Big news on the AIG bonus front: Nine of the top 10 bonus recipients at AIG have given the money back. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo made the announcement late this afternoon, adding that 15 of the top 20 recipients in the ill-starred financial products division have returned their bonuses, for a total of $30 million. “Those bonuses will be returned in full,” he said. Interestingly, 47 percent of the $165 million in bonuses was given to Americans, and Cuomo said he expects to get that money back. Some tricky bonus recipients are refusing to give their “retention payments” back, however—especially those who are overseas, outside the jurisdiction of New York State.

Will this quiet the Tim Geithner haters? Stock markets are bear-hugging the treasury secretary’s toxic asset plan, with the Dow leaping 497.47 points, or 6.84 percent, in late trading to close at 7,775.86, and the S&P and Nasdaq climbing 7 percent. All 30 of the Dow’s 30 components were up, and Alcoa, American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase posted double-digit percentage gains after details of Geithner’s plan were announced. The Treasury Department announced this morning that a new public-private partnership could purchase $1 trillion in bad credit bets from banks. “The [stock] market was looking for anything that was more definitive from Treasury than what we had,” Bud Haslett, chief executive of Miller Tabak Capital Management, tells The Wall Street Journal. “There are still are lot of unknowns, but it is more clear. The market is going to have a positive bias going forward.”

In yet another rebuke of the Bush administration, the new-look Environmental Protection Agency has released a proposal stating that “global warming is endangering the public’s health and welfare.” The findings, The Washington Post reports, could serve as the foundation for nationwide limits on emissions. Business leaders are attacking the report—a direct response to the Bush administration’s rejection of much of the research surrounding global warming—saying that if enacted, emissions limits would slow down or completely stop construction, including projects tied to the economic stimulus.

Bernie’s assets are popping up all over: A trustee appointed to unwind Madoff’s businesses says the swindler’s assets that have been tracked to Gibraltar are worth about $75 million, raising the recovered total to $1 billion. Trustee David Sheehan also told a court today that French authorities could soon try to seize Madoff’s three-bedroom apartment in Cap d’Antibes, worth about $1.6 million. Sheehan is also asking the court to give him power of attorney over Madoff’s UK unit to help speed his efforts to recover assets for investors.

We never thought we’d see the day: David Letterman is a married man. The Late Night host married his longtime girlfriend, Regina Lasko, in a courthouse ceremony Thursday, Us reports. A source at a taping of the show today said Letterman broke the news “about 20 minutes into the show, before the ‘Top 10’ list.” The couple has been together 10 years, since Lasko worked for Letterman on his show; their son, Harry, was born in November 2003. Letterman’s previous marriage, to his college sweetheart, Michelle Cook, ended in divorce after seven years.

With 8,000 dead in drug violence in the past two years and narcotrafficking raging out of control, Mexico is taking drastic measures—offering $2 million each to informers who help arrest the country’s 24 most wanted drug gang leaders. The move is a public challenge to the cartels, the BBC reports, and comes amid increasing U.S. and Mexican cooperation as gang violence spills over the border. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week will be in Mexico, where she’s expected to confirm the U.S. will deploy more federal agents along the American-Mexican border, before President Obama travels to Mexico City for meetings next month.

Putting an end to persistent speculation on the Internet, Michelle Obama flatly denied she's pregnant in a new interview with Oprah Winfrey's O magazine. When pressed by Winfrey in the cover story of the latest issue, the first lady responded, "I was like, 'Baby bump? As hard as I work on my abs?!" Michelle added that she has no plans to have a third child: "Here's the scoop. Not pregnant. And not planning on it."

Those who dream of getting even with Madoff will get a kick out of Woody Allen’s latest “Shouts and Murmurs” column in The New Yorker, for which he invents two victims of Bernie who drop dead after learning they’re bankrupt. Reincarnated as lobsters awaiting their demise in a posh New York City restaurant, the pair passes the time reminiscing, until in walks their nemesis—and he has a hankering for crustacean. Outraged at the sheer injustice of it all, the lobsters manage to topple their tank and assault the Ponzi schemer. With their rose-colored pincers firmly wrapped around Madoff’s ample proboscis, the lobsters demand a guilty plea and get their wish.

The classic 1969 film True Grit, which earned John Wayne an Oscar, is being remade by Hollywood darlings the Coen brothers. Variety reports that their adaptation of the 1969 picture will hew more closely to the Charles Portis book on which it is based. In the book, a 14-year-old girl, an aging US marshal, and another lawman track her father’s killer through Indian country. While the 1969 version focused on Wayne, the Coens’ version will highlight the girl’s point of view. But fans might have to wait a while for the film—according to IMDB, the brothers, who won several Oscars for No Country for Old Men, have three films coming out before True Grit: A Serious Man, Hail Caesar, and Suburbicon.

