A week-and-a-half after Somali pirates took him hostage, ship captain Richard Phillips returned to his home in Vermont. His wife and children went on board the corporate jet to greet him at the airport in Burlington, and a small crowd gathered to greet him. Speaking to the media, Phillips thanked the US military: "They're the superheroes," he said. "They're the titans. They're impossible men doing an impossible job, and they did the impossible with me." Of his crew, he said, "We did it. We did what we were trained to do."

The Obama administration stepped into the culture wars today by releasing new guidelines for government-backed stem cell research. The draft from the National Institutes of Health allows for a "vast expansion of the research" but draws the line at "allowing scientists to create human embryos for research purposes or pursuing cloning techniques," the Washington Post reports. "Administration officials took the more conservative approach largely for political reasons, rather than any particular scientific concern," according to the paper. The new rules, which will be finalized in three months, will open up hundreds of lines of stem cells that were under wraps during the Bush administration.

Not so fast. Though Steve Rattner has been drawn into a New York state pension fund kickback scandal through his former firm Quadrangle, The Business Insider's Henry Blodget reports that Rattner, who heads Obama's auto industry team, is probably clean. The SEC's report on the scandal makes it sound like Quadrangle bribed a now-indicted state official into allocating the state retirement fund with the firm. Quadrangle reportedly paid a $1.1 million "finder's fee" to a placement agent, and then a Quadrangle affiliate bought distribution rights to a D-list movie produced by the state fund employee's brother for $89,000. Blodget says it’s not as bad as it looks: Quadrangle hired the placement agent before they ever met with the state fund official, meaning the firm probably hired multiple placement agents and weren't in a pay-to-play deal with the fund. In regards to the film, Rattner referred the fund employee's brother to GT Brands, which then bought the distribution rights. He says this is a typical act of mutual backscratching that characterizes the business world, though the timing certainly looks suspicious.

President Obama won over reluctant world leaders in Latin America yesterday. "We cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements," Obama said at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. Several leftist leaders, including Cuban President Raul Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, rejected the meeting's draft proposal before the summit began. The countries protested the exclusion of Cuba, but Obama addressed the country in his speech, saying he wants to engage with them on human rights, migration, and economic issues in a "new beginning." Castro said his government was willing to talk about "everything" with the United States. The speech seemed to endear Obama to the leaders: Long-time U.S. antagonist Chavez said, "I want to be your friend," as the two shook hands. Before the meeting started, a White House spokesman called on Cuba to release political prisoners and stop taxing remittances sent from the United States.

The only gunman captured in the Mumbai terror attacks, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, claimed he was only 17 years old at his trial yesterday. Kasab's lawyer asked that his client be tried in a juvenile court, but the judge rejected the request, noting that in earlier reports Kasab said he was 21 and doesn’t look like a teenager. Kasab is charged with 12 crimes and could face the death penalty if he is convicted of being one of 10 men who killed more than 160 people in last November’s terrorist rampage. In another unforeseen twist, prosecutors attempted to implicate military Pakistani officials in the attacks by pointing to their level of sophistication. Additional evidence includes a trace of one of the conspirator's email addresses to a military-backed phone company.

What’s this? Honesty and clear-sightedness from the head of GM? New CEO Fritz Henderson said today that “the automaker was readying detailed plans for a bankruptcy filing that now appears more likely even as it races to complete a business plan under federal oversight,” according to Reuters. Henderson said it was still “feasible” that the automaker would avoid bankruptcy. "Given what we need to accomplish, I certainly felt a couple weeks ago that it was more probable that we would need to go through a bankruptcy process," Henderson told reporters on a conference call. "That continues today." GM has until June 1 to institute deep cuts in its debt, labor costs, dealership network, and brands.

The man who died at the G-20 summit in London after being hit and shoved by an unprovoked policeman died of internal bleeding, not a heart attack, a second post-mortem autopsy has revealed. The masked police officer caught on tape outside the summit pushing and hitting Ian Tomlinson, who was not a protester, is being questioned under suspicion of manslaughter. Two officers have been suspended for police brutality after inquiries into policing during the summit. The first pathologist to examine Tomlinson said he died from a heart attack. Police originally mentioned nothing of their violent interaction until video and photographic evidence poured in. The hedge fund manager who filmed the video said he's happy he came forward or the death "would have been swept under the rug."

