The president, it seems, committed a minor gaffe during this week's G-8 meetings in Northern Ireland. According to the Financial Times, the stumble came during a discussion of tax avoidance issues, when Barack Obama thrice interrupted the British chancellor of the exchequer in order to say he agreed with "Jeffrey."

The chancellor's name is George Osborne.

Obama later apologized, saying, "I'm sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favorite R&B singer." The U.S. leader was referring to Jeffrey Osborne, the soulful crooner responsible for "On the Wings of Love."

But is Osborne really the favorite that Obama claims? Some investigative reporting has raised serious questions about where Osborne ranks in Obama's hierarchy of musical preferences.

In multiple interviews about music, Obama has never once mentioned Osborne when asked about the songs he listens to, even when mentioning other R&B artists. Consider the following data points:

• In an interview with Cincinnati radio station WIZF, Obama says he listens to Stevie Wonder, James Brown, the Fugees, and even jazz artist Gil Scott-Heron, among others. But Osborne is never brought up.

• In an interview with Rolling Stone, he specifically discusses R&B -- but again, makes no mention of Osborne (the late classical singer Maria Callas gets a shout out).

• Asked about his musical preferences by a middle school teacher while campaigning in 2007, Obama again mentions Stevie Wonder, and adds that he enjoys Earth, Wind & Fire -- but no Osborne.

So -- is Jeffrey Osborne really an artist so close to the president's heart that he could accidentally blurt out his name when addressing another country's chancellor of the exchequer? Or did Obama just forget poor George Osborne's name?

We report, you decide.

China, Russia, and Uzbekistan are simply not committed to addressing human trafficking. That's the takeaway from the State Department's new 2013 Trafficking in Persons Report, out Wednesday afternoon. After nine years each for China and Russia, and six years for Uzbekistan, on the State Department's watch list, the status of the three countries was downgraded this year to "Tier 3," the lowest rank, which includes "countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards [to address human trafficking] and are not making significant efforts to do so." Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania were also downgraded to Tier 3, joining the ranks of North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among others.

According to the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST), Russia "ranks among the top 10 countries of origin for trafficked individuals," with as many as "130,000 sex trafficking victims ... in Moscow alone." The State Department report notes that while several Russian law enforcement and judicial bodies conduct "periodic training" on trafficking issues, the government does not investigate reported abuses. This includes the forced labor, documented by Human Rights Watch, being used to construct facilities for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Workers have had their passports and other documentation seized, pay withheld, and contracts violated.

The State Department report also includes a case study of 12 migrant laborers from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Trapped in Russia, they "were held captive for 10 years in a supermarket after being promised employment in Russia." The owners of the supermarket held their documents and "used threats of violence, beatings, and sexual violence to demand subservience." A brief investigation was closed after Russian "prosecutors claimed there was no evidence of a crime."

China is singled out in the report for, among other things, its "birth limitation policy and a cultural preference for sons," which has led to "a skewed sex ratio of 118 boys to 100 girls." To fill that imbalance, the report notes that China has an unusually high "demand for the trafficking of foreign women as brides for Chinese men and for forced prostitution." China is also the country of origin of many sex trafficking victims, with "Chinese sex trafficking victims ... reported on all of the inhabited continents" over the past year. Chinese men in forced labor were reported across Asia, in African mining operations, and in European agriculture. The Chinese government has run a series of public service announcements to raise awareness about human trafficking, and has addressed the issue on social media, including the popular microblogging site Weibo. But, the report notes in a particularly damning observation, "the government continued to perpetuate human trafficking in at least 320 state-run institutions."

In 2008, Congress legislated that, rather than keep countries on the government's watch list indefinitely, nations that did not show signs of improvement of human trafficking over a series of yeas would face automatic demotion, and China and Russia have since exhausted the maximum two years of waivers to prevent their downgrade. The Tier 3 designation opens China, Russia, and Uzbekistan to potential U.S. sanctions. In a statement, Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, suggested that more countries should be downgraded to Tier 3 and that the State Department report was "pulling punches."

Representatives from the Russian and Chinese embassies did not respond to requests for comment.

President Barack Obama stood before the Brandenburg Gate on Wednesday and tried to make some history. 

In a speech that referenced a band of doomed protesters in East Germany, Immanuel Kant, and John F. Kennedy, Obama announced that he intends to cut America's nuclear arsenal by up to a third in pursuit of "peace with justice." The headlines from today's address will undoubtedly focus on this proposal, and whether the speech goes down as one for the history books will likely depend on Russia's willingness to shrink its nuclear stockpiles in tandem with the United States.

But the president's call for nuclear reductions was confined to a mere four paragraphs in an address that ran just over 30 minutes. The speech's real centerpiece was the idealist in Obama.

