This was a rather quick turnaround: President Barack Obama’s administration appears to be bending to the massive opposition against the proposed health-care overhaul, and is now leaving open the possibility to drop the government-run health-insurance option that Republicans fear would drive private insurers out of business. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Sunday that the government alternative to private health insurance is “not the essential element” of the overhaul. In a compromise that will please the GOP, Sebelius said the White House would be open to co-ops: “I think there will be a competitor to private insurers. That’s really the essential part, is you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing.” However, an administration official told Atlantic Monthly that Sebelius "misspoke." Sebelius was simply supposed to say the public option is a tough sell and not the most important part of health reform. Another spokesman said "nothing has changed...The President has always said that what is essential that health insurance reform lower costs...He believes that the public option is the best way to achieve these goals." At a town hall on Saturday, Obama said the public option "is not the entirety of health care reform."

The American who was sentenced to seven years of hard labor in Myanmar after swimming to the home of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been released and has left the country, the Associated Press reports. Senator Jim Webb secured the man's freedom on his visit to the country after meeting with the junta's leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe. Webb also met with Suu Kyi for nearly an hour on Saturday, and requested that the country's leadership release the Nobel laureate from her 18-month house arrest. Suu Kyi was sentenced after John Yettaw swam, uninvited, two miles to reach her home, which violated her house arrest. Yettaw stayed for two days, claiming God had sent him there to protect Suu Kyi. The Nobel laureate has spent 14 of the past 20 years in confinement for her pro-democracy actions. Webb is the first member of Congress to visit Myanmar, also known as Burma, in over a decade.

North Korea said on Sunday it will reopen its border with South Korea so that tourism and family reunions can start up again. The country's news service immediately followed that announcement with a warning of "a merciless and prompt annihilating strike" if U.S. and South Korean military operations infringe the country's sovereignty. Kim Jong-Il met Friday with the leader of South Korea's Hyundai Group, who was trying to secure the release of a detained worker. The Hyundai Group runs tourism to the North and operates the Kaesong industrial park just over the border, which brings in money for Pyongyang's leadership. Normal traffic can resume to the Kaesong factory park, though it's unclear whether Hyundai buckled to Kim's demands for a payment hike for operating the park, which offers cheap labor to South Korean companies.

Good news from Japan: The world's second-largest economy rebounded in the latest quarter, for the first time in a year. It could mean the beginning of the end for the country's deepest recession since World War II. Even better, if Japan's economy is out of the red, it might boost a global recovery, economists say. Exports plunged following the financial crisis last year, but in the three months preceding July, Japan's economy expanded by an annualized 3.7 percent. Just last week, Germany and France reported unexpected growth, while the Federal Reserve said the U.S.'s economy, which is the largest in the world, is beginning to level out. Some economists question whether Japan's bump was only due to their stimulus, and say the recovery isn't sustainable. Stocks fell on these worries, Bloomberg reports.

And now he decides to play nice: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced plans today to propose at least three female ministers for his new cabinet, but also blamed the West for stoking political unrest after Iran’s disputed election in June. Ahmadinejad has until Wednesday to submit his new cabinet to parliament, although it’s likely to be met with much opposition, as conservatives will resist his attempts to garner support among women, and most moderates still see his election as illegitimate. Should any be approved for cabinet positions, it would be the first time a woman held a ministerial position in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Two women mentioned by the president for the positions include a conservative lawmaker for the post of social-welfare minster and a former member of parliament as health minister. Meanwhile, the mass trial of protesters was expanded to include 25 new defendents, despite widespread international condemnation.

Usain Bolt shattered the world record for the men's 100 meters today, beating out Tyson Gay in a stunning 9.58-second run. The time was eleven-hundredths of a second faster than his world-record performance at the Beijing Olympics, where he appeared to stop sprinting at the end of his run but still picked up a gold medal. Tyson Gay "ran the race of his life," The New York Times reports, and finished at a remarkable 9.71 seconds, a U.S. record. But the 22-year-old Bolt was too fast for him—he finished the race by pounding his chest and loping on for another 200 yards. Bolt's training was hampered by a minor car wreck in Jamaica in April.

The Santa Barbara, California, blaze that tore through more than 75,000 acres was started at an illegal marijuana farm, authorities say. The fire began in the cooking area of the farm, which is run by a Mexican drug organization, and authorities say the culprits are hiding in the forest somewhere. The fire, which started August 8, is still burning out of control, while 10 other fires are currently blazing in California.

