We hope Bernard Madoff got a good last look at his penthouse: After Madoff plead guilty Thursday, the judge ordered him jailed pending sentence and revoked his bail. In a statement to the judge, Madoff said, “I am actually grateful for this opportunity to publicly comment about my crimes, for which I am deeply sorry and ashamed. … As the years went by, I realized my risk, and this day would inevitably come. I cannot adequately express how sorry I am for my crimes.” Madoff faces a maximum sentence of 150 years.

Three is a trend, right? The Dow Jones rose today for the third straight day, climbing 240 points to surpass the 7000 threshold and finish the day at 7170. Big winners include General Electric, which rose 13 percent, and Bank of America, which rose 20 percent. It marks the best three-day run for the markets since November.

This doesn’t look good: Obama’s new computer chief has taken a leave of absence after the FBI raided his old District of Columbia office and arrested two of his former colleagues on corruption charges. While Vivek Kundra—whom Obama chose to coordinate federal computer systems, was not charged—Yusuf Acar, security chief at the city’s technology office, was ordered held without bond and Sushil Bansal, technology consultant, was released but ordered not to leave the area or conduct overseas financial transactions. Acar, who worked under Kundra, and Bansal are accused of defrauding the government through “a variety of schemes, including billing the city for items that were never delivered and ‘ghost’ contract employees who did not work,” the AP reports.

Two years after her death, Anna Nicole Smith is still making news. Late Thursday Howard K. Stern—the lawyer and ex-boyfriend of the model and reality TV star, who died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in 2007 in the Bahamas—as well as psychiatrist Kristine Eroshevich and Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, were charged with one count apiece of felony conspiracy to furnish drugs to Smith and prescribing, administering, or dispensing a controlled substance to an addict. Kapoor, whose office was raided by the DEA last month, and Stern were also charged with “a single count of unlawfully prescribing a controlled substance between June 9, 2004, and Sept. 22, 2006, while Stern and Eroshevich were hit with the same charge for prescriptions doled out between June 5, 2004, and Jan. 26, 2007,” E! Online reports. Bail is set for each defendant at $20,000.

Talk about scary close calls: The crew of the International Space Station briefly evacuated their floating home today to avoid the possibility of space debris hitting the craft. The move was just a precaution, but it did mobilize the crew to enter the Soyuz capsule. The debris may have been an old motor from the station itself.

A month after the brutal killing of Aasiya Zubair Hassan in a Buffalo suburb, her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, has been indicted for second-degree murder. Aasiya Hassan was beheaded Feb. 12 at the offices of Bridges TV, which the couple had founded in 2004 to counter stereotypes of Muslims. Six days earlier, she had filed for divorce after eight years of marriage, citing domestic violence. Hassan is accused of repeatedly stabbing his wife, 37, and decapitating her. He faces 25 years to life in prison.

More trouble at the Treasury: According to George Stephanopoulos, “Democratic sources say that H. Rodgin Cohen, a partner in the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration.” Cohen is the third Treasury nominee to withdraw this week. He was supposed to replace Annette Nazareth, who withdrew from consideration for the same post last week.

Should we stick a fork in Michael Steele? The blogosphere thinks so based on some answers he gave to questions about abortion in an interview with GQ. Asked if women should have the right to choose an abortion, he said, “I think that's an individual choice.” He then tried to backpedal, saying, “The states should make that choice. That's what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states.” Steele also says he believes homosexuality is not a choice and that states should decide whether to allow gay couples to marry. Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly writes, “It's very easy at this point to imagine Steele coming to the conclusion that he’s become a ‘distraction,’ and deciding that what he really wants to do is spend more time with his family.”

Despite home field advantage, the beast succumbed: A spearfisherman armed with only a fishing knife, a speargun, and a snorkel managed to battle a 12-foot tiger shark to the death in the Gulf of Mexico, the New York Post reports. Craig Clasen was attacked by the huge creature while hunting tuna. The shark circled him and a fellow fisherman aggressively, then barreled toward Clasen. Upon seeing the shark, the duo recognized they were on the beast’s menu. The showdown lasted two hours, with Clasen spearing the shark seven times before finishing it off with a long hunting knife. Clasen, for his part, felt no pride at the kill. “This was one of the most remorseful moments I have ever had in all of my years in hunting and fishing,” he said.

