supercommittee in Congress has declared its members can't agree on how to cut about $1.2 trillion from the next decade's federal budget deficits, the "what next" stories are everywhere.

And many are zeroing in on the political effects.

There's another mass rally underway in Cairo's Tahrir Square — where four straight days of anti-military rule protests have turned violent and led to about 30 deaths and thousands of injuries as government forces responded with force.

When he walked down a line of seated Occupy protesters Friday at the University of California Davis and shot pepper spray directly at them, campus police Lt. John Pike likely never thought that video of the incident would go viral on the Web, that there would be outrage not only at the school but around the nation, or that "casually pepper spraying cop" would quickly become one of the year's top memes.

From NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson and The Associated Press, both in Cairo:

State TV in Egypt is reporting that Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and his cabinet have submitted their resignations to the nation's military council.

It isn't known, Soraya says, whether the interim government's resignations will be accepted.

You can still text the name "Jesus Christ" and the word "naked" if you're a Pakistani with a cellphone.

Also still safe for texting: damn, nude and poop.

Those are among more than 1,600 words and phrases that the Pakistan Telecommunications Agency had reportedly ordered mobile companies in the country to block by today.

The likely collapse of the so-called supercommittee's efforts to put together a deficit-reduction deal and continued concern about the debt crisis in Europe are pushing stocks lower on Wall Street.

From Cairo's Tahrir Square, where three days of clashes between authorities and thousands of protesters have left more than 20 people dead and more than 1,700 injured, NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson says the Egyptians who have taken to the streets again:

There was a 1.4 percent increase in sales of existing homes in October from September, the National Association of Realtors reported this hour.

At its 4.97 million annual rate, the pace of sales was up 13.5 percent from October 2010.

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh has been brought in to be a "special investigative counsel" for Penn State's internal look into how its officials handled reports that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky might have been sexually abusing young boys.

Full disclosure: We're not even close to being qualified to figure out who's right and who's wrong on this one.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Superfailure Looks Likely; Then What?.

-- Death Toll Rising In Cairo After Crackdown In Tahrir Square.

"Dutch police say Seattle Mariners outfielder Greg Halman has been stabbed to death and his brother has been arrested as a suspect," The Associated Press reports from Rotterdam. He died earlier today.

Halman, 24, is Dutch-born. In the past two years with the Mariners, he appeared in 44 games — hitting at a .207 average, with two home runs and nine runs batted in.

The death toll from three days of clashes in Cairo's Tahrir Square has risen to 35, a morgue official tells The Associated Press.

Through the weekend and into today, security forces have been moving against protesters who are demonstrating against the country's military leaders who, the protesters say, are ruling in much the same way as former President Hosni Mubarak.

The headlines this morning all say pretty much the same thing:

-- "Deficit Effort Nears Collapse." (The Wall Street Journal)

-- "Debt Supercommittee Members Brace For Failure." (The Washington Post)

Saying it is deeply troubled by "tragic events" alleged to have happened at Penn State, the NCAA has told the school it is launching an examination of whether the university has "institutional control over its intercollegiate athletics program, as well as the actions, and inactions, of relevant ... personnel."

A balanced budget amendment to the Constitution just failed to get the two-thirds majority vote in the House that's needed to move such a measure forward.

It was approved by a simple majority: 261 to 165. But for a two-thirds majority, at least 290 votes would be needed.

There are currently 434 House members (one seat is vacant). Of those, 242 are Republicans and 192 are Democrats.

"Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, who outlined an emergency plan two days ago, isn't wasting any time taking action" in tackling his city's financial crisis, our colleague Micki Maynard at the Changing Gears project reports. "Today, Bing said the city will lay off 1,000 employees, or about 9 percent of the city's payroll, by Feb. 25."