Score one more for science. In another example of the new political climate in D.C., a federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make the morning after pill available to 17-year-olds—immediately. The judge also ordered a reexamination of whether the pill should be available over the counter to all women. Echoing Obama’s emphasis on “getting politics out of science,” the judge said in a statement, “the record is clear that the FDA’s course of conduct regarding Plan B departed in significant ways from the agency's normal procedures.” Women’s rights groups are cheering the news.

How goes democracy in Afghanistan? The Guardian reports that “the US and its European allies are preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.” The new “prime minister” will bypass Karzai, and the U.S. will further undermine the corrupt central government by diverting money to the provinces. One diplomat says, “Karzai is not delivering. If we are going to support his government, it has to be run properly to ensure the levels of corruption decrease, not increase. The levels of corruption are frightening."

It seems that, quite literally, a stick has been thrown in the wheel of Lance Armstrong’s comeback. The 7-time Tour de France champion crashed in the first stage of Spain’s Vuelta Castilla y Leon today and “appeared to be in pain as he was helped into an ambulance,” according to Reuters. A spokesperson for his team said that it was likely he injured his collarbone or shoulder.

Robin Williams fans, take heart: The funnyman’s surgery to replace an aortic valve went “extremely well,” according to a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, where the operation was performed today. “A couple hours after surgery, he was entertaining the medical team and making us all laugh,” said the surgeon. Health problems had forced Williams to postpone his one-man show, Weapons of Self-Destruction, although he is expected to resume the 80-city tour this fall. The actor said through a spokesman: “I’m thinking the next leg of the tour will be Weapons of Self-Destruction and Reconstruction!”

Has JPMorgan Chase decided to add its own digit to the phalanx of middle fingers being waved at taxpayers by companies like AIG and Citigroup? ABC News reports that “Embattled bank JPMorgan Chase, the recipient of $25 billion in TARP funds, is going ahead with a $138 million plan to buy two new luxury corporate jets and build ‘the premiere corporate aircraft hangar on the eastern seaboard’ to house them.” The two jets will cost $120 million, while the hangar at Westchester Airport in New York will cost $18 million. A spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase emphasized that no TARP money will be spent on the project and that it will repay its taxpayer money before proceeding with the plans. 

Does tragedy haunt certain families? According to AFP, Nicholas Hughes, the son of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, hung himself today in Alaska, 46 years after his mother’s suicide. Hughes suffered from depression and was a professor of ocean sciences at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. He was unmarried and had no children, and is survived by a sister. Six years after Plath’s death, Ted Hughes’s next lover also committed suicide.

AIG can’t run, but can it hide? The embattled insurance giant has removed its logo from the entrance to one of its Manhattan office buildings. The company plans to change its property-casualty operation’s name to AIU Holding Ltd., and the change was designed, according to a spokesperson, to “distinguish these well-capitalized businesses from AIG.” The company’s main headquarters, in a separate building, are marked only by an understated brass plaque that reads “American International Building.” AIG is also considering selling its headquarters.

This is good PR for a network desperately in need. Deposed DNC chairman Howard Dean has found a new outpost as a pundit for CNBC. A source confirmed the gig to The Huffington Post, and Dean began his stint this morning with a guest hosting appearance. Dean has been an outspoken critic of the business practices that spiraled into the current mess, and his post-college days on Wall Street will (hopefully) prove informative. Although it's nice to imagine this is part of the channel's damage control, the source says the Dean deal was in place long before the verbal lashing by Jon Stewart.

When the court asked alleged Mumbai gunman Ajmal Amir Kasab whether he understood the charges against him, the so-called "baby face killer" broke into a fit of laughter, the London Times reports. The Pakistani national's charge sheet runs to 11,000 pages and is written in English and Marathi, the local language of Mumbai. Kasab was caught on camera with an AK-47 and a bag full of ammunition and grenades during the coordinated commando-style attacks on Mumbai last November, when he and an accomplice allegedly killed 58 people at Mumbai's main train station. Kasab reportedly smiled throughout the hearing and is reading Gandhi's autobiography in his cell. If convicted of murder and waging war against India, he'll face death by hanging.

Apparently, man is a social animal: Atul Gawande has a fascinating piece in this week's New Yorker on what solitary confinement does to prisoners. Using psychological experiments from the 1950s, memoirs from former POWs like John McCain and journalist Terry Anderson, and interviews with current and former prisoners who spent years in supermax prisons, Gawande builds a compelling case for why solitary confinement should qualify as torture. As McCain put it, solitary confinement "crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment." Gawande's conclusions are troubling, particularly given that the US is home to 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of its prisoners. If the supermax solitary style of confinement breaks down the minds of criminals, making some psychotic and rendering a convict's transition back into society more difficult while failing to reduce prison violence in a substantive way, then perhaps it's not a great idea.