Thursday's presidential election in Afghanistan is in danger if suicide bombing continues, officials tell the Financial Times. On Saturday, a bomber attacked the NATO headquarters in Kabul, killing an estimated eight people and wounding 100 others. Already the number of polling stations that can be safely opened has fallen from 7,000 to 6,000. One security expert said that the bomb came with a clear message: “The message is: ‘We can strike at will at the center and, if we can strike there, we can strike at the polling stations.’ It’s timed to cause psychological damage, just as much as physical." The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. With a rise in popularity, presidential candidate and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah has made the election a far tighter one than expected by President Hamid Karzai, who is seeking another term. Karzai said the election would go on despite the violence.

Y.E. Yang won his first major title Sunday, taking down Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship. Yang is the first Asian player to win one of golf's majors. Woods, the world’s No. 1 player, has finished the year without a major title for the first time in five years. Woods started out the day at Hazeltine National in Minnesota with the lead, but missed a few birdie putts and seemed off his game. Yang, who is South Korean, also beat out three-time major winner Padraig Harrington, who ended up in the water twice during the day.

Who exactly is running things in the White House? In a front-pager, The New York Times makes the case for the tremendous power of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. According to the paper, "Seven months after moving into his office in the West Wing, Mr. Emanuel is emerging as perhaps the most influential White House chief of staff in a generation. But with his prominence in almost everything important going on in Washington comes a high degree of risk." Those risks may include being fired if Obama's grand policy efforts come up empty. But that won't happen without a fight, folks in Washington say: The man's a work horse. “It seems like he has a 72-hour day,” Senator Charles Schumer told the Times. That work includes involving himself in domestic and foreign policy, helping develop limits on credit-card policy and strategies for Pakistan.

A low-budget, R-rated alien flick climbed to the top of the U.S. box office this weekend, edging out mega-movie G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra. District 9 cost only $30 million to make, features no big-name stars, and was directed by a relatively inexperienced 29-year-old, Neill Blomkamp. The film's success is due in part to a viral-marketing campaign that "echoed the paranoia of the storyline," The New York Times reports. The ads on billboards and buses encouraged viewers to call a number to report "nonhuman activity." Thousands called. G.I. Joe came in second over the weekend, and The Time Traveler's Wife followed with $19 million in sales.

Has Harvey Weinstein lost the Midas touch? His “vintage Harvey chutzpah” may have been tempered, but the controversial producer says he’s refocusing. The Weinstein Company has released about 70 films since it opened in 2005, and many of them have underperformed: 13 took in less than $100,000 at box offices, and the company has also been bogged down by litigation over Project Runway. In a lengthy profile, The New York Times reports backers of the company are getting anxious. The company’s identity crisis may come from the slowdown of the DVD market, but also from a string of bad investments, such as those in fashion label Halston and A Small World, a “MySpace for millionaires.” In this effort to establish a conglomerate, Weinstein admits he lost his focus on film: “What happened was, I got more fascinated by these other businesses and I figured, ‘Making movies, I can do that in my sleep.’…I thought I could build the company and delegate authority, and that’s where it went wrong.” Now, Weinstein says he’s going back to what he knows. Sounding a bit “like a married man lamenting a fling,” Weinstein has a simple message about his film career: “I’m going to just do this and nothing else.”

The "King of Bollywood" Shah Rukh Khan was detained and questioned by immigration officials for two hours at Newark International Airport, The Washington Post reports. The star was on his way to Chicago for a parade marking India's Independence Day on Saturday. "I was really hassled—perhaps because of my name being Khan," he said in a text message to reporters in India. "These guys just wouldn't let me through." The movie star recently wrapped a film in the U.S. about a Muslim's "harrowing experience with racial profiling.” Just last month, Continental Airlines apologized to former Indian president Abdul Kalam, who was frisked at a New Delhi airport. "Shah Rukh Khan...is a very welcome guest in the United States," the U.S. ambassador to India said in a statement. The incident has sparked nonstop coverage in India.

