For the second year in a row,  Mad Men, which was nominated for 16 awards, won Best Drama Series at Sunday's Emmy Awards, hosted by How I Met Your Mother star Neil Patrick Harris. Alec Baldwin of the NBC Series 30 Rock, which was nominated for 22 awards, won Best Actor for the second year in a row, but the show still held some surprises. Toni Collette won Best Actress for her portrayal of a woman with multiple personalities on Showtime's United States of Tara, while Kristin Chenoweth won Best Supporting Actress for Pushing Daisies, which was canceled. Jon Cryer won Best Supporting Actor for Two and a Half Men. Cable series dominated the nominations: 99 nods went to HBO series. HBO's series Grey Gardens won three Emmys, including one for lead actress Jessica Lange.

President Barack Obama is dominating TVs across the country this morning with a jaw-dropping five separate appearances on major networks—ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Spanish-language Univision—a record for any sitting president. The media blitz comes in response to the debate over health care, and though the president covered a variety of topics ranging from ACORN to Afghanistan, the focus stayed on health care. Obama chalked up recent tensions to fear of “big changes” rather than racial prejudice, but conceded, "Are there some people who don't like me because of my race? I'm sure there are. Are there some people who vote for me only because of my race? There are probably some of those, too." He had harsher words for the media’s role in the controversy. “Let's face it,” he said on ABC, “the easiest way to get on television right now is to be really rude,” and later sparred with Stephanopoulos over whether or not a proposed requirement to buy health insurance constitutes a tax increase. He later criticized Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’ (D-Mont.) proposed bill, which lacks a public option promoted by Obama and many Democrats.

Barack Obama wants the Pentagon to review the U.S.'s nuclear-weapons doctrine to prepare for deep cuts to the country's arsenal, The Guardian reports. The president rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the review as not consistent with his goal of eventually banning nuclear weapons entirely. He wants the new plan to contain the option of reconfiguring the arsenal to contain hundreds instead of thousands of strategic warheads and narrowing the range of conditions under which the U.S. can use nuclear weapons. The review should be finished by the end of the year. Obama will be chairing a session of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday addressing global nuclear disarmament.

Federal agents have charged three men in a terror probe that reaches from Colorado to New York to Pakistan. Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan national and airport shuttle driver, was arrested with his father outside of Denver. Investigators say they found notes in Zazi's handwriting about how to make a bomb, and also found his fingerprints on batteries and a scale that could be used to make explosives. Zazi admitted receiving weapons training from al Qaeda, but denied plotting a terrorist attack. An acquaintance of the two men, Ahmad Wais Afzali, who is from Flushing, New York, was also arrested. All three will appear in court Monday. Officials are investigating several people for a plot to detonate improvised explosive devices in the United States. The plot may have involved a major transportation center, officials said. The three men were picked up for giving federal agents false statements and face up to eight years in prison.

President Barack Obama sent word that he would like embattled New York governor David Paterson to forego a run for reelection, but Paterson didn't blink. "I've said time and time again I am going to run for governor next year," Paterson said Sunday. "My plans have not changed." Paterson did not deny that an Obama official met with him last Monday and expressed concerns. “Is there concern about the situation in New York? Absolutely,” an Obama official told The New York Times. “Has that concern been conveyed to the governor? Yes.” The request is an extraordinary one from a sitting president for a member of his own party—particularly because Paterson is only one of two African-American governors in the country. The White House has become increasingly uncomfortable with Paterson, according to the Times, as it has watched him fumble the decision to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat and then go on to declare that his low ratings are a product of racism.

The Taliban might not be on the ticket, but the fraud-ridden Afghanistan elections have been a boon for the terror organization. Systematic cheating and fraud gives the Taliban ammunition against President Hamid Karzai, who they say is hopelessly corrupt and a puppet of foreign powers. The Taliban's reclusive leader, Mohammad Omar, denounced "the so-called elections which are fraught with fraud and lies" in a statement online Saturday. The Taliban at first discouraged voters with threats of violence, a tactic that was largely successful as only 39 percent of registered voters showed up, The Washington Post reports. Officials have ordered a partial recount, while Karzai supporters have blamed foreign diplomats for exaggerating the election fraud incidents.

