President Barack Obama said in an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes that his health-care bill will pass this year, and once it does, he will ''own it." Obama said he sees this moment as the best opportunity to solve health-care issues, and that he wouldn't sacrifice the bill for the sake of bipartisanship. He's also skeptical of the cost-saving potential of caps on payouts in malpractice suits. The president warned that he would not repeat the health-care history of 15 years ago: "I think there're some who see this as a replay of 1993-94. You know, young president comes in, proposes health care. It crashes and burns and then the Republicans use that to win back the House in the subsequent election… And I think there are some people who are dusting off that playbook."

The MTV Video Music Awards always have a few memorable moments, and during Sunday’s presentation, it didn’t take long for another celebrity feud to erupt. Kanye West, who has notably freaked out after losing past VMAs, Grammys, and American Music Awards, jumped on stage after Beyoncé lost the Best Female Video award to young country singer Taylor Swift, saying "Taylor, I'm really happy for you, and I'm gonna let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.” Nineteen-year-old Swift didn’t even finish her speech and quickly followed up with a performance of “You Belong to Me.” Kanye West was booed by the crowd throughout the rest of the show, and after her win for Video of the Year, Beyoncé invited Swift up to the stage to have her moment. A memorable tribute to Michael Jackson headlined the event, with his sister Janet singing their duet “Scream” and a touching speech by Madonna. "Sometimes, we have to lose things before we can truly appreciate them," she said.

Rep. Joe Wilson has had enough—apologizing, that is. “I am not going to apologize again,” said the South Carolina congressman who yelled “You lie” during Obama’s address to Congress. “I have apologized to the president, I believe that is sufficient,” he told Fox News Sunday. His comments come as Democratic leaders plan to introduce a “resolution of disapproval” up for a vote early this week unless Wilson apologizes on the House floor. "There was a violation of the rules of the House," a spokesman for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said. "It needs to be resolved by an apology or a resolution." Wilson said the reprimand would “be tough for me,” then added, "Democrats are playing politics. I believe in the truth.”

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Stewart offers a 24-page, 19,000-word inside account of the eight days of drama that went down at the White House, Federal Reserve, Treasury, and Congress a year ago over the collapse of Lehman Brothers. “Everybody in some part of their brain thought it was a good thing for Lehman Brothers to go under,” one Treasury official reveals. On September 16, 2008, Bush convened a meeting at the White House. “So what is going on in our financial system, and what are we going to do?” he asked Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke. Said one Bush loyalist: “This came up in the final months of an eight-year term. He was so ground down by Katrina, the war in Iraq. He was just out of gas.” So Paulson was “unilaterally making economic policy for the administration,” an official says. At the close of the meeting, Bush remarked, “Someday you guys are going to need to tell me how we ended up with a system like this… We’re not doing something right if we’re stuck with these miserable choices.” Later that day, Paulson and Bernanke explained to the House and Senate leadership the need to loan AIG $85 billion. “Do you have $85 billion?” Rep. Barney Frank asked. “I have $800 billion,” the Fed chairman responded, referring to the Fed's balance sheet. Politico’s Mike Allen has excerpts of the story, which goes online Monday.

Tragic news coming from Connecticut. Police announced on Sunday that a body was found inside the Yale lab building where missing graduate student Annie Le was last seen. New Haven Assistant Police Chief Peter Reichard says the body, found inside a wall in the building’s basement, has not been identified, but that “We are assuming that it’s her.” The 24-year-old Le last swiped her ID card to enter the lab last Tuesday, but there was no evidence that she had left. Le’s wedding, which was scheduled for Sunday, was canceled.

So much for hopes of a much-hyped U.S. Open finals faceoff between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Juan Martin Del Potro of Argentina beat Nadal in three straight sets 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 in a match lasting over two hours on Sunday. Del Potro, the No. 6 seed, now heads to his first grand-slam final against none other than five-time champ Federer or fourth-seed Novak Djokovic of Serbia.

