Unemployment numbers are due out this morning and economic analyst Lakshman Achuthan, Managing Director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, joins us with his predictions. In April, Lakshman predicted that we’d be coming out of the recession this summer. We wanted to road test some of your ideas, so The Takeaway's Femi Oke went looking in unusual places for indications on how the economy is doing. First stop: the ASPCA in New York City, where the rates of pet adoptions tend to follow people's economic well-being. Could the dogs here give us a peek at which direction the economy is going?

Next stop: Wall Street, but not to visit the banks. Instead, Femi spoke with cobbler Minas Polychronakis, who for over 30 years has been repairing shoes for rich and poor alike.

If you couldn't get into your Twitter account yesterday, you weren't alone. A massive denial-of-service attack by unknown hackers knocked out the popular micro-blogging site for some 45 million users. Children's book author Laurel Snyder, who normally sends 50 tweets a day, tells us how she survived.

You can follow Laurel's Twitter feed @LaurelSnyder.

Girl Scouts start selling their best-selling cookies — Thin Mints and Tagalongs — each December. But this year, the Scouts’ annual cookie sales, which add up to $700 million a year, may not be so high. That’s because giant Wal-Mart will start stocking its shelves with its own Great Value brand Fudge Mint and Fudge Covered Peanut Butter Filled cookies next month. Some bloggers who were at the women's BlogHer convention where Wal-Mart debuted its desserts last week are crying foul, saying the retailer is trying to steal the Scouts’ sales. We discuss the cookie war with culture critic Mary Elizabeth Williams and her 9-year old daughter, Lucy, who is, in the interest of full disclosure, a Girl Scout and a darn good little saleswoman.

The United States Senate wrapped up business for the summer yesterday, voting to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who will become the first Hispanic to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. The Senate also approved another $2 billion for the Cash For Clunkers program. The Takeaway's Washington Correspondent Todd Zwillich is following all of this and more.

Yesterday, while on a morning walk in New York City, the acclaimed film director John Hughes, creator of those classic 80's teen angst movies, died after suffering a heart attack. Few American directors have captured and distilled the American teen experience the way John Hughes did. In Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink his protagonists broke down class barriers in high school social circles. Joining The Takeaway to remember the man and his legacy is Wesley Morris, film critic from the Boston Globe, to talk about how Hughes' films influenced a generation.

Watch this tribute to John Hughes made at the height of his career:

As the federal government prepares to release its recommendations for schools during flu season, The Takeaway talks to two workers on the front lines of the war on the flu. Ryan Kelley is the emergency medical services manager for the Imperial County Public Health Department in El Centro, California. He closed four schools last April because of confirmed swine flu cases, but is expecting a different approach during the upcoming school year. Kathleen Murphy is the health services coordinator for the Milwaukee Public Schools in Wisconsin. In addition to being in charge of Milwaukee's public school health services, Kathleen is also a nurse. Wisconsin was hit particularly hard with the H1N1 flu and the problem hasn't ebbed with the summer.

In honor of John Hughes, the quintessential 80s director who passed away yesterday, The Takeaway's John Hockenberry presents a remembrance of life as The Breakfast Club.

Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has been killed in a U.S. drone attack. While it's not the first time reports of his death have surfaced, the Taliban has confirmed his death. Mehsud is known as Pakistan's most wanted man and has been suspected in the killing of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Does his death mean that the U.S. is closer to success in its mission to rout the Taliban out of Afghanistan and Pakistan? As the American military comes to full strength in the Afghan surge, the Obama administration’s national security team is struggling to come up with specific measurements of progress. David Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, and he's writing about the administration attempt to set benchmarks for success in Afghanistan.

Also joining the conversation is Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security. He served two tours as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. He is just back from Afghanistan where he was part of a team of independent analysts whose report is expected to help define the U.S. mission in Afghanistan going forward.

We also speak with retired Colonel Paul Hughes, who is senior program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace. In 2003 he served as the director of the Strategic Policy Office for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He believes that the fates of the missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are completely intertwined and must be closely coordinated.

