In today's speech on Afghanistan, President Obama will announce a plan to send 4,200 new troops and hundreds of civilians to the embattled nation, Politico reports. "He's gone all in," said Politico's White House source. "This is Obama's war. He's pushed all the chips to the center of the table." Among those chips is an aggressive new benchmark system for quelling militants, reports The New York Times. The strategy is remarkably similar to America's Iraq policy of two years ago, which aimed to guide the unstable nation's fight against insurgency and push for permanence. The new troops will add to the 17,000 new troops Obama ordered for Afghanistan last month. Obama phoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday to relay the message. In his speech tomorrow, expect the president to explain why his new Af-Pak policy will work better than Iraq did, and to endorse an effort spearheaded by Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to dial up anti-terrorism aid to Pakistan.

Take your copies of Dow 36,000 off the shelves: The Wall Street Journal reports that the Dow Jones rose 2.3 percent today, up 21 percent from its closing low on March 9, which “technically pushes the blue-chip benchmark into bull-market territory.” The gain is the best since the bear market began in October 2007. The S&P 500, meanwhile, rose 2.3 percent, which extends its best monthly rally since 1974.

The GOP has drafted an alternative to Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget in order to demonstrate its opposition, except … Politico reports that there is feuding going on within the party, with House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and Rep. Paul Ryan being ordered to back the plan by Minority Leader John Boehner after they raised objections. Politico notes the feud “underscores the minority party's woes in mounting a unified opposition.” The GOP’s alternative is 19 pages, compared to Obama’s 142 pages. Ryan had wanted to present a detailed amendment to the Democrats’ plan next Wednesday, but was told the party needed to act quickly to counter the Democrats’ charge that it was becoming the “Party of No.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva promised to make international economic policy “spicy,” and he is already delivering: With British Prime Minister Gordon Brown standing beside him at a press appearance in Brasilia on Thursday, Lula blamed the recession on the West’s “blue-eyed bankers.” The Guardian relayed Lula's statements: “This crisis was caused by no black man or woman or by no indigenous person or by no poor person. This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behavior of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics.” When questioners pressed the president for details, he replied, “I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker.” Lula then drew reality television (or maybe just closed-circuit cameras) into his argument against America’s financial practices: “You go to the shopping mall and you are filmed. You go to the airport and you are watched. I can’t imagine that only the financial system has no surveillance at all.”  According to The Guardian, Brown “looked mildly uncomfortable” during Lula’s rants.

Though a piddling sum when compared to Ponzi artist Bernie Madoff's multi-million dollar homes and lavish lifestyle, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee gave $100,000 in Madoff contributions back to a trustee appointed with the task of liquidating Madoff's assets and using the money to compensate his victims. According to the New York Times' The Caucus blog, Bernie and wife Ruth gave nearly $240,000 to "federal candidates, parties and committees since 1991, with 88 percent of that going to Democrats." Among Bernie's favorites were Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York—who donated $30K in Madoff family contributions to Madoff victims' trustee—and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut—who gave $1,500 to the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, is one of Madoff's most outspoken victims.

Malawians bent the rules for eager adoptress Madonna when she took in baby David in 2008, but now they're really breaking barriers. Were she to adopt a second child as she desires, officials would have to set aside current bans on not only foreign adoptions but also on unmarried parents."Our official policy is that we do not encourage our children to be sent into broken homes," said a spokesman from Malawi's Ministry of Women and Child Welfare Development, continuing: "The news she is linked to another woman's husband and a young man less than half her age makes us question her morals." Yet the official was quick to add that adoptions are decided on a case by case basis—leaving plenty of room for wiggling around Malawi law. The AP reports that the star will arrive in the country this weekend, and may present her adoption case to a court there as early as this weekend.

Can the Obama administration channel populist anger into the construction of a new regulatory system? In testimony about regulation before the House Financial Services Committee, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner declared the need for “not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.” He is proposing to regulate hedge funds, private-equity firms, and derivatives markets for the first time. According to Bloomberg, “A new systemic risk regulator would have powers to force companies to boost their capital or curtail borrowing, and officials would get the authority to seize them if they run into trouble.”

Looks like lots of employees aren't hesitating to jump off the Titanic. Since GM offered their employees buyouts of their contracts or early retirement, about 7,500 people—roughly 12 percent of the workforce—have accepted. Also, Chrysler has extended its deadline for employees to accept buyouts in an effort to encourage second thoughts on the matter. None of this comes as a surprise: Both car companies have to prove to the government they have financially restructured at the end of the month.

