It's like the '90s all over again, with news outlets all but swooning over Bill Clinton's speech last night at the Democratic National Convention—and the rave reviews come a day after the journalistic standing ovation for Michelle Obama's highly personal speech. As President Obama prepares to take the stage tonight, The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz asks whether pundits are going soft on the Democrats.

201,000 private-sector jobs were added in August, according to a report released by the ADP on Thursday, a figure significantly higher than analysts anticipated. The number comes ahead of the U.S. Labor Department’s job numbers for the month of August due out on Friday, which has become one of the most-watched numbers this election cycle. A sampling of economists polled by the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch found that they expect the Labor Department to say that employment rose by 120,000 jobs in August, and that unemployment will remain steady at 8.3 percent. Also on Thursday, the Department of Labor announced that jobless claims fell to their lowest level in a month.

Will.i.am, the Black Eyed Peas frontman turned humanitarian and political activist, is fired up. Past midnight in his sprawling hotel suite near DNC headquarters in Charlotte, the singer opens up to The Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern about Bill Clinton’s speech, why the Republicans are holding us back, and more.

Police in France are trying to piece together what happened in a bizarre, gruesome murder that took place at a camping ground near the Swiss border. A 4-year-old girl was discovered alive in a car with three adults, believed to be their mother, father, and grandmother—all of whom were shot dead. Eight hours after the police began their investigation, the girl was discovered huddled under the legs of the two dead women, apparently too scared to move and unnoticed by police. A 7-year-old girl had been discovered alive but unconscious by the side of the car, which alerted a passing cyclist that something was amiss. A local cyclist was also found dead—shot in the head—at the scene. Police believe the family was British and vacationing.

The Dow Jones spiked 200 points after the European Central Bank announced its latest effort to deal with the burgeoning continental debt crisis Thursday. ECB head Mario Draghi announced a new program under which the central bank will commit to buy government bonds of troubled eurozone countries, provided that they adhere to certain conditions. Declaring that the “euro is irreversible,” Draghi charted a course for a more robust common currency that relies on “unlimited” buying of bonds by the central bank. Markets around the world rallied Thursday morning in response to Draghi’s appearance.