If this week’s nuclear talks with Iran don’t go well, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on CNN today that the U.S. may begin to impose “severe” economic sanctions on the country. In light of Iran’s newly discovered nuclear capabilities, Gates freely discussed ways to target the nation’s weak economy, including sanctions on banking and technology related to its lucrative oil industry. Gates also addressed the controversy over strategy in Afghanistan, saying, “I think that the notion of timelines and exit strategies […] would all be a strategic mistake.” However, he went on to describe failure in Afghanistan as a potentially “huge setback.” Gates consistently put a positive spin on these issues, highlighting what he sees as the United States’ first real strategy in Afghanistan since the 1980s, the amount of economic leverage the U.S. has against Iran, and his support for President Obama’s call to close Guantanamo Bay, although he claims he is not optimistic about the timeline.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist William Safire, who drew notice for his role as President Nixon’s speechwriter, died today in Maryland at the age of 79. The man of letters, who wrote the twice-weekly “Essay” for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times for over 30 years, was a college dropout who, the Times recalls, set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “Kitchen Debate” in Moscow. Safire, a “forceful conservative voice in the liberal chorus” was often outspoken in print, calling people liars and using his love of words to express his contrary opinions. Until he succumbed to cancer, Safire was still writing “On Language,” a readers’ favorite column in The New York Times Magazine that discussed the meanings of words and phrases.

President Obama and his top education official want to increase the amount of time students are in classrooms, which might mean—gasp!—shortening summer vacations. "Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," Obama said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom." Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the current school calendar is based on "the agrarian economy," but kids today aren't working in the fields. "Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here," Duncan says. "I want to just level the playing field." But the Associated Press reports that kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school than many students in Asian countries like Singapore,Taiwan, and Japan, who outscore American students on math and science tests. Charter schools report academic gains from lengthening the school day.

Roman Polanski’s surprise arrest at the Zurich airport could lead to a happy ending for the Polish filmmaker, The Washington Post reports. Polanski’s legal team has filed a motion to dismiss the charges that have followed him for 31 years, since he fled the United States after pleading guilty to sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old. "I think he will finally get his day in court," criminal defense attorney Steve Cron said, "and there's a good chance his case will be dismissed or the sentence will be commuted to time served." Poland and France are making a joint appeal to the United States to have Polanski released from detention. A HBO documentary raised questions over judicial misconduct in Polanski’s 1977 case, and his victim, Samantha Geimer, has joined the filmmaker’s bid for dismissal after Polanski and she reached a settlement outside of court. The Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby director won an Oscar for The Pianist in 2002 and was in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award when he was detained by Swiss police at the request of U.S. authorities. Extradition could take months.

New York Governor David Paterson has joined the apparently increasing ranks of people who disagree with Barack Obama, announcing that he plans to run for re-election in 2010, despite the president’s alleged advice not to run. In an interview with Meet the Press, Paterson said that, contrary to reports, Obama never directly told him to drop out and “can’t say” what exactly the president’s thoughts are on the issue. Paterson has been criticized consistently over the past several months, beginning with his treatment of Caroline Kennedy’s short-lived Senate candidacy. Paterson acknowledged the onslaught of recent problems, saying, “I’m blind, but I’m not oblivious.” Nonetheless, he seems confident that he can turn around his poll numbers before the election, and is committed to remain in the race. “You don’t give up because everybody’s telling you what the future is,” he said.

Backed into a corner over its recently revealed secret nuclear facility and facing a renewed push by President Obama to change its ways or face sanctions, Iran struck back on Sunday with a missile test. According to Reuters, Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced they fired two types of short-range missiles, tested a multiple missile launcher, and plan to test-fire the longer range Shahab 3 missile, which could reach Israel. "The message of this maneuver is for some domineering countries whose intention is to create fear, to say that we are able to come up with an appropriate response to their enmity with high speed and precision," Iranian General Hossein Salami said on Sunday. The move comes ahead of a key meeting in Geneva Thursday in which representatives from the United States and five other major powers will discuss the nuclear issue with Iranian officials.

When in doubt, Hollywood studios can always fall back on a remake. The strategy doesn’t seem to be working for MGM’s Fame, though, and critics across the board are taking aim at an updated take on the classic 1980 musical about students at a New York City performing arts school. Reviews of the film, which opened this weekend, accuse Fame of being a squeaky-clean and flavorless spin on the original, removing grittier subject matter and skirting around subjects such as homosexuality. The original Oscar-winning score has also been replaced this time around, and critics at Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews, have clocked the movie in at an abysmal 27 percent. In the New York Post, Lou Lumenick called the remake both “desperate and cynical,” claiming that it “dishonors the original,” leading the critic to predict the end of MGM altogether.