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Back in 2008, Barack Obama's rollicking overseas tour hit a snag. The Democratic presidential candidate, James Mann later wrote in The Obamians, wanted to deliver a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin that would showcase his widespread popularity in Europe and capacity to rehabilitate America's reputation abroad. But Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's foreign policy advisor, was having none of it. He quickly lodged a complaint with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's staff.

"He questioned why the German government was allowing its most revered symbol, the Brandenburg Gate, to be used for one of the two major-party candidates in an American political campaign," Mann noted. "Merkel apparently agreed with this argument; she soon made clear in public her disapproval." Obama got the message, and spoke before 200,000 ecstatic Germans at the city's Tiergarten instead.

On Wednesday, Obama finally gets his chance to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, where he will reportedly call for the United States and Russia to reduce their nuclear stockpiles by a third. But delivering an address from the famous gate, which dates back to the 18th century and has come to symbolize Germany's Cold War division and reunification, is no easy task. Not only has the monument witnessed pivotal moments such as the 1989 meeting of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow, but it has also played host to two landmark speeches by U.S. presidents. 

Here's a look back at how Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton left their mark on Brandenburg.

In 1987, Ronald Reagan famously implored Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" (11 minutes into the video). Reagan also broke into German, a virtual requirement for U.S. presidents speaking in Berlin following John F. Kennedy's iconic "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in 1963, delivered in front of the West Berlin mayor's office. 

In 1994, five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bill Clinton memorably proclaimed "Berlin is free" (9 minutes into the clip).

No pressure today, Mr. President. 

We're learning tonight that Michael Hastings -- the 33-year-old journalist whose 2010 Rolling Stone profile of a remarkably unguarded Gen. Stanley McChrystal cost the top commander in Afghanistan his job -- died in a tragic car crash on Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. Hastings may be best known for exposing McChrystal's critical views of the Obama administration, but he also painted memorable portraits of Gen. David Petraeus and American prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl (a blunt, aggressive, and controversial reporter, Hastings also got in the occasional sparring match with the State Department).

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On Monday, France's Le Monde newspaper published a letter that has left many amused -- and others utterly confused. Investigators found the handwritten, undated letter, allegedly from current IMF chief Christine Lagarde to former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, during a search of Lagarde's Paris apartment in March, and it's now been leaked to the press.

France 24 posted a translation of the note, which Le Monde has dubbed "La lettre d'allégeance":

Dear Nicolas, very briefly and respectfully,

1) I am by your side to serve you and serve your plans for France.

2) I tried my best and might have failed occasionally. I implore your forgiveness.

3) I have no personal political ambitions and I have no desire to become a servile status seeker, like many of the people around you whose loyalty is recent and short-lived.

4) Use me for as long as it suits you and suits your plans and casting call.

5) If you decide to use me, I need you as a guide and a supporter: without a guide, I may be ineffective and without your support I may lack credibility. With my great admiration,

Christine L.

The backstory here is pretty complicated. The authorities searching Lagarde's apartment were investigating her involvement in a 2008 settlement paid to Bernard Tapie, the former head of Adidas, while Lagarde served as France's finance minister under Sarkozy. Tapie accused the state-owned bank Crédit Lyonnais of defrauding him and Lagarde recommended the case go to arbitration, where Tapie was awarded more than $500 million. Critics have charged that the award was too generous and likely resulted from Tapie's close relationship with Sarkozy's government, while Lagarde has denied any wrongdoing.

The five-point letter has revived interest in the controversial case and left many in France scratching their heads. Slate's French edition took the historical route, going back to the Middle Ages and questioning whether the letter should be interpreted as an oath of allegiance or as a pledge from a vassal.

Le Huffington Post, for its part, compiled a list of funny French Twitter responses, including one person who compared the letter to something a 13-year-old girl would write to Justin Bieber. One tweet noted it was lucky the letter wasn't intended for former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who has been embroiled in several sex scandals.

Traditional media outlets aren't sitting this one out either. The news magazine L'Express is asking readers to imagine how Sarkozy might respond to Lagarde's letter They'll publish the best submissions on Friday -- and they're asking readers to avoid any vulgar language, s'il vous plaît.

For anyone in the habit of wearing a tinfoil hat, the last couple of weeks have been ones of redemption. With a steady stream of revelations about the National Security Agency's astonishingly broad intelligence-gathering activities, conspiracy theories about its reach have seemingly been validated.

Those same raise a related question: Are there ways to avoid the NSA's prying eyes?

It turns out there are (for the most part, anyway). And for the companies selling communication tools to circumvent surveillance programs, business is going like gangbusters.

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