Less than a month ago they were arm-in-arm at the Oscars. Today, Maniston is no more. Yes, Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer have split again after a year of off-and-on dating, People reports. The breakup, reportedly initiated by Mayer, 31, came as Aniston, 40, returned from a promotional tour in Europe—he had stayed behind in LA to “work on his music.” “They had some disagreements and decided to not continue to see each other,” a source tells the magazine. “Jen is moving on with her life like she always does. She seems happy.” Mayer and Aniston previously split in August; at that time, he told the media, “I ended a relationship to be alone because I don’t want to waste somebody’s time if something’s not right.”

Several Somali-Americans, mainly from Minneapolis, have returned to their homeland to join a radical Islamic movement, according to BBC News. The terrorist group, called Al-Shabab, reportedly has links to Al-Qaeda. Thus far, however, the attacks have been limited to within Somalia's borders. Al-Shabab controls the majority of Somalia and is at war with the more moderate central government. One young Somali-American college student returned to join the cause of Al-Shabab and became a suicide bomber. According to an FBI official, "A lot of them are being put on the front line and some of them [may] have been killed."

Adjust your mental encyclopedia: The nation’s tallest tower—currently known as the Sears’ Tower—will be rechristened the “Willis Tower” after its New York-based owners signed a deal with the Willis Group Holdings, a London-based insurance broker, for 140,000 square feet. Willis will consolidate its five Chicago-area offices and move 500 employees into the tower. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, “Real estate experts wondered why the tower's owners handed naming rights to a tenant that will take only 3.5 percent of the 3.8-million-square-foot building.”

“If you have ever groused about the size of your apartment, then visit Mr. Guzman’s on Seymour Avenue in the Bronx,” says today’s The New York Times. The article explores a flophouse in the Bronx that is home to as many as 30 men, each of whom pays $215 to $300 a month in rent. The apartment was condemned by firefighters last year, but the men remain there and argue that they deserve tenant protections. What exactly are they protecting? Three sets of bunk beds are crammed into a 10-by-12 room. The rooms stink of stale alcohol and are infested with bed bugs. The bathrooms are “spotted with a brackish mold.” After visiting, according to the Times, “You will walk out feeling chastened by your pampered sensibilities. You will breathe a little deeper and then go home to take a shower.”

George Packer, staff writer for The New Yorker, praises on his blog the choice of conservative wunderkind Ross Douthat for The New York Times op-ed page, saying that the choice was essentially "an admission and correction of a mistake" (the mistake being Douthat’s predecessor, William Kristol). Packer also had choice words for most of the Times' other op-ed columnists who "seem unable to contend with the earthquake rolling under our feet" and "have almost without exception fallen back on the comfort of well-worn stances and personality tics." Tom Friedman, Packer argues, puts too much faith in elites; Dowd's latest column bordered on "self-parody"; and Frank Rich puts on "a weekly display of rhetorical bravura and cheap shots."

President Obama may be popular with the public, but economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal give him and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner failing grades for their efforts to revive the economy. A majority of the 49 economists polled told surveyors they were dissatisfied with the Obama team’s economic policies; on average, they gave him a grade of 59 out of 100, while Geithner got just 51. (Fed chief Ben Bernanke, meanwhile, scored a respectable 71.) The Journal does cast a somewhat suspicious light on the judgmental economists, however, remarking that many of them “have been continually surprised by the depth of the downturn…On average, they expect the downturn to end in October. Last month, they said the bottom would arrive in August.”

Is Ann Coulter now stuck in Rush Limbaugh’s shadow? Sales of the conservative firebrand’s latest book, Guilty, are way down reports Conde Nast Portfolio: In its first two months on sale, Guilty has sold 100,500 copies, according to Nielsen Book Scan (which reflects about 70 percent of total sales). Her last book, Godless, sold 279,100 copies in hardcover; Treason sold 396,600 hardcover copies; and Slander sold 333,100 hardcover copies.

Yesterday, a tourist called authorities after spotting a man in his late 30s entering the water above Canadian Horseshoe Falls, one of Niagara's three main water falls. Miraculously, the man survived the plunge, and although rescue crews tried to help, he swam away from them toward the middle of the river. Finally, a private helicopter hovered over him and used the current created by the propeller to push him toward shore where emergency workers swam 60 yards into the river to haul him out. The man's clothing had been ripped off by the currents, and he was suffering from a head injury and hypothermia.