She may have another four more years—but is Germany ready for the type of change Angela Merkel wants to enact? The current German chancellor claimed victory Sunday in her country’s national elections, with her conservative Christian Democrat party beating out the Social Democrats. “We have reached our election goal of a stable majority for a new government,” Merkel told supporters in Berlin, adding that she would be a “chancellor for all Germans.” Merkel hopes to cut taxes and reduce bureaucracy; she will likely reach out to the pro-business Free Democrats to make the government more business-friendly, but rising budget deficits make it difficult for her to enact the kind of tax cuts she has promised.

Italy's scandal-prone prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is stepping on the toes of Barack and Michelle Obama...again. "I bring you greetings from a person who is called ... a person who is sun-tanned ... Barack Obama," the politician told a cheering crowd in Milan on Sunday. "You wouldn't believe it, but they go sunbathing at the beach together—his wife is also sun-tanned." Michelle Obama pointedly shook Berlusconi's hand at the G-20 meeting last week after hugging and kissing the cheeks of every other world leader. The 72-year-old Berlusconi sparked outrage last November when he called Obama "sun-tanned." He said anyone who found the comment racist was an "imbecile."

The body of Anne Morell Petrino, the heiress who jumped to her death on Thursday, has been found in the Hudson River, state police say. Petrillo was the daughter of newspaper heiress Anne Scripps Douglas, who was murdered by her husband before he fatally jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge in suburban New York in 1994. Petrino jumped from the same bridge as her stepfather did 15 years earlier. The family founded the Detroit News. Friends say Petrino was struggling financially and had an alcohol problem. She left a note, but police won't disclose its contents. The examiner's office will make the official identification.

While the consensus among experts is that the recession is coming to an end, the job market is still historically bad with little hope for a quick turnaround. The ratio of those seeking a job versus the number of job openings available is now six to one, the worst since the government began keeping track of the statistic in 2000. Some 14.5 million people are officially unemployed and it may be some time before the employment picture improves. “There’s too much uncertainty out there,” a labor economist at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, told The New York Times. “There’s not going to be an upsurge in job openings for quite a while, not until employers feel confident the economy is really growing.”

Barbra Streisand’s much-anticipated show last night at New York’s Village Vanguard seems to have lived up to the expectations of even the most giddy of superfans: “It was like seeing the pope,” said one lucky concertgoer. The concert was part of the promotion for Streisand’s new album, Love Is the Answer, and marks the singer’s first time performing at the Vanguard since getting her start there 48 years ago. The 123-person venue was packed with VIP audience members including Sarah Jessica Parker and the entire Clinton family, but 74 of the audience members had won their tickets in a contest on Streisand’s Web site, enduring airtight security and harassment from other jealous fans in order to see their favorite singer live. The singer stuck to her classics including “The Way We Were,” and joked with the audience about the tiny space, saying “It’s hard to have stage fright when there’s hardly any stage.”

At the heart of a new plan by President Obama to create a watchdog agency to oversee consumer protection is the disastrous job the Federal Reserve did with its own responsibilities over the last decade. The organization was in charge of monitoring subprime mortgages only to see them spiral out of control as officials did little to follow up on evidence of abusive practices. According to The Washington Post, experts and current and former employees blame everything from anti-regulation attitudes among top Fed officials to the lack of follow-up on anecdotal evidence of problems. "It is like a city with a murder law, but no cops on the beat," former Fed Governor Edward Gramlich warned in 2007, concerned that despite rules on the books regulating subprime mortgages there were few people assigned to enforce them. From 2004 to 2007, banks made some 1.1 million subprime loans, a grand total of 13 percent of all home loans, the Post reports, many of which ended up in foreclosure and helped spark the financial meltdown in 2008.

Is it 1998? Hillary Rodham Clinton famously stated during the Monica Lewinsky scandal that her husband was the target of a “vast, right-wing conspiracy” to drive him out of office. Now, the former president is using the same phrase to describe some of Barack Obama’s harshest critics. When he was asked Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press whether he believes the conspiracy is still there—perhaps in the form of those who level accusations of socialism and fascism against Obama—he responded: “You bet. Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was because America has changed demographically. But it's as virulent as it was." He added that “their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail.”

In an interview with the BBC, embattled British Prime Minister Gordon Brown vehemently denied recent rumors of an alleged dependence on prescription painkillers. The charge comes after a long downturn in Brown’s popularity, and the prime minister also used the interview to address pet political issues in preparation for next year’s election. Brown did a political about-face regarding the economy, speaking of his desire to crack down on banks after having a “change of heart” at this week’s G-20 summit. “The banks are anxious to return to the bad old days,” said Brown, vowing to combat wayward financiers with "the toughest action of any country in the world.” Shifting the focus away from his critics, Brown sought to highlight the slowing growth of unemployment and position himself as an effective leader: "I’ve had to fight through all kinds of difficulties. A setback can either be a challenge or you roll over. I do not roll over."