Somebody buy Paul Krugman a drink. “[Geithner’s plan] is more than disappointing,” he writes in today’s New York Times. “In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair.” The problem, as Krugman sees it, is that Geithner is simply rehashing Henry Paulson’s old plan and that it’s a one-way bet: “if asset values go up, the investors profit, but if they go down, the investors can walk away from their debt.” Writing for his blog, however, likeminded economist Brad DeLong declares “I think Paul Krugman is wrong.” He lists three reasons: 1) “I see the Geithner Plan as a positive step from where we are”; 2) “Politics: I think Obama has to demonstrate that he has exhausted all other options before he has a prayer of getting Voinovich to vote to close debate on a bank nationalization bill”; 3) “I think the private-sector players in financial markets right now are highly risk averse—hence assets are undervalued from the perspective of a society or a government that is less risk averse.”

Six years ago, actress Lana Clarkson died of a gunshot wound at Phil Spector's mansion and now his trial is wrapping up for the second time. His first trial, which took place 18 months ago, ended in a deadlocked jury that voted 10-2 in favor of conviction. Today, closing arguments begin in his retrial, in which prosecutors will attempt to establish that the 69-year-old music producer responsible for creating rock music's "wall of sound" effect shot Clarkson as she attempted to leave his house. Defense attorneys will counter that Clarkson was a down-on-her-luck actress approaching middle age who killed herself. Although Spector has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, on Friday the judge ruled that jurors have the option to convict Spector on a lesser involuntary manslaughter charge, which would yield a two to four year prison term.

Score one for Bambi. Matt Lauer played hooky from his Today hosting duties this morning after a run-in with a deer placed him on the injury list. This weekend the 51-year-old anchor flipped over his bike's handlebars and separated his shoulder when a deer sauntered in front of his path. He is expected to have surgery today. Meredith Vieira was full of sympathy, saying, "I hired the deer... but I said, 'Just graze him.'"

Desperate times, desperate measures. Across the country, women who have lost their job are finding openings at strip clubs and in adult entertainment. Many of the newcomers are college grads with white collar resumes who can't find a gig in the current economic turmoil. Though a job in adult entertainment certainly has its drawbacks, the pay—as much as a couple thousand a week at a club in Chicago—makes the leering customers a little easier to tolerate. But adult entertainment is no longer recession proof. According to porn mogul Larry Flynt, many of the smaller studios are going under, making it harder to climb the ladder in porn. Big spenders at strip clubs aren't making it rain like they used to, either. Lastly, there is the stigma of adult entertainment. No matter how desperate for a job you are, one veteran admonishes would-be Jenna Jamesons, "Once you make an adult film, it never goes away."

Find yourself pinching pennies at every turn? Why not eschew the creature comforts you expect in a car? Power steering, A.C., radio, airbags—Who needs it? Looking to capitalize on the large amount of motorcycle riders in India, a company there has launched the Tata Nano, a tiny five-seater that does nothing more than get its passengers from point A to B. The carmaker is expecting to make big bucks... eventually. Even if the Tata sells like gangbusters, it won't turn a profit for six years. It remains to be seen whether the car will make it to the states, partly due to the obvious safety concern: With no airbags and a frame made of sheet metal and plastic, how would the Tata Nano fair on Route 66?

UK scientists led by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service are beginning a three year trial to examine whether stem cell replication could provide an unlimited safe blood supply, untainted by HIV or the human version of mad cow disease. The BBC reports that the scientists, fueled the Wellcome Trust's promised $4.3 million, will use human embryos left over from in vitro fertilization treatments to create the supply. Scientists will test embryos to determine which ones have O negative blood, which is the universal donor group, then culture the cells and remove their nuclei to produce mature oxygen-carrying cells. The U.S. firm Advanced Cell Technology has already managed to produce billions of cells, and now the challenge is to scale up production.

Alex Rodriguez can’t escape scandal. The pinstriped slugger is making a splashy return to the papers with reports claiming he was once involved with a Manhattan madam—the same one who supplied former governor Eliot Spitzer with hookers. Two former employees of the call girl agency say the Yankees player became a regular at one of Kristin Davis’ three agencies and wooed the woman in charge. “In regard to Alex, all I can say is our paths have definitely crossed personally and professionally,” Davis told the New York Daily News. The two met in 2006, before his divorce and “affair of the heart” with Madonna.

