Takeaway contributor, Beth Kobliner, on the financial regulation bill; headlines.

President Obama made it official yesterday: the financial overhaul bill has been signed into law. So who are the winners as this new law takes effect? Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner believes the consumer is the real winner in financial reform, with new rules about mortgages, credit cards and student loans. However, she reminds us that car dealers are not included in the law, so it's important to stay vigilant.

Former USC football coach Pete Carroll has at times been likened to a god in California for his wildly successful nine year run. But during his time in Los Angeles, questions arose over whether his team was playing a fair game. Carroll is out with a new book called "Win Forever: Live, Work, and Play like a Champion." He tells us about his legacy and the fairness of college athletics.

In this day and age, we're used to the rapid rise and fall of public officials. This week, the story changed, and instead, we witnessed the rapid fall and then rise of Shirley Sherrod, the USDA official who was pressured to resign after a video of her making racially-tinged remarks was made public by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.

Rebels and pro-government forces clashed this morning in Yemen, killing 19 people. This is the latest in a series of violent eruptions, which are putting increased strain on a truce between the government and rebels. The violence also indicates that al-Qaida may be growing in strength in Yemen, where in the south of the country there's a separate insurgency involving al-Qaida rebels. The BBC's Jon Leyne describes the violence and the challenges of stabilizing a country with scarce resources. "The bottom line is that the country is in a real mess," says Leyne.

Today through Sunday, tens of thousands of people will descend upon San Diego for the 41st annual Comic-Con International Convention. The largest such convention in the world, Comic-Con has gone from attracting a small handful of comic book enthusiasts to serving as one of the premier pop culture events in the world, with stars like Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie stopping by to present their latest projects.

We bring you the morning's top stories from BP to the financial regulation law and more on Tom Vilsack's apology for forcing Sherrod's resignation.

It is currently legal to grow, purchase and use marijuana for medical purposes in 14 states and the District of Columbia. And this November, Californians will vote on whether to legalize recreational pot use, too. So who benefits financially from the legalization of marijuana? And could legalizing and taxing the drug be a good way to boost local and state economies?

Yesterday we spoke with Shirley Sherrod about her forced resignation from the USDA after an edited online video suggested she had withheld aid to a white farmer because he was white. Many listeners commented on the role of the media in this incident and the current state of the race discussion in the U.S., while a few said she deserved to be fired.

Mike from Denver writes on The Takeaway website:

"I'm concerned that this is becoming a new trend of retaliatory racism, where ultra-right wing conservatives in the media take snippets out of context that result in people wrongly losing their jobs."

In a surprising move, ex-Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich decided he would not testify in his corruption trial. Rob Wildeboer, criminal justice reporter for Chicago Public Radio, believes this was a wise move on Blagojevich's part. "I don't know what he could say to convince jurors about those tapes," he told The Takeaway. The defense strategy has shifted from putting Blagojevich on the stand to trying to prove that the government's case is too weak to find Blagojevich guilty.

The suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince in January made international headlines and changed the way that Massachusetts schools view and prosecute bullying in schools. What was described by state District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel, initially, as a “nearly three-month campaign” of “relentless” and “torturous” bullying, may in fact have been a more nuanced and complicated case with an emotionally disturbed teenager at its center. 

Warren Evans unexpectedly resigned from his post as Detroit’s chief of police Wednesday. He had held the position for under a year and his rocky tenure will probably be marked by a scandal in which a 7-year-old girl was shot and killed by a police bullet in a home raid. The incident was caught on tape by a reality TV crew which was following Evans for a show called “The Chief” about his job as the city’s top cop. The show painted him as a cowboy-like cop and may also have pushed the mayor to ask for his resignation.

A new book provides a window into Iran in 2009, after Western journalists were forced to leave. "Death to the Dictator!: A Young Man Casts a Vote in Iran's 2009 Election and Pays a Devastating Price" is an insider's account of one voter's experience in detention after the bloody protests that followed last summer's presidential election in Iran.