Forging ahead in spite of clear political consequences, North Korea has loaded a missile onto its launching pad and is on schedule for lift-off in early April. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the UN have both warned North Korea that severe sanctions will be enacted should the country carry out its illegal war games. North Korea claims that is preparing a harmless satellite launch, but the international community remains concerned because the same technology is used to fire a missile. More ominously, Pyongyang threatened to undo its progress toward nuclear disarmament should it face sanctions from the UN.

American bankers are complaining about their bonuses, but check out Switzerland: The Financial Times reports “Switzerland’s private banks have started to ban their top executives from travelling abroad, even to neighboring France and Germany, because of fears they will be detained as part of a global crackdown on bank secrecy.” The FT doesn’t disclose which bank its sources works for, but last year a senior private banker from UBS was detained in the United States as part of a federal tax investigation.

Another depressing day for print journalists: The New York Times is asking editors to take a 5 percent cut in pay, the New York Observer reports. Last year, the company reduced 100 jobs from its newsroom staff of 1,300. In related news, the Washington Post is offering another round of buyouts in an effort to avert further layoffs. Elsewhere on the newsstand, Alpha Media Group closed Blender magazine, eliminating 30 jobs.

This is rather shocking: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “about 60 people marched and rallied in Oakland on Wednesday to condemn the police and honor Lovelle Mixon, who was killed by Oakland police after he fatally shot four officers Saturday.” Demonstrators chanted, “"OPD you can't hide - we charge you with genocide." The protest was organized by the Uhuru Movement, whose flyers declared “Stop Police Terror.” Marchers wore t-shirts with Mixon’s photo and included his mother and multiple cousins.

Pirates off the coast of Africa are really taking it up a notch. Not only have they captured two tankers—with a total of 46 crew members on board—they've also been spotted pursuing various small boats, successfully hijacking a two-person yacht—all within the past day. Last year, Somali pirates reaped $50 million from their activities, but NATO seems intent on curbing that income, and has dispatched an anti-piracy flotilla to the area. Five ships will reach the waters off of Somalia within days, where they will back up the anti-piracy patrols there before moving on to Southeast Asia. Piracy has dwindled slightly in the last two months but is expected to pick up again now that the monsoon season is over.

Alfie—the 13-year-old Brit who had supposedly fathered a baby—can go back to being a kid: According to the Mirror, a DNA swab test has revealed that he is not the father of 15-year-old Chantelle Stedman’s child. The Mirror previously reported that “half a dozen” boys have slept with Chantelle, which prompted the paternity test.

Most Americans look at a pothole and see a nuisance. The folks at Kentucky Fried Chicken, however, look at a pothole and see an advertising opportunity. KFC is volunteering to fill potholes in American cities. The catch? The filled holes will be branded "Re-Freshed by KFC" in non-permanent chalk. Potholes in the Colonel's hometown of Louisville have already been filled—not with chicken grease—and the fast food company has asked mayors of other major cities to send in essays explaining why they think their town could use KFC's assistance.

As First Hairstylist, Johnny Wright is privy to all sorts of juicy gossip. But, the man is a consummate professional, and keeps his cards close to his chest. He won't dish any dirt on how Michelle Obama does her hair, whether she dyes it, or if that really is her own hair. Those are all state secrets. Wright is one of the people behind Michelle's most famous looks, including the Democratic National Convention and the Vogue photo shoot. Now, he runs a salon in the heart of D.C. and will be involved with a reality show for Style network. Of course, if the phone rings and the number is from the White House, he has his priorities straight.

Did actress Natasha Richardson have to die as a result of her fall last week? A week after she died of an epidural hematoma (bleeding around the brain) following a ski accident, questions are being raised about whether Canada's health care is up to task. "Canadian health care de-emphasizes widespread dissemination of technology like CT scanners and quick access to specialists like neurosurgeons," New York Post columnist Cory Franklin points out. "With prompt diagnosis by CT scan, and surgery to drain the blood, most patients survive" an incident like Richardson's, Franklin says. Not only are CT scanners "less common in Canada," Franklin writes, but Quebec, where the 45-year-old fell, "has no helicopter services to trauma centers in Montreal." Franklin presents a convincing case that if Richardson fell in Denver, it's likely she would have lived.