European leaders are questioning the U.S.'s commitment to reaching a global agreement on climate change, noting that the government has dragged its feet over setting specific targets for reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. The leaders have little hope that Congress, embroiled in a health-care debate, would act on a bill before the international talks in Copenhagen in December. Some are worried Copenhagen might be a repeat of President Clinton’s mistake in Kyoto in 1997, where he signed an international agreement that was repudiated by the Senate for making too few demands on developing countries. European nations have already pledged to cut their emissions by 20 percent by 2020.

The county fair is safe again. A schizophrenic killer who escaped in Washington state during a field trip to the county fair has been recaptured, authorities say. Phillip Paul, who confessed to killing an elderly woman because "voices" told him to, was the subject of a massive manhunt after he slipped away on Thursday. Paul also briefly escaped in 1991, when he injured the same police officer who recaptured him on Sunday. Paul was committed to a mental institution after he confessed to the murder in 1987. Authorities worried his medication would wear off and he would become dangerous if he wasn't captured soon.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates took to the pages of The New York Times Sunday to defend Barack Obama’s new missile-defense plan, which the president announced last week. Gates, a Republican who was appointed by President George W. Bush, called Obama’s plan to end strategic missile defense in Europe a “vastly more suitable approach” than the one taken by Bush. Gates praised Obama’s goal of implementing sea-based interceptor missiles for providing “greater flexibility.” The president’s proposal, Gates said, “is, simply put, a better way forward.”

A black bear injured nine tourists Saturday in the small mountain town of Nyukawa, Japan, after it wandered into a rest stop area and wreaked havoc. Four men were seriously injured by the 4-foot bear. One tourist tried to beat the creature back with a stick, but the bear fought back and seriously injured him. The bear was eventually trapped in a souvenir shop in a lodge and shot dead by a hunter. Bear attacks are rare in the area.

More people seem to disagree with Barack Obama, and now Christopher Dodd is proposing an economic plan that was already rejected by the administration. Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, spoke Friday of upcoming legislation proposing to merge four bank agencies—the Federal Reserve, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Comptroller of the Currency—into one large “super-regulator.” Dodd told The New York Times that the goal of the legislation is to “restore consumers’ confidence in the nation’s banking system, while not hampering business.” “Super-regulator” title aside, the president is seeking a plan with greater regulation than Dodd’s and is said to be pushing for the creation of a national bank supervisor position and streamlined Fed oversight of large firms and economic risk.

With bankers holding on to their limited capital for dear life, borrowers are increasingly looking to less-traditional sources for cash. The Washington Post reports Sunday that a leading source of loans these days has become other people, as peer-to-peer lending gains in popularity. The Post reports that about $282 million was given in peer-to-peer lending in 2006. By 2010, analysts expect that number to grow to $5.8 billion. “It offers a viable option for folks who are getting turned down for credit elsewhere,” one industry expert says.

Five young children and their mother were found dead in their apartment on Saturday, and authorities are hunting for the family's father, who left the country. Mesac Damas boarded a flight to Haiti, where he has family, from Miami on Friday. The five children ranged from 9 years old to 11 months old. A Florida sheriff called the homicides "the worst of the worst." Damas, who worked as a cook, had prior charges of domestic violence against his wife. The family lived in a gated community in Naples, Florida.

Just in time for her 60th birthday, London’s National Portrait Gallery is opening Twiggy: A Life in Photographs, a collection of snapshots from the supermodel and mod icon’s personal and professional life. To coincide with the exhibit, she talked to The Guardian about today’s models, aging, and her much-discussed weight. She tells the paper that she was “much too thin,” at the height of her career, adding, "I had a look—I can see that now—but I don't think I was beautiful. That look is a total impossibility for women over the age of 20. Fashion has a lot to answer for, doesn't it?” These days, after a brief stint replacing Janice Dickinson (the other “world’s first supermodel”) as a judge on America’s Next Top Model, Twiggy is now the face of Marks and Spencer, a British chain store, and says of her supermodel days, “it's amazing, really, that I didn't go stark raving bonkers."

