Watch your bank accounts, expats. On Monday Obama announced a plan to crack down on off-shore tax avoidance—when multinationals, wealthy individuals, or U.S.-based businesses park their earnings in foreign tax havens. It’s estimated that more than $700 billion in U.S. corporate earnings are in such overseas havens. Obama is tightening the rules for offshore subsidiaries and making it harder for Americans to open offshore bank accounts. His plan, which will likely be very unpopular with big business, also curtails a practice called “deferral,” in which Americans who earn money overseas avoid taxes until that money is repatriated–a restructuring that, if enacted, will bring about $60.1 billion back to the United States through 2019.

Details of the bank stress tests are leaking out: About 10 of the 19 financial institutions undergoing the government-ordered tests are going to be required to boost their capital, The Wall Street Journal reports. Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup are expected to be among the number of banks that the government on Thursday will say need a stronger buffer against future losses. The news isn’t as bad as analysts feared it would be when the tests were announced in February. Because the Obama administration isn’t singling out one or two institutions to raise capital, the process seems less daunting. The stock prices of the three biggest banks likely to need more capital were all up on Monday.

A local feud in Turkey has turned a wedding day into a bloodbath: Armed men opened fire at a wedding on Monday in the village of Bilge in Mardin province. Firing off automatic weapons and grenades, the men killed at least 41 people, says Al Jazeera’s Istanbul correspondent. Authorities believe the attack was motivated by a local feud between rival factions of pro-government guards who fight with Turkish troops against Kurdish soldiers. The guards are heavily armed at all times to fight the independence-seeking Kurds, which might explain the use of grenades.

Hope it’s not awkward at the water cooler: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has signed on to the GOP’s rebranding effort—the National Council for a New America—amid swirling rumors that Republicans would rather she stay home. The council has been cast as a Republican “establishment” group that shuns big-name, tabloid-ready figures like Palin and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. On CNN on Sunday, council member Mitt Romney snubbed Palin’s appearance on Time’s 100 Most Influential list: “I think there are a lot more influential Republicans than that would suggest,” he said.

Start stowing away your masks for the next outbreak. If all goes according to plan, Mexico City will begin to return to normalcy this week, as restaurants, libraries, and churches reopen—though nightclubs and schools will remain closed—following the H1N1 outbreak. Mexican and U.S. medical officials have said they see signs that the outbreak is slowing but continue to admonish the public to remain vigilant. One Mexican official warned that the virus could regain strength at any moment. The director of the Centers for Disease Control also said this morning that he expects to see cases of the H1N1 flu virus in all 50 states soon. Though the virus has turned up across the globe, it appears that substantial outbreaks have occurred only in Mexico, the U.S., and Canada.

Bad news for thrifty fashionistas: Filene’s Basement Inc. is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and selling 17 of its 25 stores for $22 million. But not all is lost. The sold stores, including the flagship location in Boston, will still be operated under Filene’s name and sell designer goods at lower prices. The rest of Filene’s assets will go up for auction in five weeks. A few months ago the chain closed 11 of its stores, noting that its foray into the suburbs was ill-timed as consumers slashed their spending amid the recession.

President Bush certainly wasn’t Mr. Popular during his final days in office, but he’s managed to pull in $100 million in as many days for a presidential library to house his official papers. Bush’s longtime financial backers raised the impressive pot of money in a highly organized fundraising effort that’s paying off quickly—it took President Clinton about two years to reach the $100 million mark. Southern Methodist University will host the library in Dallas, where the George W. Bush Presidential Center will soon be built on 25 acres. The center also will include a museum.

Vincent van Gogh is remembered as the tortured artistic genius who cut off his own ear and then killed himself two years later. But a new study finds that van Gogh only pretended to cut off his ear to protect close friend and fellow painter Paul Gauguin, who sliced it off with a sword during an argument. Historians Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans point to a few references by van Gogh of a “pact of silence” with Gauguin to back up their claims. Van Gogh also drew a picture of his ear with the word “ictus” next to it—the Latin term in fencing to mean a hit. Van Gogh was “hopelessly infatuated” with Gauguin, and their fight—not his own madness—is what led him to commit suicide, the historians claim.