Further proof that the truth is stranger than fiction: A woman in Ohio recently gave birth to a stranger’s baby. This past February, Carolyn Savage visited a fertility clinic outside of Ohio, where she was mistakenly implanted with an embryo from a Detroit couple named Paul and Shannon Morrell. Savage and her husband learned of the mistake 10 days after she became pregnant, but say they never considered terminating the pregnancy or fighting for custody. The baby boy was born this past Thursday and will be raised by the Morrells, who thanked Savage in a statement, calling her their child’s “guardian angel.”

At least 83 people are dead and thousands evacuated after Tropical Storm Ketsana slammed the Philippines, causing the worst flooding the country has seen in 42 years. The government has declared a state of calamity and the country's Red Cross is warning that the death toll could reach "several hundred," according to Bloomberg. At least one town is completely underwater. About 16.7 inches of rain fell on the city of Manila in just 12 hours Saturday. Residents were seen perching on roofs as the flooding swept away houses. Christina Esguerra, 31, said she only narrowly escaped being dragged away by the waters. “I’m lucky someone managed to pull my hair,” she said. “The current was so strong, my feet were no longer touching the ground, my face was in the water and I even drank some.”

President Obama, famed for his cool under pressure, is taking his time with one of the toughest decisions of his career: whether to fulfill his general’s request for more troops and escalate the war in Afghanistan. The White House has at least five meetings scheduled over the coming weeks to reassess U.S. strategy in the region, but no deadline has been set on making a final call. "I think the most important thing is to do it right," National Security Adviser James Jones told The Washington Post's Bob Woodward. Jones said that urgent requests for more troops by General Stanley McChrystal may end up being unnecessary if the administration adopts a new plan. "We will ask General McChrystal, and say, 'OK, now that you've heard what our strategy is, does this affect your thinking in terms of your resources and, if so, how?'" Jones said. The debate has split the administration, with McChrystal's call for more troops going up against skepticism from Vice President Joe Biden that a major counterinsurgency strategy could succeed.

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney's husband died while descending the sixth-highest mountain in the world, located between Nepal and Tibet, the New York Post reports. Clifton Maloney, 71 years old, a former investment banker and an experienced climber, reportedly said he was "the happiest man in the world" shortly before dying of unknown causes after going to sleep in his tent. Maloney was a Navy veteran and multimillionaire who founded an investment firm and was a vice president at Goldman Sachs. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and her husband married in 1976 and have two children.

After a week of dealing with world leaders at the United Nations and G-20, President Obama is getting back to where he left off on domestic issues. "We must bring about a better health-care system in this country not in 10 years, not in five years, not in one year, this year," he said on Saturday at a dinner hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Weaving his diplomatic week into the speech, Obama said that one world leader told him that people in his country were confused by the more outrageous anti-health overhaul protesters. "He says, 'Barack, explain to me this health-care debate. We don't understand it. You're trying to make sure everybody has health care and they're putting a Hitler mustache on you. That doesn't make sense to me, explain that to me,'" Obama said.

The White House plans to tell Iran this week that it must open up all of its nuclear sites for inspection and hand over notebooks and computers about its suspected plan to build nuclear weapons within the next three months, The New York Times reports. Fresh on the heels of the revelation that Iran was concealing a nascent uranium-enrichment plant, the Obama administration senses it has unprecedented leverage in its negotiations this week in Geneva. Even Iran's ally Russia has rebuked the country following last week's bombshell. On Thursday, the United States will join talks with Iran for the first time in 30 years as a full participant, and the meeting may be a turning point in the West's quest to gain access to off-limits nuclear facilities. On Saturday, Iran's nuclear chief said the U.N. was free to search its formerly hidden site, but the White House is expected to demand interviews with scientists and access to all nuclear sites.

He’s been considered a fugitive by the U.S. government since 1978, and now after 31 years, Roman Polanski has been detained in Zurich on charges of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. Polanski, a Holocaust survivor, left for France after pleading guilty to the molestation charge and had managed to elude arrest for over three decades. The Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby director won an Oscar for The Pianist in 2002 and was in Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award when he was detained by Swiss police at the request of U.S. authorities. In recent years, Polanski sought—unsuccessfully—to have his charges overturned. Artists, filmmakers, and even the French Culture Minister and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are calling for the director to be returned to his family.