Could this be the end for Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari? The government is banning protests and arresting hundreds for fear that a planned national protest march might eventually topple Zardari's regime. Protests led by some of the same leaders helped bring down General Pervez Musharraf in 2007. Zardari's six month-old government has been under fire over a worsening economy and growing Islamist insurgency. American intelligence officials have long warned that a destabilized Pakistan could pose a major threat to the U.S., as the country possesses nuclear weapons and houses a large number of Taliban militants and Al Qaeda terrorists.

Sorry kids: The New York Times reports that Chris Brown has removed his name from the ballot of the Nickelodeon’s Kids Choice Awards, which are set to air on March 28. Brown was nominated for favorite male singer and favorite song for “Kiss Kiss.” The nominations were announced before Chris Brown was accused of attacking Rihanna.

A kinder, gentler war on drugs might be in the works under Obama's new drug czar. Yesterday Vice President Biden nominated Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske as the latest drug czar and indicated a change in the focus of the war on drugs. According to Biden and Kerlikowske, more emphasis will be placed on treating, instead of incarcerating, those arrested for drug-related offenses. "The success of our efforts to reduce the flow of drugs is largely dependent on our ability to reduce demand for them," said Kerlikowske, whose stepson has been arrested in the past on drug charges. Unlike past administrations, the White House will not place the drug control director in a Cabinet position, so Biden can play a larger role in policy-making.

Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul spent six years in Guantanamo before convincing a U.S. military review board that he had never been a Taliban commander. In December 2007, the U.S. military released him to Hamid Karzai's government in Afghanistan, who let him go in spring 2008. Now Resoul goes by Mullah Abdullah Zakir, and is the Taliban operations chief in Afghanistan's Helmand province. He's allegedly responsible for a dramatic rise in roadside bombings. Since 2008, 44 British troops have died in such attacks and 18 have died from exchanges of fire, up dramatically from the prior year. The news may complicate Obama's plan to close Guantanamo and convince other countries to take some of its detainees.

Is Odysseus next? Anne Heche gave birth to her second child over the weekend and, like most celebrity baby names, her new son’s moniker is slightly puzzling. Atlas Heche Tupper weighed six pounds, 12 ounces, and is the first child for Heche and her former Men in Trees costar James Tupper. The actress’ divorce to first husband Coley Laffoon was made final days before she gave birth. In case you don’t remember, their five-year-old son is named Homer.

Forbes’ list of billionaires has taken on an unusually macabre tinge this year. From German pharma king Adolf Merckle, who committed suicide in January after running up huge debts gambling on risky short positions, to India’s Anil Ambani, who lost $31.9 billion, or 79 percent of his fortune, as shares of his companies collapsed, the annual article makes for an addictive read. Overall, 793 made the list, a 30 percent decline; of 752 who retained their status, 87 percent saw their personal wealth tumble. Most shocking: Their collective net worth is now $2.4 trillion, down a whopping $2 trillion. David Geffen, whose net worth has fallen 25 percent to $4.5 billion, sums it up: “I don’t think we’ve hit the bottom. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Dow fell below 6000…I think [unemployment] will reach 15 percent or 16 percent by the end of the year.”

This announcement is brought to you by the letter “F.” Sesame Workshop, which produces the PBS series Sesame Street, pink-slipped 67 of 355 staff positions recently, as it seems even the classic Muppet characters cannot escape the economic pinch. Founded in 1968, the Sesame Workshop functions from product licensing and by selling its programs to PBS. Last year’s revenue totaled $145 million, while operating expenses equaled $141 million.

Two days after instructing the government to ignore President’s Bush’s signing statements, Obama has issued one of his own. In the statement—a direction to executive branch officials about how to implement the legislation—he reserves the right to bypass dozens of disputed provisions in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill. Obama writes that a provision instructing money not to be spent on any UN peacekeeping mission if it means putting US troops under a foreign commander “raises constitutional concerns by constraining my choice of particular persons to perform specific command functions in military missions.” He also takes on whistle-blower protections for federal employees; negotiations with other countries; what agencies should include in budget requests; and allowing money to be reallocated to a different program only with the approval of a congressional committee (an “impermissible forms of legislative aggrandizement”).