Perhaps 2009 is the year of the underdog. The BlackBerry Curve snagged the coveted No. 1 spot in smartphone sales in the first quarter, edging out the iPhone with a “buy one get one free” promotion. The Curve is also available through four cell phone carriers, while the iPhone is still restricted to AT&T. The iPhone might recapture the title now that the Curve’s promotion over, but the highly anticipated Palm Pre, from Sprint, could be the next smartphone heavyweight—the carrier is planning a major marketing campaign.

It’s Week 2 of the Astor trial, and yet more scandalous details are leaking out. Anthony Marshall—son of Brooke Astor, the New York society doyenne who died in 2007 at age 105—is accused of swindling $60 million from her estate by persuading his senile mother to change her will. But it’s his wife, Charlene, whom Astor truly disliked, it seems. A witness at Marshall’s trial Monday told the court that Astor said she’d rather spend Christmas with her two dogs than “that bitch.” Ear doctor Kevin O’Flaherty said that when he treated Astor at her Park Avenue home in 2000, he asked about her Christmas plans. “She said she’d rather have Boysie and Girlsie, her dogs, there than her son and that B-I-T-C-H.” Prosecutors say Charlene was the reason Marshall allegedly took advantage of his mother.

Anonymous casual sex is under assault like never before: In the wake of the “Craiglist killer” murder case gripping the nation, an outcry is growing against the Web site that facilitated the illicit rendezvous, which led to the killing of a 25-year-old masseuse in Boston. Speaking today after announcing further charges against the suspect, former med student Philip Markoff—for an assault on a stripper at a Holiday Inn in Warwick—the Rhode Island attorney general openly criticized Craigslist. “The guy from Craigslist [founder Craig Newmark] was on TV. He said it was only one incident. I think it was totally irresponsible. It was a murder,” the attorney general said.

To buy or to sell? That is the question. Across the board, stocks rallied today—with the Dow up 214.33 points, to close at 8,246.74, and the S&P surging 3.39 percent, putting it in positive territory for 2009—spurred by statistics showing that construction spending and pending home sales were on the rise. Many of the heavy hitters of the portfolio management world are worried that they may have missed the boat on the first signs of economic recovery, The Wall Street Journal reports. The rebound is attributed to the stimulus spending "kicking in." Many of the bailout banks, which have the release of the government's stress tests looming over them, also showed signs of recovery in the market. Even GM—despite being on the verge of bankruptcy—got in on the action, rising 0.6 percent as Fiat continued to pursue investing in the embattled American automaker.

We know French people don’t get fat, but a new study reveals why: The French spend more time eating and sleeping than anyone else among the world’s wealthiest cultures. The average French person spends two hours a day eating, and almost nine hours every night sleeping. Americans are surprisingly high on the sleep list, coming in at number three with an average of eight and a half hours a night. And in some countries, leisure time is split along gender lines. According to the study, “Italian men have nearly 80 minutes a day of leisure more than women. Much of the additional work of Italian women is apparently spent cleaning the house.”

Can the Kindle save print journalism? On Wednesday, Amazon will unveil a new “large-format” device that’s ideal for reading newspapers and magazines, and The New York Times is partnering on the project. The company already has a deal with Amazon and is apparently making “modest” profits from the $14-a-month Kindle subscriptions. Other companies, like News Corp. and Hearst, have also expressed interest in creating large-format devices for their publications. It’s a dilemma for media outlets: jump on the Kindle bandwagon and risk being standardized like musicians in the iTunes system, or create one’s own platform. No matter the format of these new reading devices, will they save the industry? “Nope,” Peter Kafka writes. “It doesn’t matter how you deliver the information if you can’t afford to generate it in the first place.”

All personal failures fall by the wayside when the economy is in the tank, apparently. A new poll conducted by Marist College finds that New Yorkers would prefer to have former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in disgrace a year ago amid a prostitution scandal, back in office instead of their current leader, David Paterson. Fifty-one percent of those polled said “bring back Spitzer,” while just 22 percent approved of the job Gov. Paterson is doing running New York. Paterson’s approval ratings have been in a steep decline since the start of 2009—due in large part to the state’s budget woes. Paterson also trailed far behind in theoretical elections against state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State Department has so far been successful. Is she due for a promotion? With senators like Patrick Leahy advising President Obama to appoint someone “from outside the judicial monastery” to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, Hillary’s name may come up. On Meet the Press yesterday, new Democratic Senator Arlen Specter said he wanted someone “who has done something more than wear a black robe for most of their lives.” He went on to suggest “perhaps a statesman—or a stateswoman.” The New York Daily News, reading perhaps a bit too much between the lines, asks: “A thinly veiled nod to Secretary of State Clinton?”

