Skate Park Could Be Part Of 2020 Plan

The Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee announced on Monday (Sept. 28) that it is proposing 18 more events for inclusion in the 2020 games. In addition to male and female baseball and softball (which have been excluded from competition since 2008), the committee proposed a variety of Karate competitions and three other events that are decidedly "youth-focused" in order to get a new generation interested in the Games. Among them are street and park skateboarding, shortboard surfing and a variety of sports climbing events, including bouldering and speed climbing.

All-Star Game At U.N. World Summit

If you thought the Pope brought traffic to a halt in N.Y. last week, just wait until Monday, when President Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jingping AND Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, take the stage at the United Nations. Cuban president Raul Castro is also set to make his debut in front of the General Assembly, hopefully with a speech a bit shorter than his brother Fidel's nearly 5-hour marathon in 1960. Monday will mark the first time in two years Obama and Putin will meet face-to-face, and Syria will likely be their biggest talking point.

Shell To Give Up On Alaskan Drilling

After spending a fruitless summer searching for gas and oil off the coast of Alaska, Royal Dutch Shell announced on Monday that it will stop looking in the area "for the foreseeable future." Though they did find some fuel, the company said the decision was also based on the "high costs" associated with the "challenging and unpredictable" regulatory forces in the state. Plus, with world energy prices in free-fall, the expensive drilling in the Arctic just didn't make economic sense. Environmentalists had protested against the Obama administration allowing Shell to drill in the sensitive area, worrying that an accident could cause significant damage to the coastal ecosystem.

Quick Take 1: The Dalai Lama has checked into Minnesota's Mayo Clinic for a medical evaluation just days after the 80-year-old spiritual leader of Tibet canceled a series of October appearances in the U.S. on doctor's advice.

Quick Take 2: NASA Scientists are promising to reveal a "major science finding" about Mars at 11:30 a.m. ET on Monday. We don't know what it is, but some are speculating it could be anything from signs of life to the discovery of liquid water, which would be huge. Why? Because that would show that the red planet has (or had) one of the key ingredients necessary to sustain life.

Daily Pic: Minnesota artist Stan Herd "painted" an amazing 1.2 acre replica of Van Gogh's "Olive Trees" in a field, which took six months to create using just dirt, flowers and other vegetation.