Israel said Saturday that its three-week military offensive into the Gaza Strip was over and that a cease-fire was now in effect. "The conditions have been created that our aims, as declared, were attained fully, and beyond," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared in a televised address. Hamas, however, refused to agree to the truce, saying it was void until Israeli troops left the territory. "A unilateral ceasefire does not mean ending the aggression and ending the siege. These constitute acts of war and so this will not mean an end to resistance," a Hamas spokesman responded. Since the campaign began on December 27, over 1,200 Palestinians have been killed. Hamas rockets were fired into Israel minutes before Olmert's speech. Overnight, the Israeli military deployed 50 air strikes into Gaza as a final show of force.

Taking a page from Lincoln’s playbook, Obama and his wife, Michelle—whose 45th birthday is today—and daughters, Malia and Sasha, boarded a train in chilly Philadelphia this morning for a six-city whistle-stop tour to Washington. The soon-to-be first family was greeted by cheering crowds along the 137-mile route, then made a stop in Wilmington, Delaware, to pick up Joe Biden and his family, and did “slow rolls” through the towns of Claymont, Delaware, and Edgewood, Maryland, where viewers caught a glimpse Obama waving from the back balcony of the 80-year-old Georgia 300 rail car. He delivered a speech in Baltimore to a crowd of 40,000, in which he recalled the troops at Maryland's Fort McHenry who defeated the British in the War of 1812, before continuing on to Washington's Union Station, where the tour will conclude.

Obama for America is becoming Organizing for America. That’s what the president-elect announced today during his weekly YouTube address. The move means his huge electronic apparatus will become part of the Democratic National Committee, resolving a long-standing debate about how best to leverage Obama’s stunning campaign organization. In a press release, Organizing for America says it’s “the next phase” of the Obama organization, offering “volunteers the continued opportunity to work for change in their communities by organizing in support of reform in Washington.” Heading OFA will be campaign aides Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Jeremy Bird, and Mitch Stewart.

The government is planning a second phase of its rescue of the financial system, and it's looking a lot like the original plan that Henry Paulson scrapped. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Officials at the Treasury, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., in consultation with the incoming Obama administration, are discussing a plan to create a government bank that would buy up the bad investments and loans that are behind the huge losses that U.S. banks continue to report, say government officials. Also under consideration is an additional and giant government guarantee of banks' assets against further losses." The goal is to get private capital back into the banking system. Paulson originally planned to use TARP funds to buy up bad assets, but ditched that plan because it seemed too slow and costly at the time.

It’s the first lady-in-waiting’s birthday, and she’s spending it with her family—aboard a train bound for Washington, D.C. Not too romantic, maybe, but she already celebrated her big day, with a dinner at the capital’s Equinox restaurant. “We actually had a little birthday party last night,” Barack Obama said yesterday in an interview with CNN’s John King. “If you’re going to miss it, better miss it earlier than miss it late.” Michelle celebrated her birthday under unusual circumstances last year, as well, on the campaign trail in Las Vegas. “I took her out to dinner,” the president-elect said then. “At a fancy restaurant. Because she has just been so spectacular putting up with me on this presidential run. And I thought that I was being slick…And I said, you know, ‘Bring us a glass of champagne,’ because Michelle likes champagne...Everything went off without a hitch…Michelle loved it, she was feeling good. At the end of the dinner, I looked at the check and I did not realize you could pay that much for a glass of champagne, I mean wow! If I had known, I would have had a sip of this champagne. It’s Vegas, huh?”

What was it like aboard Flight 1549? The passengers included 23 Bank of America executives and an Australian pop singer named Emma Sophina. When passengers reached the exit, the life raft was upside down and out of reach, and three passengers linked like monkeys from a barrel and leaned out of the plane to retrieve it. One man fell into the freezing water and was pulled out by the other passengers. According to another passenger, one woman was struggling to retrieve her luggage. "Another gentleman who did a great job—he's a hero—actually picked her up and threw her on the lifeboat." At some points, the story turns absurdly comic, as when passengers trying to help a mother on the wing of the plane instructed her to "throw the baby." After the landing, the passengers gathered at a downtown hotel, drank martinis, returned to La Guardia, and boarded Flight 2591 to Charlotte at 10 p.m.

President Bush's imminent departure isn't generating many warm feelings among the American public: His approval rating remains in the cellar at 22 percent, according to a new poll by CBS News/New York Times. It is the lowest final approval rating for an outgoing president since Gallup began its surveys 70 years ago. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans still approved of the president, while only six percent of Democrats and 18 percent of independents did. Over the course of his presidency, Bush had both the highest and lowest approval ratings of all time—90 percent following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and 20 percent in November 2008.