As President Obama prepares to meet with the nation's top banking executives at the White House tomorrow, Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger says there's little hope of them seeing eye-to-eye. With the House vote against AIG bonuses, the "Democratic Party has disconnected itself entirely from the private sector," he writes. "The party is acting as if the marketplace was the world of an alien tribe." Henninger warns Obama supporters: "If the private sector is now largely an abstraction to Democrats in Congress, they will continue to make mistakes."

As the House and Senate begins moving on companion versions of Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget, the president is in desperate need of some Democratic support. And although he forcefully urged party unity at a closed-door on Capitol Hill Wednesday, tensions are simmering among Democrats over climate change, health care, and spending among other issues. So what Obama priorities could get rolled back? Democratic leaders in both chambers are pushing for narrower deficits and have abandoned a White House request for additional money for the Wall Street rescue.

What do Nashville, Olympia, Seattle, St. Petersburg, Fresno, and Sacramento have in common? Shanty towns. The New York Times reports that tent cities are cropping up across the nation as the country's recession deepens and people who used to make more than minimum wage become unable to house themselves and turn to modern day Hoovervilles as a last resort. Residents of Sacramento's tent city got tired of the media after Oprah's coverage of their plight prompted a media stampede. Fresno's homelessness prevention and policy manager said that drug use, violence, and prostitution happen in the encampments. "That's all part of that underground economy," he said. "It's what happens when a person is trying to survive."

On Tuesday, President Obama made headlines by skipping over the nation's biggest papers at his post-speech press conference, and today he'll continue to cut out the mainstream media. (Doesn't the man know we're in the middle of a newspaper crisis already?) Having apparently run out of TV channels to grant interviews to this week, Obama will now take questions from WhiteHouse.gov, where he's invited citizens to post their own questions and then vote on the ones he'll answer. As of 3 a.m. this morning, 70,000 questions had been asked. Press secretary Robert Gibbs said, "The president just thinks it's another opportunity to talk directly with the American people about the challenges we have." But can WhiteHouse.gov really compete with Lolcatz?

John Hope Franklin, one of the preeminent black scholars of history, died yesterday at the age of 94. In a front-page obit, the Washington Post wrote that Franklin's "voluminous writings" made him an "inestimable historian." Of course, Franklin saw "racial horrors up close and thus was able to give his academic work a stinging ballast." He died of heart failure in a North Carolina hospital.

It’s Day 1 of her first trip to Mexico as secretary of state, and Hillary Clinton has already made a startling admission about America’s war on drugs: “Clearly what we’ve been doing has not worked. It is unfair...to be creating a situation where people are holding the Mexican government and people responsible” for our addiction problems. Clinton’s statement is the “most sweeping yet by a top Obama administration official accepting a US role in the drug havoc in Mexico,” The Washington Post reports, and squares with the general consensus in Latin America over the last 30 years—that it is unfairly blamed for America’s insatiable appetite for drugs. Clinton’s conciliatory tone comes the White House is ramping up its support for Mexico’s efforts to end narco-violence, and follows several highly publicized reports examining whether Mexico is doomed to become a “failed state.”

For years, New York's Rockefeller drug laws have been among the toughest in the nation-as well as a magnet for criticism by activists who contended that the laws' mandatory sentencing requirements were overly harsh and constrained judges' authority in dealing with nonviolent offenders. After years of activist efforts to "Drop the Rock," Governor David Paterson and state lawmakers have reportedly reached a deal to roll back the laws' toughest provisions. Governor Paterson himself was once arrested for protesting the drug laws outside then-Governor George Pataki's Manhattan office in 2002, when he was still a state senator. The laws were originally passed in 1973 to combat a sharp rise in heroin use.

The bonus uproar hasn’t died just yet: CNBC reports that the head of AIG Financial Products, the unit that caused most of the bank’s troubles, told French and British employees on Monday that the public demand for repayment is “blackmail.” According to an employee who received a bonus, "The vast majority of people in London have made the decision that the request is pretty offensive. It effectively constitutes blackmail whether it is criminal or not. There is no moral reason to give it back." AIG’s small London branch office is believed to have put as much as half a trillion dollars at risk.