A man suspected of murdering New York model Julissa Brisman in a Marriott Hotel in Boston is now implicated in the armed robbery of two more women. Boston police suspect he met all three women through personal service ads on Craigslist. The 26-year-old Brisman was described by friends as "a really sweet, goofy, energetic kid." She was allegedly found by the man after offering massage services on Craigslist. Police think the killer wanted to rob Brisman when they met at the hotel, until she struggled with him in the doorway and he shot her. Two other women who advertised services on Craigslist have been robbed at gunpoint in the Boston area, leading police to believe the man who killed Brisman was also involved in those robberies. Video from Marriott surveillance cameras after Brisman's murder show a tall, clean-cut, blond man leaving the property.

Sarah Palin may be candid, but how will her right-wing base feel about this? Speaking to a crowd at an anti-abortion event in Indiana, Palin said she considered “just for a fleeting moment” having an abortion when she was pregnant with her son Trig, who will turn one on Saturday. "Just for a fleeting moment I thought, 'No one knows me here; no one would ever know.' …My amniocentesis came back and then I understood why some people would think they could change their circumstances, just take care of it. Todd didn't even know.” Palin is considered a hero in the pro-life movement for choosing to give birth to Trig, who has Down syndrome.

Those having grown a bit tired from repeated watchings of “I Dreamed a Dream” this week have a new Susan Boyle song they can turn to for inspiration: The Daily Record reports on the discovery of an early CD recording of Boyle singing “Cry Me a River” (not the Justin Timberlake song) on a compilation CD for the Whitburn Academy from 1999. Only 1,000 copies of the disc were ever produced. Get your bids in on eBay early.

Newspapers aren’t the only victims of the cratering advertising market—even Google is feeling the pinch. The company, considered a sure bet by investors, saw profits rise in the first quarter of 2009, but also saw total revenue decline 3 percent from the previous quarter because of cutbacks in online ads. It is “the first sequential revenue decline for Google since it went public nearly five years ago,” The Wall Street Journal reports. The company, however, is far from panicking: It reported net income of $1.42 billion and said it will continue “investing for the long term to drive future growth in our core and emerging businesses.”

Fresh direct? Eh, not so much at celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's London restaurants. Turns out meals at his gastropubs and bistros are "prepared at a centralized 'food factory,'" according to the Evening Standard. The British paper reports: "Dishes such as pork belly, coq au vin, braised pig cheeks and orange and bitter chocolate tart are prepared in bulk before chefs put them in plastic bags and dispatch them across London." The news is certain to tarnish his reputation and fuel critics, who have argued that he's "spread himself too thin." The pitfalls of success!

If you broke ten bones before you turned twenty, it may not have been all your fault: Not only may extreme risk taking be genetic, but it may also make for a more attractive mate, evolutionarily speaking. "As our species evolved, communities with risk takers might have done better at things like warding off attackers," says a psychologist at the University of Colorado Denver. Risk taking comes from an adaptive gene: the people who jump from rocks without parachutes are also more likely to stumble upon the next big invention or run for office. This gene can be seen at work in the brain's amygdala, which processes emotion. Using fMRI imaging, neuroscientists at UCLA have shown that a tendency to put oneself in harms way originates in the amygdala by observing heightened activity in this region after eliciting fear in those who are proven risk takers, and, on the other hand, no activity for those who aren't.

A day after Ashton Kutcher beat CNN in a race to get a million Twitter followers, Oprah Winfrey has stepped up to the plate by posting her first Twitter message. She wrote Friday morning: "HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY." As the New York Times points out in insta-analysis, "The digerati will probably scream about all the Internet etiquette rules she broke. She used all capital letters, which typically indicates screaming. She called Twitter users 'Twitters' instead of 'Twitterers.'" Even so, she may have the fastest-growing Twitter audience yet.

