Morning Buzz: July 12, 2007

Former first lady Lady Bird Johnson died Wednesday at her home in Texas at the age of 94.
She became first lady after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Her husband, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, was sworn into office aboard Air Force One. The Johnsons witnessed the assassination from two cars behind Kennedy’s in the presidential motorcade. “There had been such a gala air that I thought it must be firecrackers or some sort of celebration,” she recounted to her audio diary, which was submitted to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination. This transcript was published by U.S. News in 2006.

Want to bring down the reputation of your competitor? Try using an Internet alias and then talking about the competition’s bleak financial future on the Internet. This is what Whole Foods Chief Executive John Mackey has been reportedly doing. Mackey disparaged Wild Oats Market Inc. in the Yahoo! financial forum for years, and now the organic giant is trying to acquire the smaller chain of markets. This latest news was revealed as part of a lawsuit attempting to block the purchase.

This week, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told Americans he had a “gut feeling” that the United States could again be attacked by terrorists this summer.  At the same time, U.S. counterterrorism analysts are being reported today as saying that al Qaeda has matched its operating capabilities to those it possessed in the months before 9/11. However, so far, the national threat level remains at the elevated “yellow” alert, with the threat to the airline sector being an “orange” high.

It seems the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost some equipment--$22 million of it, according to a congressional oversight committee’s audit. Computers and other equipment have vanished, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is set to investigate. In the meantime, the CDC has installed software on its computers to keep better track of items.