If the health-care debate has achieved one thing, it’s been to unite the Republican Party. So says Peggy Noonan in her Wall Street Journal column this week on the “disaster” of a health-care debate, which could turn into a bill that’s somewhere between a “pig in a poke and three-card Monte.” She says Obama has proven that, like Jimmy Carter, he’s “brilliant at becoming president but not being president.” Obama’s town-hall meetings, Noonan says, have become a giant game of softball. One memorable question came from a grade-school girl in Portsmouth, N.H., about the signs she’s seen that say “mean things” about health care. “I’ve seen some of those signs,” the president responded, continuing that there had been a “rumor” that the House voted for “death panels” that will “pull the plug on grandma,” but that none of that is true. Writes Noonan: “I’m glad he’d like psychiatric care included in future coverage, because after that answer, that child may need therapy.”

Billy Wayne Posey, a key suspect in the murders of three civil-rights workers in 1964, died at age 73 on Thursday. Federal authorities say they will continue to investigate the Mississippi murders. The 1964 slayings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who were in Mississippi to register black voters, shocked the nation and helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Hundreds of FBI agents investigated the men's disappearance, eventually finding them buried 15 feet below a dam. Seven people were convicted of trying to violate the victims' civil rights, and one man, a reputed Ku Klux Klan leader, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for manslaughter. Authorities say four suspects remain alive, and civil-rights activists have pressed for more murder convictions.

He’s certainly no “father figure.” After smashing his car into the back of a truck in England early Saturday, George Michael was arrested on suspicion of “drug-driving.” He drove his silver Range Rover into the back of a seven-ton truck just after 1 a.m. Saturday. His car bounced and skidded to a stop—witnesses thought Michael was dead, but the singer miraculously climbed out of the wreckage. According to the trucker, “He must have been doing 100 mph. When he got out he couldn't walk straight." An onlooker who stopped nearby said of Michael: “Eventually the guy got out of his car. He came over to my cab and asked if I had stopped to give him a lift. I was stunned. He was absolutely not with it, so I told him no. But he insisted and came around the other side of the truck and tried to get in the passenger door.”

Arriving in Islamabad on Saturday, Richard Holbrooke, the president's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, praised the increased security efforts of the Pakistan military along its border with Afghanistan. The envoy said the fact that he is able to focus on economic and social issues during his visit is a sign of the success that the Pakistan military is having in the Swat and Burner valleys. "If you compare the situation in Pakistan today to what it was in March and April, there's been a dramatic change," Holbrooke said. Perhaps the biggest sign of that change came recently with the apparent killing of Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban's leader in Pakistan. The greatest gains may be a result of convincing Pakistan to change its focus from its neighbor India to the Taliban threat within its own borders.

Hurricane season is officially here: Look out for Ana, a tropical storm swelling 90 miles off Florida’s coast. A warning has been issued east of Alabama, which means extreme tropical storm conditions could appear in the next 24 hours. Ana, which is traveling with winds of 35 mph, could hit land as soon as Monday. Another storm, Bill, is also picking up strength in the Atlantic, but is 1,640 miles off the Lesser Antilles, while Tropical Storm Claudette threatens the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Guillermo, meanwhile, is a Category 2 storm with 100 mph winds moving over the Pacific.

And Mark Zuckerberg’s reign continues: Facebook’s recent $47.5 million purchase of FriendFeed, a social-media platform that collects everything you do on the Internet, drew notice earlier this week. FriendFeed will direct other sites, like Twitter and Flickr, to Facebook, which may result in a mash-up many might call “FaceFeed.” The sophisticated aggregator of everything you do on the Internet will cycle back onto your Facebook page, creating the ultimate social tool. As Facebook is trying to become your single portal for the Internet, The Washington Post writes, “Facebook bought FriendFeed so it could be the Huffington Post of your social life.” If all goes according to plan, Facebook would be second only to Google—and possibly create a viral war between the two portals. But in the end, the article continues, Facebook bought FriendFeed for one reason: “So it could own you.”

At a health-care town hall Saturday in Colorado, President Barack Obama got personal when he said that those who argue his plan includes a push for euthanasia are "dishonest." “I just lost my grandmother last year, I know what it’s like to watch somebody you love who’s aging deteriorate, and have to struggle with that,” Obama said. “So the notion that somehow I ran for public office, or members of Congress are in this, so they can go around pulling the plug on grandma? When you start making arguments like that, that’s simply dishonest.” Obama addressed the crowd of almost 2,000, pushing back on what he termed the "scare tactics" used by opponents. "For all the scare tactics out there, what is truly scary is if we do nothing," he said. Obama also addressed a few sharply-worded questions on the public option, though the crowd seemed largely supportive of the president.