Caroline Kennedy and ‘Daily News’ columnist Michael Daly: The princess and the pea-brain

Maybe our mayor can now make her a kind of special city envoy to Washington in these difficult times ahead.

She will still have a deep connection with our new President, one of whose daughters now sleeps in Caroline’s old room at the White House.

Special Envoy give me a break there are thousands of New Yorkers without the Kennedy name or connections who commit themselves to New York and NewYorkers whether it be our children in education, mentoring or being a role model or be it our Senior citizens they do this from their heart, they are the “unsung heroes” perhaps if you want to appoint a “Special Envoy” I suggest you turn an eye to one of those citizens I’m sick of people making those whose family fortunes was made questionably and off the backs of others still receive special treatment. Turn to the average Joe who does good deeds from their heart Those are the special envoys we need.

President Barack Obama, on a busy first full day in office, announced a wage freeze for top White House staff, waded into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and prepared to issue executive orders Thursday — including one to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year.

He also issued the strictest rules to date on lobbying activities for members of the administration and met with his national security team to begin the process of withdrawing troops from Iraq.

In an unusual moment that was not part of his team’s extensive planning for day one, Mr. Obama also retook the oath of office. That came after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and then Mr. Obama, spoke one of the words out of order during the swearing in on Tuesday.

On his first full day, President Obama kept campaign promises by going after Gitmo and toughening ethics standards.

Musicians and managers are turning to BlackBerry phones and YouTube videos to solve a problem that just won’t go away: illegal downloads of digital tracks.

The landmark arts venue announced Wednesday that it will cut its upcoming schedule by 10% and slash its budget by $4 million.

The U.S. led the global economy into its worst recession in at least a quarter century. Now the rest of the world is looking to Barack Obama to lead the way out. The trouble is, even the incoming commander-in-chief of the biggest economy can’t do it alone.

Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project is in such financial upheaval that the developer is now trying to cut back on much-needed transit improvements, which he promised in exchange for approval for…

A Jersey mom who gave her three children Nazi-friendly names says she lost custody after being wrongly accused of abuse.

…In my tests, even the beta version of Windows 7 was dramatically faster than Vista at such tasks as starting up the computer, waking it from sleep and launching programs.

And this speed boost wasn’t only apparent in the preconfigured machine from Microsoft, but on my own Sony, which had been a dog using Vista, even after I tried to streamline its software. Of course, these speed gains may be compromised by the computer makers, if they add lots of junky software to the machines. Windows 7 is also likely to run well on much more modest hardware configurations than Vista needed….

Compatibility with hardware and software, which was a problem in Vista, seems far better in Windows 7 — even in the beta. I tried a wide variety of hardware, including printers, Web cams, external hard disks and cameras, and nearly all worked fine.

I also successfully installed and used popular programs from Microsoft’s rivals, such as Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Reader, Apple’s iTunes, and Google’s Picasa. All worked properly, even though none was designed for Windows 7.

A scholar studying graffiti culture watches for cops, invents a ‘tag’ and wields a spray can himself.

If negotiations fall through between the MTA and the Related Cos., the project may never be built.

…My fellow Jews love to write and talk about how horrible Madoff is and how much damage he has done to the Jewish people. Some have even compared him to Hitler which is scary because it means that money has become so important today that someone who steals money and swindles people is comparable to a person who engineered the murder of six million people….

Banco Santander SA sold Bernard Madoff investments to a teacher and a street vendor, not just to wealthy private banking clients in Spain and Latin America.

Branch managers channeled customers with money from property sales or inheritances to private banking salespeople, lawyers for the investors said.