Subtle, he ain't. Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie, Bruno, based on Chen's gay fashion TV reporter character, originally earned an NC-17 rating for "pervasive strong and crude sexual content, graphic nudity, and language" from the Motion Picture Association of America, the BBC reports. The producers then re-edited the footage and the new version successfully won an R rating. The deleted scenes will doubtless appear on the film's DVD release. Bruno reportedly features Cohen's trademark awkward interviews with the governator and Ben Affleck. According to Hollywood director Ruben Fleischer, the film "beyond delivered."

The most heated contest in Las Vegas isn't on the casino floor—it's over the future of MSM Mirage. In one corner, investor Carl Icahn, who wants to restructure the company via bankruptcy. In the other corner, Kirk Kerkorian, who owns 53 percent of the company. But Icahn and a private equity fund have been buying up hundreds of millions of dollars in MGM Mirage debt recently to gain influence. Filing for bankruptcy would mean Kerkorian loses his stake—valued at $900 million, down from $14.9 billion in 2007. What's really on the line, though, is ego, power, control of Nevada's largest taxpayer (with 50,000 employees) and the fate of a new $8.6 billion Vegas project.

What do you do when you've lost it all? Bill Richardson, who resigned from his position as Obama's commerce secretary in January, still isn't sure. He's back to his old post as governor of New Mexico, but he's little more than a lame duck now, stuck in "virtual exile" with low approval ratings. But in his first interview since withdrawling from the cabinet, Richardson insists he's still on top: "I don't miss it one bit. I really don't. I wish them well... This is hard convincing people because they know me, but I've found the ultimate job in being governor. I really have."

President Obama is arriving in Mexico City ready to unveil his support for the Inter-American Arms Treaty aimed at reducing the flow of guns to cartels. The plan "addresses a key hemispheric concern relating to people's personal security and well-being," an administration official said. Obama's trip to Mexico is more fraught with heady issues than his recent much-hyped trip to the G-20 summit in Europe. Aside from curtailing drugs and gun sales, top issues on the agenda are civil unrest in Mexico, the economic crisis, immigration, cross-border trucking, and clean energy challenges. "We are going to be dealing not only with drug interdiction coming north, but also working on helping to curb the flow of cash and guns going south," Obama said of drug policy ahead of his departure. More than 10,000 people have been killed since 2006 in drug-related violence in Mexico.

President Obama is in Trinidad today along with representatives of 34 countries for a Latin American summit, but it's Cuba, absent from the meeting, that's drawing the most attention this week. Hoping to build off of a White House decision to ease travel restrictions on Cuba, President Raul Castro is signaling that he is open to discussing some of the thorniest obstacles to getting rid of the American embargo there. "We have sent messages to the U.S. government in private and in public that we are willing to discuss everything, whenever they want," Castro said on Thursday in a speech. "Human rights, press freedom, political prisoners, everything, everything, everything they want to talk about." Obama has cited these issues as being among several that would need to be dealt with to further normalize relations between the two countries. With little to show for its 47 year embargo and Fidel Castro old and frail, could the U.S. finally be set to move on?

The human wet blanket, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warns that recent optimism over the economy may be overblown in a piece today. "The most you can say is that there are scattered signs that things are getting worse more slowly," Krugman writes. While bank earnings numbers that have propelled the stock market to a recent rally are encouraging, they should be taken with a hefty grain of salt thanks to some creative accounting—Goldman Sachs, for example, changed its definition of "quarter" to drop a difficult month from its quarterly earnings report. Even if things are getting better, unemployment is still a long way from improving. According to Krugman, the biggest danger to the economy is that the federal government becomes too optimistic too soon and cuts its recovery programs short. "There's a real risk that all the talk of green shoots and glimmers will breed a dangerous complacency," he writes.

Might the Americas’ chilliest relationship finally be thawing? Hillary Clinton said today that “we view the present policy [toward Cuba] as having failed” after Raul Castro said yesterday he was willing to talk with the United States and put “everything” on the table, including questions of human rights and political prisoners. "We could be wrong, we admit it. We're human beings," Castro said . "We're willing to sit down to talk as it should be done, whenever." Clinton replied, "We welcome his comments and the overture they represent, and we are taking a very serious look at how to respond.”