Apparently at Fox News, if it’s a slow news day, you can always make your own. A producer for the cable network has been caught on tape waving her arms to hype a crowd from behind-the-scenes at a 9/12 rally while reporter Griff Jenkins tells Glenn Beck about the impassioned “grassroots movement” at hand. Jenkins continues in the segment, “this is an uprising,” adding “we are at the beginning of a political movement.” The network and Beck himself had promoted the 9/12 movement extensively prior to the event, chiding other media for ignoring the protest with its stated purpose of bringing “us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001[…] standing together to protect the values and principles of the greatest nation ever created.” The channel’s Washington bureau chief responded to the video: “The employee is a young, relatively inexperienced associate producer who realizes she made a mistake and has been disciplined.” Not exactly ripped from the pages of a journalism textbook.

Is L'Affair Edwards finally reaching its conclusion? As a federal grand jury in Raleigh, North Carolina, continues its investigation into whether John Edwards broke campaign laws while concealing his affair with employee Rielle Hunter, The New York Times reports that the one-term senator is getting ready to go public as the father of Hunter's 19-month-old daughter Frances—despite having unequivocally denied fathering the child on previous occasions. Though Edwards staffer Andrew Young once claimed Frances' paternity, Young is now working on a tell-all memoir that will reportedly admit that it was all a ruse to protect his former boss. What's more, the NYT reports that Rielle Hunter is contemplating a move to Wilmington, North Carolina, not far from the Edwards family's restricted-access beach home. An acknowledgement of paternity would not only be a nail in the coffin of Edwards' credibility, but could "shift Ms. Hunter's image from that of a predatory celebrity stalker... to that of a mother concerned about her child's rights." Holding the public acknowledgement back, NYT reports, is Edwards' cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, who "has yet to be brought around" according to a family friend.

President Barack Obama will hold a joint meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, the White House said. The meeting is the first between the three men and will be held in New York when the leaders are in town for a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell just returned from a weeklong mission in the Middle East with little to show for his efforts. The White House is trumpeting the meeting as a demonstration of the president’s commitment to the region.

Sitting in the South of France, a columnist from Britain began to wonder how her fellow countrywomen stack up against the beauties of Provence. Apparently, she finds that they don’t measure up well to their neighbors across the Channel, but, as AA Gill declares in a Sunday column for The Times of London, so what? “The English at heart know that beauty is a cheat; it is an unfair advantage, a distraction from the real qualities that you want in a girl: the ability to fry a breakfast with a hangover, have sex in the rain without complaining, flatten an intruder with a left hook…” The list goes on. So chin up, Britons, the news today is that there’s far more than beauty to behold in your land.

Probably no week is an easy one to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office, but the next seven days may be some of Barack Obama’s toughest. President Obama will take his show back on the road this week, for what may be the most difficult diplomatic challenges of his young presidency. In only four days, Obama will dive into the politics of the United Nations, where the world’s leaders will be arriving this week. He will host the G-20 in Pittsburgh, as the planet’s most powerful gather to discuss the state of the economy. All the while, pressure is heating up in a number of hot spots worldwide as the Mideast peace process stalls and the U.S. continues to consider how to confront nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea.

A week before turning 75, Leonard Cohen collapsed while performing a concert in Spain. Organizers said the singer-songwriter fainted on stage after suffering food poisoning. About half-way through the show, while Cohen was singing his hit, “Bird on the Wire,” he fell into his back-up singers, only to fall again moments later. He was taken the hospital and released hours later.

The religious right has spoken, and it wants Mike Huckabee. The former governor of Arkansas and Fox News personality won the Values Voter Summit’s 2012 presidential straw poll on Saturday, scoring more than double the votes of his closest competitors. The crowded field included former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, each of whom won about 12 percent of the 597 votes cast. Huckabee’s comparatively blockbuster 29 percent made him the king of the crop, though the president of the Family Research Council (which hosted the summit) noted that, though Huckabee has “potential,” FRC isn’t ready to endorse. “We want a fully rounded conservative candidate,” he said. “Right now, the door’s wide open.” Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum each won a single-digit share of the vote.