The “wardrobe malfunction” heard round the world–when Janet Jackson exposed her right breast for nine-sixteenths of a second onstage at the Super Bowl in 2004–is still under discussion in court. The FCC instated a $550,000 fine to CBS, but an appeals court threw out the fine last year. And now, the Supreme Court is ordering the federal appeals court to re-examine its ruling in favor of CBS. That’s a whole lot of legal labor for, er, nine-sixteenths of a striptease.

She’s the preacher’s daughter in real life, but on the cover of June’s Vanity Fair, Jessica Simpson is nothing short of a ‘50s pin-up. In her interview with the magazine, Simpson dishes on life with Dallas Quarterback Tony Romo, her religion, and how she doesn’t speak to ex-husband Nick Lachey. "I have not spoken to him in years,” Simpson says. And of the show that made her a star, Newlyweds, she says: “[I]n all honesty, I believe it did not affect our marriage. Because we enjoyed watching those episodes, and that will always be a time I cherish." But recently, Simpson’s gotten more than a little bit of heat about a curvaceous new bod, with which she has filled out a pair of what are definitively “mom jeans.” But according to Vanity Fair writer Rich Cohen, weight is strictly off-limits with Jess. “She didn’t want to talk about her weight, so, of course, that’s all I could think of—it gilded each question in my mind: What are you working on now [that you’re fat]? Do you see yourself as part of a class, with Christina and Britney [or are you too fat]? Do you feel that your relationship with Tony Romo has affected his performance as a quarterback [because you are fat]?"

We'll all be driving Fiats one day. The Fiat SpA Chief Executive is expected to meet with senior German government officials on Monday to discuss a potential alliance with Opel, the German unit of General Motors Corp. After teaming with Chrysler LLC last week, Fiat is rumored to be crafting a three-way alliance among the major brands, reports The Wall Street Journal. If a deal between GM’s European operations and Fiat is reached, the alliance could generate as much as $105.84 billion in revenue a year and would sharply increase the Italian company’s current production of 2.2 million vehicles a year to their goal of 5.5 million. German and Italian unions are resistant and fear job cuts that could result from the merger.

Selena Roberts’ allegations that baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez may have used steroids as a teenager leaked last week, but now you can get them straight from the horse’s mouth: Roberts’ book, A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez hits shelves today. According to ESPN, “Roberts traces much of the slugger's behavior to his father's decision to separate from the family when Alex was 10.” In an interview with the Associated Press, Roberts said "I've talked to players who say he was using in high school, but if you want to discard that, you look at the physical evidence. You look at a player who by his own coach's account was unrecognizable his junior year because his body had changed so much. Scouts didn't recognize him. In his sophomore year he could barely bench press 100 pounds. By his junior year, he was bench pressing 300 pounds."

If whatever Oprah touches turns to gold, then Jenny McCarthy is one lucky woman. She’s just inked a multi-year deal with Harpo Productions, and Oprah will help the actress and former model launch her own talk show. Oprah has helped others like Dr. Phil and Rachel Ray become TV moguls, and it looks like McCarthy will be no exception. McCarthy has regularly blogged for Oprah’s website, and appeared on her show several times to discuss her son’s autism.

How much does it take to ruin a man? Over the last year, John Edwards has suffered a failed presidential bid, a publicized extramarital affair, a wife with terminal cancer, and now, a federal probe into how he spent campaign funds. Edwards' political action committee paid $100,000 his mistress, Rielle Hunter, for producing a video about his candidacy the Associated Press reports. A more suspicious charge, however, is the additional $14,086.50 the PAC paid her company on April 1, 2007 for "furniture" despite the fact that the PAC only had $7,932.95 in cash on hand at the time. It's also come to light that Edwards' national finance chairman, Fred Baron, was paying Hunter to resettle in California, although he says he didn't use campaign funds. Baron died of cancer last October, and Edwards says he knew nothing about those payments. "I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly," Edwards said in the statement. "However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true."