Poet and punk rocker Jim Carroll died from a heart attack on Friday in Manhattan. Sixty-year-old Carroll earned a cult following for his poetry—he began publishing pamphlets in his teens—long before the 1978 publication of The Basketball Diaries, a journal he kept in high school as he descended from basketball-scholarship student at a Manhattan private school to hustling in Times Square for heroin. The book became widely popular on college campuses, and Leonardo DiCaprio played him in a 1995 film adaptation of the book. Singer Patti Smith met Carroll in 1970 and encouraged him to read his poetry while Smith's band played background. He then formed the Jim Carroll band, and with the help of Keith Richards he scored a record deal. The band's first release, Catholic Boy, in 1980, is considered by some to be the "last great punk album."

President Bush was often criticized for using the politics of fear to win votes and win favors on Capitol Hill. It’s a quality President Obama is rejecting—or has yet to learn. But Politico says Obama’s inability to muster fear among his opponents has contributed to falling popularity and the health-care reform impasse. “One of the few areas of agreement on the right and left is that both sides want to see more strength of leadership from him,” says Democratic consultant Dan Gerstein. “There has to be respect—and fear.” Karl Rove agrees: “[On the Hill] they appreciate his diffident attitude, but I'm not sure it's one that inspires either fear or respect.” Instead of instilling fear and winning people over with a tough stance, Obama seems more interested in finding middle ground at any cost.

Last week, Amazon's Jeff Bezos said his company was keeping its copies of Dan Brown's new novel, The Lost Symbol, "under 24-hour guard in its own chain-link enclosure," before the book's Tuesday release, and others hyping the book (like Matt Lauer) promised not to divulge too much about its top-secret storyline. But somehow The New York Times procured a copy, and on Sunday revealed The Lost Symbol's moments of heart-pounding symbol-interpreting action in such surprising locales as…the U.S. Capitol building. After Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, good ol' Robert Langdon is back. Also making an appearance: a severed hand, a giant squid, and a muscular bad guy who has castrated himself. The biggest revelation? Brown “[brings] sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead.”

Sir Elton is considering a new career: father. The singer has his heart set on adopting a 14-month-old toddler he and his partner David Furnish met at an orphanage in Ukraine while on a trip for his AIDS foundation. “David always wanted to adopt a child and I always said 'no' because I am 62 and I think because of the travelling I do and the life I have, maybe it wouldn't be fair for the child,” the pop star explained. “But having seen Lev today, I would love to adopt him. I don't know how we do that but he has stolen my heart. And he has stolen David's heart and it would be wonderful if we can have a home. I've changed my mind today.” Elton John has been with Furnish since 1993.

Tyler Perry can do good box office numbers all by himself. The director’s latest, I Can Do Bad All By Myself, had an opening weekend haul of $24 million—the biggest opening yet for the director/writer/producer/actor excluding his hit Madea series. I Can Do Bad took in 37 percent more than his last film, The Family That Preys, on opening weekend. The movie, starring Taraji P. Henson, did particularly well among African-American audiences, especially women.

France's labor minister is meeting with the head of the country's leading telecommunications company as concern rises over the number of suicides at the company. Since the start of 2008, 23 employees of France Telecom have taken their own lives. Union officials are blaming tough working conditions since the company went private in 1998. France Telecom leaders say the suicide rate is not unusually high for a company of 100,000 workers. The most recent suicide occurred Friday when a France Telecom worker leapt to her death out of an office building in Paris.

Two worlds collide in the cover story for this Sunday’s New York Times magazine: health and social networks. The Times looks at a controversial study which came out last year suggesting that good health is a product of being near other healthy people. If your friend, or even your friend’s friend is obese, you are 57 percent more likely to be obese, public-health researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler have found. Critics say that they are misreading their data. Either way, writer Clive Thompson concludes, “To look at society as a social network—instead of a collection of individuals—can lead to some thorny conclusions.”

A key figure in the federal corruption probe into former Governor Rod Blagojevich is dead, reports the Chicago Tribune. A body identified as Christopher Kelly was brought into the morgue, the examiner's office said, and hospital officials say he died of salicylate intoxication. Salicylate is used in over-the-counter pain medications, and police are treating the investigation as a possible homicide or suicide. Kelly was a former top fundraiser for Blagojevich and was indicted alongside the governor in April. Kelly, who owns a roofing business, pleaded guilty Tuesday to mail fraud in a surprise move a day before his scheduled trial. Kelly said he was under pressure to cooperate in the federal investigation, but that he refused. He faced five years of prison on top of three more years for tax offenses.  

