Monica Lewinsky went to college in Portland. Al Gore allegedly demanded sexual favors and made “unwanted sexual contact” on a masseuse in his Portland hotel room in 2006.

Coincidence? What’s in the water in the Willamette River?

Where the National Enquirer went yesterday, the Washington Post and New York Times follow today.

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Break out your martini shaker and/or your bottle of Xanax, as Stinquer DodgerBlue shares with us this satellite image of close to the entire Gulf of Mexico coated with oil.

Meanwhile, the broken oil well was uncapped this morning and currently is spewing oil uncontrollably.  The cap had to be removed after BP engineers drove their submarine into machinery being used to clean up the fuel. It’s not a bumper car, Einstein!

No word on when the cap will be put back on, or if it will be put back on.

More details after the jump, plus something to hopefully keep us all sane.

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U!S!A! will see if they can start playing in the first half of today’s do-or-die game against Algeria.

Bill Clinton visited the team in the locker room and gave them a pep talk.

If you’re at work you can watch the game on Univision’s website.

GOOLLLL!!!!

World Cup open thread below.

And a sneak-peak of a hottie after the jump.

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After a series of resignations, firings, and strikes, the French national soccer team ingloriously left South Africa this afternoon after losing to the host nation and scoring only one goal in three games at the World Cup.  Quite a ways for the 1998 champions and 2006 finalists to fall, but they had no business being there, as they were there by virtue of a player knocking in a goal with his hand in a qualifying game against Ireland.  Gallons of ink – both real and virtual – while be spilled in the coming weeks as the navel-gazing French determine what went wrong and the rest of the sporting world laughs at them.  SFL says that Karma is a bitch, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys, and apparently she’s Irish to boot.

On to happier notes, hot soccer players. The South African nation and team have been gracious hosts for the tournament, and their players have been exemplars on and off the field. While they didn’t qualify for the next round despite beating Les Bleu, they are proud of what they have accomplished.  Their captain, Steven Pienaar told The Guardian, “People can never say we didn’t do our best but through football we have brought the whole nation together. We have shown that we are one country and that’s all we need to say.”

And meet Katlego Mphela, their goal-scoring hottie. That’s him above scoring on the Frog goalie.

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Today’s WCHotD is Chile’s Mark Gonzalez, who came off the bench to score the winning goal in Monday’s game against Chile.

Prior to today’s achievement, his greatest accomplishment was getting fired and sent home in 2006 from the Chilean national team’s tour of Europe after he was found in a Dublin hotel room with three women.

European powerhouse teams such as Germany, France, and England are collapsing. The workaday Dutch continue their systematic move forward in the World Cup play.

Today’s World Cup Hottie of the Day is a product of the Ajax training factory recently profiled in the New York Times, plays for Inter Milan, and scored today’s goal in the 1-0 defeat of Japan.

Meet Wesley Sneijder.

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Corporations around the world are eager to exploit Afganistan’s newly discovered mineral wealth.  JP Morgan has just sent a team of mining experts to Afghanistan to examine possible projects to develop. No word if Goldman Sachs is going to Kabul next.

[NYT]