David beat Goliath—but it wasn’t because of luck. In an essay in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell explores what it takes to beat the odds and topple the giant. Here’s the secret: Goliaths only win 71.5 percent of the time; Davids aren’t just one-in-a-million victors. But Davids almost never win if they play by Goliath’s rules. Whether it is in a war or on a basketball court, the weaker team must not only outsmart – it must streamline, and risk being laughed at to win. Take, for example, the California basketball dad who knew he was coaching an inferior team. He watched as other teams on defense retreat to their own basket, waiting patiently for the opponent to advance. Why, he thought, would an underdog surrender 75 percent of the court? Instead, he decided, he was going to have his team do a full court press, every game, all the time. They went to the National Championships. “David pressed,” writes Gladwell. “That’s what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths.” And when they can’t match up on ability, David must challenge what Goliath has in his corner: social convention. Gladwell continues that in order to win, Davids must “…do what is ‘socially horrifying’ – they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought.”

A domestic dispute on Sunday night ended in four deaths, when a man in Lakeland, Florida shot his wife, two sons, and then himself. The boys were five-months and seven-years-old— a third child, a 13-year-old son, was chased through the garage by the father, evading gunfire and successfully escaping to a neighbor’s home. The boy will be placed with family members. While the motive of the shootings is unknown, the local sheriff said: "This is one of the most tragic, senseless and horrific crimes we have investigated.”

A shocker from the "water-is-wet" department: The Catholic Church was not amused by Ron Howard's new film adaptation of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, the prequel to the vaunted Da Vinci Code, the Telegraph reports. The film's storyline involves a plot by the Illuminati, a secret society, to exact revenge on the Catholic Church, which murdered their predecessors years ago—an event not backed by history. One of the church's most senior bishops called the movie "total rubbish" and "far removed from the truth." The studio's senior vice president countered, "We don't believe the nearly 40 million people worldwide who purchased the novel were confused by the fact that this is a fictional mystery thriller." The Vatican's economics minister saw another plot at hand—"Let's be careful not to play their game... by giving them free publicity," he said.

Goodbye weepy winter films, and hello summer. X-Men Origins: Wolverine took in a huge box office haul this weekend and positioned itself as number one nearly everywhere internationally. The Hugh Jackman-fronted film took in $87 million in the U.S. and nearly $170 million worldwide, and marks the highest premiere weekend all year. The Lost Angeles Times notes that the film played particularly well with female audiences, who represented 47 percent of ticket buyers. Matthew McConaughey’s latest, the critically-reviled Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, took in a meager-by-comparison $15.3 million. After Wolverine leaked to the Internet in early April, Fox was anticipating a much smaller take, but its huge bow should assuage studio fears that Internet piracy deters audiences.

Hollywood's superhero movies have bizarrely paid off. Meet Shadow Hare, a 5’7” man armed with handcuffs, a Taser, pepper spray, and tights. All that's known about him is that he's 21, and claims to have been abused as a child and brought up in foster homes, the Telegraph reports. He says he's going to clean up the streets of Cincinnati and that he's currently working with San Diego-based superhero Mr. Extreme to “track down a rapist.” Other members of the so-called “Allegiance of Heroes” include Wall Creeper from Colorado and Aclyptico from Pennsylvania. Local police are not taking the Allegiance seriously (surprise!), although four members have been filmed helping the homeless.

Condi may know how to expertly answer questions from White House journalists and senators, but she recently faced one of her toughest questioners yet: a fourth grader. After she spoke at the Jewish Primary Day School (her first public appearance since leaving office) Condi was asked softball questions, such as, ‘What skill did she want to be best known for?’ Then, one student asked: ‘What did she think about what President Obama’s administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees?’ Rice didn’t miss a beat in her response, saying that Bush would not have authorized anything illegal. “Let me just say that President Bush was very clear that he wanted to do everything he could to protect the country,” Rice said. “After September 11, we wanted to protect the country. But he was also very clear that we would do nothing, nothing, that was against the law or against our obligations internationally.”

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi insists that his divorce is "a private matter," but according to The Times of London, there's something fishy in Rome. Apparently, Berlusconi's attendance at the 18th birthday party of model/showgirl Noemi Letizia was the last straw for Berlusconi's wife. Letizia said that she calls him “Papi” because he “brought me up” and “loves me like a daughter.” However, Letizia's mother and former beauty contestant Anna Letizia says she prefers not to explain “how, where and when" she met the prime minister. The Times adds that Veronica Lazio, Berlusconi’s wife “is also an astute — if hitherto discreet — political operator, who has expressed left-wing views that differ sharply from her husband’s on issues from the Iraq war to bio-ethics” and suggests that her entry into politics “could give the fractured and demoralized Left a badly needed boost.”

