Monday, July 7, 2008

7 President Bush is in Japan for the opening of the annual G-8 summit, and where today he will attend a working lunch and meetings with African Outreach Representatives. He also met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is making his international debut at the conference. [Story, Page A8.]

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is stealing the G-8 show online.

No. 10 Downing Street is blogging the summit in Toyako, throwing up an integrated social media site to follow "our man in Japan," with Twitter and Flickr feeds to boot.

Members of the British -- and international -- public can follow along at http://japang8.number10.gov.uk, where they can get such news updates as "No10 has found a cure for jetlag -- work for 12 hours right after a 24 hr journey. Toyako is hazy today." That was the report from "downingstreet" over Twitter, the trendy site designed for extremely short communications.

Downingstreet, "the official twitter channel for the Prime Minister's Office based at 10 Downing Street," has more than 3,000 followers, and is part of the prime minister's ongoing Web-savvy operation. It includes a dedicated Flickr feed, podcasts, an e-petitions feature and the regular answering of video questions from the public over YouTube.

7. Supermodels Kim Alexis and Beverly Johnson will hold a news conference today at the National Press Club, along with TV Land president Larry W. Jones, to discuss "the latest research on the attitudes and spending habits of the nation's 78 million baby boomers." The study focuses particularly on the spending power of women in their 40s and 50s, while Alexis and Johnson will use the spotlight to also promote their upcoming new reality TV series, "She's Got the Look," a kind of "America's Next Top Model" for women older than 35.

8. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) will hold its 79th national convention in the District. Proclaiming this year's gathering "America's Latino Community Center Stage," the organization intends to highlight the power of Latino voters to affect the 2008 presidential election. Accordingly, a host of political figures are trooping to the Hilton Washington to address the conventioneers, including Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and, on Tuesday afternoon, both major-party presidential candidates: Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. The convention will begin today and will run through Saturday.

-- Garance Franke-Ruta