Watch out, John Thain: Andrew Cuomo has new details on Merrill Lynch’s bonus debacle. The New York attorney general is accusing the securities firm, bought by Bank of America on Jan. 1, of “misleading” Congress about when directors decided to pay out $3.6 billion in bonuses. On Nov. 24, as Merrill was piling up a $15 billion fourth-quarter net loss, a Merrill lawyer told Rep. Henry Waxman that bonus decisions hadn’t yet been made—though the firm’s compensation committee had voted two weeks earlier to move the bonus payments up from January to December. Also in Cuomo’s court filing today, he drops the bomb that Thain, Merrill’s chairman and CEO, “was told that he would lose any chance of succeeding [Ken] Lewis as CEO of Bank of America if he continued pressing Merrill for a 2008 bonus of as much as $40 million,” The Wall Street Journal reports. In the end, neither Lewis nor Thain collected a 2008 bonus, and Thain resigned from BofA in late January.

A routine trip to work turned into a frightening ride for workers being transported via helicopter to an Atlantic Ocean oil platform near Newfoundland. Eighteen people were aboard as copter crashed into the ocean. Two survivors have been pulled from the water and taken to a nearby hospital. A rescue mission is underway for the other passengers but heavy winds are bolstering waves in the area.

New day, new ideas: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner wants to boost our primary line of credit to the International Monetary Fund by $90 billion to give emergency support to the world’s struggling economies. The proposal, which requires congressional approval, offers a hint of the administration’s global economy strategy ahead of the G-20 summit in London on April 2. While Washington would expand its line of credit to the IMF to $100 billion from $10 billion, other countries would also be expected to boost their funds, including China, which so far hasn’t chipped in so much as a penny. If all goes as planned, the IMF will have $500 billion to loan, a ten-fold increase from its old budget. Geithner will push the plan this weekend at a finance ministers’ meeting in London.

You're an attorney general looking to win over the public en route to higher ambitions. Who do you target? Why greedy executives, of course! According to the New York Times, populist outrage against financial institutions is expected to create a surge of prosecutions against banks and mortgage officers who bent the rules along the way to the economic collapse. At the top of the legal totem pole, the Obama administration has remained mostly silent on its plans to go after financial fraud, the new budget contains more FBI money to investigate white collar crime and a 13 percent raise for the SEC, hinting that a major effort to target such cases was in the works. "It will be a top priority of the Justice Department to hold accountable executives who have engaged in fraudulent activities," a DOJ spokesman told the Times. Plenty of state prosecutors are already taking on mortgage fraud and lawmakers like Rep. Barney Frank are pressuring the SEC to take a more aggressive approach in handling white collar crime.

Less than a year after besting Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, President Obama is setting up a new panel to ensure all federal agencies take into account how their policies affect girls and women. “I sign this order not just as a president, but as a son, as a grandson, a husband and a father,” Obama said this afternoon as he signed an executive order creating the White House Council on Women and Girls. “I saw my grandmother work her way up to become one of the first women bank vice presidents in the state of Hawaii, but I also saw how she hit a glass ceiling—how men no more qualified than she was kept moving up the corporate ladder ahead of her.” The chairwoman of the council will be the president’s friend and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett; Tina Tchen, director of public liaison at the White House, will serve as executive director.

A plum major studio role has cemented Mickey Rourke as the comeback kid. Although it was rumored that The Wrestler star would play the villain in Iron Man 2, a paltry $250,000 salary offer kept him from committing. Now Variety reports that he has signed on to portray the Russian bad guy after being promised a deal more in line with his recent surge of popularity. Robert Downey Jr., who returns in the title role, was said to have a hand in getting Rourke onboard. Not a bad rebound after last month's one-two punch of losing the Best Actor Oscar and the death of his beloved dog Loki nearly sidelined the increasingly eccentric, and surprisingly emotional, thespian.

Could it be that residents of a major American city will soon have nothing to read with their morning coffee? Major papers have been folding around the nation in recent months, with the weak economy accelerating an already negative trend away from print media. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Tuscon Citizen are expected to print their last issues soon and the Rocky Mountain News shut down two weeks ago. According to analysts, it may not be long before a major American city has no major newspaper in its vicinity whatsoever. "In 2009 and 2010, all the two-newspaper markets will become one-newspaper markets, and you will start to see one-newspaper markets become no-newspaper markets," an analyst told the New York Times. So... bailout?

He became a global icon after angrily tossing his shoes at President Bush at a press conference, but Muntazer al-Zaidi, 30, will pay for his protest with three years in jail after being sentenced on Thursday. Zaidi pleaded not guilty to the charge of "aggression against a foreign head of state," and after the verdict was announced relatives disrupted the courtroom shouting that the decision was unjust. The shoe-throwing Zaidi has been detained since the December 14 incident and claimed he was tortured in custody.