This is an international showdown you wouldn’t have expected, say, two weeks ago: Tensions are high between Mexico and China, as China rounded up and quarantined more than 70 Mexicans travelling through the country on business and vacation, even though only one of them is so far reported to be sick. Mexico’s foreign minister called the tactic “discriminatory and ungrounded,” and the country chartered a plane to bring its citizens home. Meanwhile, Mexican authorities said the epidemic was waning, but world health officials said it was too early to make that call. The number of American infections rose to 245 in 35 states, though it is due to a catching up in a backlog of lab tests and not a spurt of new cases. One doctor from the Center for Disease Control said “Virtually all of the United States probably has this virus circulating now. That doesn't mean that everybody's infected, but within the communities, the virus has arrived.”

And around and around we go. While at a Washington school on Sunday, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended Bush administration policies regarding interrogation of terrorism suspects, specifically saying that President Bush “was only willing to authorize” interrogations that were legal. “He was also very clear that we would do nothing—nothing—that was against the law or against our obligations internationally,” she said. Rice was one of the top Bush advisers who approved the CIA’s use of waterboarding on those in custody. “I hope people understand that it was a struggle, it was a difficult time,” she said, making reference to Sept. 11, before continuing: “Even under those most difficult circumstances, the president was not prepared to do something illegal.”

Boston, it appears, will be the first major American city to lose its daily newspaper: The Boston Globe will shut in 60 days, The New York Times Co. announced today. The decision comes on the heels of discussions well into the night. The New York Times Co. sought $20 million in concessions from union officials but an agreement wasn’t reached by the midnight deadline. The company will file a notice today that it will shutter its plant, and that the Boston Globe, which is expected to lose $85 million this year, will publish only through a 60-day period. The decision is reversible, the Globe says, based on changing financial conditions at the newspaper. If it shutters, Boston will be left with one daily newspaper: the Boston Herald, a tabloid with 10 reporters.

Who says banks have lost their clout? “That regulators are wrangling with banks over the results of these tests shows that they are not confident in their ability to understand the institutions,” writes Breakingviews.com. “That gives banks too much power because regulators are forced to rely on many of their assertions about, say, complex products’ values. It would be better for watchdogs to demand that they reduce their complexity to comprehensible levels.” The New York Times writes, meanwhile, that “the administration seems prepared to argue that, while a few banks may need additional money, the broad financial system is healthier than many investors fear.” Geithner and crew will argue when they release the stress-test results that the needs of the banks can be met with the bailout funds that Congress has already approved. Bank of America, which needs in excess of $10 billion, isn’t looking forward to the results: Like Citigroup, it is trying to raise $10 billion in new capital.

We have bigger things to fear than swine flu: “As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities,” reports The New York times. While authorities emphasized that the threat was not imminent, they also made clear that “the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located.” Pakistan keeps deflecting American requests for details about the location and security of the country’s nukes. “Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan’s arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan’s nuclear sites.”

Lest you proceed into the workweek under the illusion that Chelsea Clinton is still engaged, as was reported by the Boston Globe on Saturday, a spokesperson for Bill Clinton has denied the rumors. “She's not getting married on the Vineyard or anywhere else this summer," said Matthew McKenna. "It's absolutely not true.” Clinton was rumored to be marrying boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky in the Martha’s Vineyard home of Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen and the “wedding” was said to coincide with the Obama family’s visit to the island in August. Alas, it’s not true.

Silvio Berlusconi apparently has a hard time coming to terms with the facts. After his wife, Veronica Lario, announced that she would seek a divorce to their 19 year marriage, Berlusconi told an Italian paper that “Veronica will have to publicly apologize to me. And I don't know if that will be enough.” Berlusconi went on to complain that this is the “third time in an election campaign that she plays a joke like this on me.” Lario was apparently pushed over the edge by Berlusconi’s attendance at an 18-year-old’s birthday party, and The Times of London notes she “is also an astute — if hitherto discreet — political operator, who has expressed left-wing views that differ sharply from her husband’s on issues from the Iraq war to bio-ethics” and suggests that her entry into politics “could give the fractured and demoralized Left a badly needed boost.”