New York Gov. David Paterson's choice to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate will be made public “right after the inauguration,” he told WFAN. "I would probably have done it this weekend, but I just kind of decided I didn't want to trample on Senator Clinton's ability to come back and say farewell to her constituents nor... the inauguration," he explained. "My job is not to pick the person who is popular today," he added. "It's the person who is going to be popular in 2010, when they run for re-election." But has he made up his mind? “He was leaning toward one person, but he has shifted to another," a source who knows him told the New York Daily News. Yet everyone is left in the dark, it seems. “He’s keeping his own counsel,” the source said.

Thursday night at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Manhattan, men like Simon Schama, Michael Steinhardt, and Mort Zuckerman gathered to ask an important question: Where did Bernard Madoff come from? The name of the event was "Madoff: A Jewish Reckoning," which Zuckerman, whose charity lost $30 million to Madoff, took issue with. "I am here to disagree with the essence of the theme, 'A Jewish Reckoning,'" he said. "I do not accept this at all as a Jewish thing," saying that no one referred to Kenneth Lay as a "Protestant American." He left early. The panel discussed whether the Madoff scandal was likely to lead to a revival of anti-Semitism, with Schama suggesting American Jews were being overly sensitive, asking "do we know that the recruiting centers in Montana have been exceptionally busy this past month?" Steinhardt found a silver lining, saying that many of the charities that were fleeced were "lousy, miserable, corrupt organizations" and this may be occasion for reform.

Republican lawmakers are unnerved by a preliminary Pentagon study into which US military bases could be used as a detention center to replace the facility in Guantanamo Bay, which President-elect Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are intent on closing. Sites under consideration are Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and Camp Pendleton, Calif., military sources told The New York Times. With nearly 250 prisoners remaining in Gitmo, Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican of Kansas, said his state’s base “isn’t set up for it.” Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican of California, told The Times that “it’s an insult to military personnel serving in Afghanistan and Iraq” to house detainees on operational bases.

Steve Jobs is too ill to run Apple, so why is he standing for re-election to the board of Disney? Jobs became Disney's largest shareholder in 2006, when the company bought Pixar, but many are concerned about his decision to try to remain on the company's board. "A directorship is not an honorary position," said a professor of corporate governance. "If he's said he can't run Apple, how on earth can he [stand for the Disney board again]?" Jobs does not have any special responsibilities or serve on any committees at Disney, but is a close advisor to CEO Bob Iger.

Bernie Madoff was in a league of his own, but there were smaller ponzi schemers all over. The latest to be accused is money manager Daren Palmer of Idaho Falls, Idaho. State securities regulators claim his scheme cost investors up to $100 million. To start with, neither Palmer nor his firm was registered with state regulators though promised annual returns of 25 percent to 40 percent were made. Now a formal investigation is under way, after authorities met with 30 investors who expressed concerns. "He just seemed so legit," one client said. "He grew up in the area."

With Barack Obama taking the oath of office this week amid millions of spectators and throngs of A-list VIPs, all eyes are on D.C.—and New York City is feeling jealous. Indeed, with the recession that’s hitting NYC’s finance, media, advertising, tourism, and real estate industries especially hard, the center of power has shifted to Capitol Hill, which is gaining more power by the day. New York has also lost two political stars—Hillary Clinton and Timothy Geithner—to D.C. posts. “When I’m out in bars and restaurants, there is a sheen that is missing…there is a sense that the thrill of paying $20 for a cocktail is over,” one young ad exec told The New York Times.

Andrew Wyeth was among America's most famous artists, but was he among its best? In The Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout notes that the recently deceased Wyeth has always suffered at the hands of art critics. "At a time when the vast majority of serious American art critics believed abstraction to be the One Best Way to paint, it was hugely irksome that America's most successful painter should have been firmly committed not just to representation, but to near-photographic realism." Teachout predicts "at least a partial revaluation," which will be based not on Wyeth's popular landscapes, but rather his more unknown watercolors, "an on-the-spot medium that does not allow for second thought…[and] forced him to be free." Teachout predicts Wyeth will "be remembered as a minor master who frequently failed to live up to his talent."

The Interior Department has given the green light to a controversial 24-square-mile wind farm that would be built off the coast of Massachusetts’ Cape Cod. Strongly opposed for years by Sen. Edward Kennedy and other state residents, final federal approval of the proposed renewable energy station of 130 windmills isn’t expected until after President-elect Obama takes office. Kennedy maintains the idea “threatens the livelihood of Massachusetts’ fishermen.”