A multimillion-dollar collection of art from icon Andy Warhol has been stolen from a West Los Angeles home. A housekeeper for art collector Richard L. Weisman noticed on Sept. 3 that several pieces were missing, though police say there was no sign of forced entry and nothing else in the home was disturbed. The thief left several Warhol works untouched. Weisman left the house the day before the housekeeper made the discovery. An anonymous source has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the paintings. Weisman was a friend of Warhol's and commissioned the silk screen Athletes series in the late 1970s.

President Barack Obama took his show on the road this weekend, traveling to Minneapolis to warn the audience not to be fooled by "scare tactics" which he says opponents of health reform employ. Relying on campaign-style rhetoric and theatrics, Obama told 10,000 people gathered in a sports arena, "The time for games has passed. Now is the time for action. Now is the time to deliver on health care." Back in Washington, tens of thousands of conservatives gathered to express their disapproval of the president's plan. Breaking out of the capital, Obama is aiming to carry momentum from his address to Congress and win over Americans to his reform plan.

The distance between New York and Washington has often been greater than the 228 miles that separate the two cities. Now, one year after the beginning of the financial meltdown, Wall Street companies are paying increasing attention to life in D.C., sending executives and representatives to the capital in numbers not likely seen before. In the new climate, execs ignore changes in Washington at their own peril, The Washington Post reports. "In the old days, Washington was refereeing from the sideline," Mohamed A. el-Erian, CEO of Pimco, the world's largest bond fund, said. "In the new world, we're going toward, not only is Washington refereeing from the field, but it is also in some respects a player as well... And that changes the dynamics significantly."

Tensions continue to escalate in Latin America where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that his country will soon receive Russian-made missiles with a range of 185 miles. The announcement comes amid worsening relations between Venezuela and its neighbor Colombia, which has decided to allow the United States to access several military bases on its territory. Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev seemed excited at the possibility of more sales to Chavez. He said this week, "We will supply Venezuela the weapons that Venezuela asks for. In accordance with all international law, of course." When asked selling about tanks, the Russian leader added, "Why not tanks? Without question, we have good tanks. If our friends want our tanks, we will deliver them."

As security improves in Iraq, radical Islamist gangs have reduced their street patrols and ramped up vigilance of Internet chat rooms, trolling for gay men and women who, as one extremist put it, "are destroying Islam." The Guardian reports that more than 130 gay Iraqis have been brutally murdered since the beginning of 2009, and that the number is likely even higher. One extremist reportedly spends at least six hours a day hunting on the Internet for his next gay victim, who could, like many others, be left brutally murdered in the street as a stark warning. One mother found her son's "body with signs of torture, his anus filled with glue and without his genitals." One human-rights group has called Iraq, "the worst place for homosexuals on Earth." The violence against gay men and women in Iraq is a relatively new phenomenon; homosexuality was not criminalized during Saddam Hussein's rule.

The Taliban says it will leave Pakistan's Swat Valley, which was once a major stronghold until the Pakistan Army upped its presence there this summer. The collapse in Swat came as the Taliban's leader there, Maulana Fazlullah, was reportedly arrested. The group's exit is a further sign of disarray among its Pakistan leadership since its top man, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed by an American drone attack last month. Since then, The Daily Telegraph reports, rivals have waged a bloody power struggle seeking to succeed Mehsud.

When was the last time a Grand Slam match ended on a penalty? With Kim Clijsters two points away from a major upset, Serena Williams was penalized for having her foot on the line on her second serve. Enraged, Williams cursed at the line judge and appeared to say, "I swear to God I'm [expletive] going to take this [expletive] ball and shove it down your [expletive] throat, you hear that? I swear to God," according to ESPN. The line judge walked over to the chair umpire and reported what was said. Williams was promptly penalized one point and lost the match, 6-4, 7-5. The embarrassing outburst continued up to the post-match press conference, though Williams did say she wished her opponent the best. The bizarre conclusion mars Clijsters' remarkable story: She has come out of a 27-month retirement and is the first mother to reach a Grand Slam final since 1980.