A study of 1,400 British psychiatrists turned up some strange results: 222 of them (17 percent) said they'd treated a client to change their homosexual feelings in 400 to 500 cases that were evenly distributed across the decades, the Independent reports. Yet therapists didn't like to admit it—when asked if they would attempt to change someone's sexual orientation if requested, only four percent said they'd help. The idea that homosexuality can be "cured" has a dubious history that involves Clockwork Orange-style electroshock treatments and the mainstream medical opinion is that it's impossible. Nor do the American Psychological Association and other leading organizations consider homosexuality a disorder in the first place, raising the question of why psychiatrists would bother to treat it as one.

Sure, its 623cc engine whines "like a blender" when pushed to 65 mph, its top speed, and it leans when cornering, but for $1,970, what do you want? The Guardian's Randeep Ramesh is the first journalist to test drive the car, and it performed admirably well: It's big enough for four six-feet-tall adults, has an amazing turning radius, goes from zero to 40 mph in eight seconds, has great suspension, and a stripped down display with only a speedometer and fuel and mileage gauges. Most surprising? At 67 miles per gallon, and emitting only 101 grams of carbon dioxide for each kilometer driven, the world's cheapest car is also one of its cleanest and greenest. Plans are already in gear to outfit the Nano with features like airbags that will allow it to be sold in the US and Europe.

More news in the wake of actress Natasha Richardson’s death last Wednesday: Her organs have been donated to help save the lives of other patients. Her family made the decision after she was taken off life support at a New York hospital, People reports. Organ donation “is very Natasha,” a family friend tells the magazine. “She spent so much time fighting the stigma of AIDS; someone like that would naturally donate her organs. At least by donating her organs something good could come out of [the tragedy].” Richardson’s husband, Liam Neeson, “is doing okay,” says friend Blaine Trump. “It takes a while to absorb this. But he says the family needs to move forward. They will take it one step at a time.” Neeson is expected back on the Toronto set of his upcoming film Chloe, and his and Richardson’s sons are headed back to school.

Britons aren’t going to be happy to hear what Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd got as a parting gift from Barack Obama at the White House today: an original printing of the sheet music of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” All Gordon Brown got on his way out? A DVD box set of 25 Hollywood classics—set to the wrong region, rendering them unplayable in the UK. And that’s not all: Obama gave the Australian prime minister a shout-out at his prime-time press conference Tuesday night. Even Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gave Rudd respect, describing him as “incredibly A-plus.” Might we have a new “special relationship” on our hands?

Bad news out of California: An F-22A fighter jet has crashed during a test mission, and the pilot David Cooley, the only person on board, was killed. It’s the first such accident since the newest stealth aircraft became fully operational in 2007, Bloomberg reports. The US Air Force says the plane took off from Edwards Air Force Base and crashed 35 miles east at 10 a.m. PST. Conceived in the early 1980s as a radar-evading, advanced dogfighter to take on Soviet jets and late recast to engage ground targets, the F-22 is the most expensive aircraft in US history, at $354 million each. The Air Force is slated to buy 183 Raptors, and President Obama will decide by next month whether to put in an order for more.

America's relationship with Pakistan is complicated, to say the least. Even as the county remains a top ally in the war on terror, a report in the New York Times suggests that Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency is directly supporting Taliban militants who target American troops with cash, military supplies, and strategic advice. According to Pakistani officials, the relationship is necessary to maintain stability once the U.S. withdraws from the region. "In intelligence, you have to be in contact with your enemy or you are running blind," one senior military officer told the Times. The ISI is also suspected by intelligence officials of aiding Lashkar-e Taiba, the Pakistani militant group believed to be behind the coordinated attacks last year in Mumbai, India.

A bill to be signed by President Obama will set aside two million acres of pristine wilderness for future generations--that equals the total amount of land protected during the Bush administration. The legislation will also fund various environmental (broadly defined) projects, including: designating Bill Clinton's home in Hope, AR as a national historical site; a commission to plan for the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine, FL; and a study to determine if a Japanese internment camp should be a national park. More significantly, the bill will fund the restoration of an important salmon run in California that was decimated by the construction of a dam in the 1940s.

President Obama will be on TV again, tomorrow, though he won’t be talking about the economy this time: In a press conference tomorrow, President Obama will announce plans to add 4,000 troops to Afghanistan in addition to the 17,000 extra troops he’s already ordered. Their mission will be to train and advise Afghan armed forces. His strategy will include 20 recommendations for defeating the insurgency along the Afghan-Pakistani border.