Although the public is still hopping mad—when’s the last time the ladies of The View weighed in on economic matters?—President Obama and his advisers are putting the brakes on the 90 percent tax that could be levied against AIG’s $165 million bonuses. "I think the president would be concerned that this bill may have some problems in going too far—the House bill may go too far in terms of some—some legal issues, constitutional validity, using the tax code to surgically punish a small group," said Vice President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser on ABC’s This Week. The president meanwhile, said he would not “govern out of anger” on 60 Minutes. "Let's see if there are ways of doing this that are both legal, that are constitutional, that uphold our basic principles of fairness, but don't hamper us from getting the banking system back on track," he said.

President Obama has apparently wounded Hugo Chavez’s pride. "He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism? The least I can say is that he's a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality," Chavez said yesterday, referring to an interview Obama gave in January. Chavez said Obama’s comments has caused him to reconsider his plan to send an ambassador to Washington. “My, what ignorance?,” Chavez said. “The real obstacle to development in Latin America has been the empire that you today preside over."

Another plane crash has killed 14 people in Montana. According to the Associated Press, “A single engine turboprop airplane nose-dived into a cemetery as it approached the Butte airport Sunday afternoon.” Half of the dead were children. The plane is believed to have been taking its passengers on a ski trip for the children. The cause of the crash is currently unknown.

At least one familiar face can cover Sarah Palin’s prospective 2012 Presidential bid. Bidding an adieu to a Pennsylvania Senate seat, MSNBC mainstay Chris Matthews has renewed his contract at the network for another four years. There were whispers that the network wanted to trim the Hardball host’s salary from its reported $5 million per year, but all parties declined to comment on money matters. Matthews appears thrilled to stay, saying, “I love what I do…It’s transparent. You can see it in my face,” and, “That microphone is more potent than any legislative position.”

In a private funeral in upstate New York, friends and family of Natasha Richardson laid the deceased actress to rest at a site near the home she shares with husband Liam Neeson and their two children. The Telegraph reports that Neeson was among the pallbearers. A head injury sustained during a ski lesson at Quebec's Mont Tremblant killed the 45-year-old actress last week. Among Natasha's mourners were sister and actress Joely Richardson, mother Vanessa Redgrave, and actor friends Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes.

As the president of Capitol Records in the 1950s and 1960s, Alan Livingston took a waning label and turned it into a success, the Independent reports. Livingston, who died on March 13, signed Frank Sinatra in 1953, the Beach Boys in 1962 and went on to sign Steve Miller Band and Don McLean, although he'll be most remembered for bringing the fab four to America. In 1963, despite the fact that British records were considered non-starters, he reluctantly ended up persuading Swan Records, which had launched the Beatles' first single "She Loves You" in 1963, to drop their dibs on the group's second single. The rest is history—the $40,000 promotional campaign about the group's long hair, the fainting women and the changing direction of American music.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is set to unveil his bank rescue package today, but don’t expect any surprises: Details of the plan were leaked a few days ago. Geithner takes to the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal to rally support for his three-pronged strategy, which relies significantly on private investment. The New York Times, meanwhile, reports that the government spent the weekend trying to entice private investors, who are wary given the recent backlash over things like executive pay and bonuses. "Some of them have told administration officials that they would participate only if the government guaranteed that it would not set compensation limits on the firms, according to people briefed on the conversations. The executives also expressed worries about whether disclosure and governance rules could be added retroactively to the program by Congress."

A little more than a century ago, the Comanche ruled the Great Plains. Now, The Guardian reports, the 14,000 strong tribe is one of several Indian tribes making desperate bids to preserve their language. The Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee has created a dictionary, holds language courses and has even offered financial incentives for parents to teach their kids Comanche. Perhaps only 100 native speakers survive, and none of them are under 60. One woman wept as she described how her grandmother failed to pass on the language because her school teachers beat her for using it. "The first English words she learned were 'Yes, Ma'am'," the woman said.

As the BBC put it, "They could be the cast of an Agatha Christie thriller —Adventure in Mesopotamia, perhaps: a civil servant, a businessman, a retired sub-postmaster, a former U.S. probation officer and an archeologist from London." These intrepid travelers spent 17 days touring Iraq, from Irbil in the north to Basra in the south, and hitting a variety of archeological sites in between. None of them seemed particularly concerned about security, odd given that a) they were visiting Iraq and b) Hinterland Travel, the British tourist company, opted to skip the 25 guards the Iraqi authorities recommended in order to save the cost of boarding them. But then, you have to respect the gumption of tourists like 77-year-old British archeologist Bridget Jones, who said she'd rather be killed by a car bomb than die in a hospital ward.

Is the housing market getting better? The Associated Press reports that existing home sales jumped 5.1 percent in February, “the largest amount in nearly six years as first-time buyers took advantage of deep discounts on foreclosures and other distressed properties.” The AP warns, however, that prices “are expected to keep falling well into the year. Tens of thousands of homes remain tied up in the foreclosure process and are not yet for sale.”