Before he was an NFL MVP, Kurt Warner, with no NFL team to sign with, played for the Iowa Barnstormers in the Arena Football League for three seasons. He finally reached the NFL in 1998 and won Super Bowl XXXIV and multiple MVP awards. The Arena Football League announced this week that it will shut down, just as the new kid on the block, the United Football League, announced its upcoming schedule for its very first season. From the USFL, to the World Football League, to the XFL, and now, the Arena Football League, leagues have been unable to escape the shadow of the NFL. Does the UFL have a fighting chance? Joining us to talk about that and other news in sports is The Takeaway’s sports contributor, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin.

For more from Ibrahim, check out his blog post Baseball Rivalries Live; Football Leagues Die.

During the 2002 Little League World Series, millions watched on TV as two young pitchers each threw well over a hundred pitches during their semi-final games. That many pitches from a growing kid can mean serious shoulder and elbow injuries, leading to a spike in so-called "Tommy John" operations in teens and children. Ron Berler writes in his upcoming New York Times Magazine article that this trend has been ballooning steadily for the past decade. And it's not always injured kids who are going under the knife.

The health care reform battle has left the Beltway and has headed home with the members of Congress. The debate has gotten increasingly vitriolic as town halls have been swarmed with organized angry protesters trying to shout down Democratic Congressmen. Today The Takeaway talks to the person in charge of fighting back. Linda Douglass is director of communications for the White House Office on Health care Reform.

Here's a video of Linda Douglass addressing a story that makes it look like the President intends to eliminate private health care coverage:

Unconfirmed reports have trickled in that Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud may have been killed in a U.S. drone attack. Now, two Taliban fighters are saying that Mehsud is in fact dead and that the Taliban leaders are trying to determine which of his top deputies will replace him. The U.S. government made killing or capturing Mr. Mehsud one of its top priorities this year. He ranked as Pakistan’s enemy No. 1. For more of the story, The Takeaway turns to Jeremy Binnie, senior analyst on terrorism and insurgency at Jane's Intelligence Group.

It’s Friday and that means new movies are opening in theaters across the country. The Takeaway talks to Wesley Morris, film critic from The Boston Globe, for his picks for the week. Today he opts for Paper Heart and Julie & Julia.

For your review, here's the trailer for Paper Heart

And for Julie & Julia:

The movie Julie & Julia, opens today. In the film, Meryl Streep brings Julia Child back to life for the viewer. But how realistic is she? Joining The Takeaway is someone who can give us a first hand comparison between the real Julia Child and Meryl Streep’s version of Julia. Russell Morash, known as the father of “how-to” and “know-how” television, was the producer of "The French Chef" with Julia Child. He also helped create and produce such notable DIY shows as This Old House, Victory Garden, and New Yankee Workshop.

Julia Child's "The French Chef" was classic cooking with a woman who became an emblem of America:

Unemployment numbers are out: payrolls dropped by just 247,000 and the jobless rate falls to 9.4 percent. That just might be good news. Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, joins us with his take on the numbers and what they mean for economic recovery.

The Labor Department released unemployment numbers this morning and the numbers may indicate the beginning of a turnaround for the U.S. economy. Employers cut back on layoffs in July, trimming 247,000 jobs; that's a substantial number, but it's the smallest monthly job loss in a year. Additionally, the overall unemployment rate dipped from 9.5 to 9.4 percent. The Wall Street Journal's economics reporter Kelly Evans joins The Takeaway to talk us through the numbers.

Unemployment numbers are out and job losses declined 247,000 in July, while the unemployment rate fell, which could suggest that the recession is nearing an end. But Jack Healy, a reporter for The New York Times, thinks that the decrease in unemployment is a statistical fluke and that without job creation, the economy is not recovering.

Pretty in Pink hit the big screen in 1986, signaling that John Hughes had not yet finished with his Brat Pack flicks. Hughes, who died yesterday, wrote the screenplay for the movie. Here to talk to The Takeaway about how this cult classic — starring Molly Ringwald as an unpopular, awkward teenager who falls for a rich, popular guy played by Andrew McCarthy — is Pretty in Pink's director, Howard Deutch.

Here's one of our favorite scenes from Pretty in Pink: