Out with the old, in with new: Bank of America Chief Executive Ken Lewis will celebrate 2010 by stepping down from his office on January 1. Lewis faced tough scrutiny in recent months, following disclosures of massive losses stemming from BofA's merger with Merrill Lynch, as well as big bonuses in the wake of the move. The House oversight committee only increased the pressure when it demanded the bank allow legal documents related to the merger to become public; bank management is facing persistent questions over what it told shareholders about the merger. Lewis ran the bank for nearly a decade, building it into one of the nation's largest through aggressive acquisitions.

Yet another earthquake has hit Indonesia, the second in as many days, with a magnitude of 6.8, so far more than 400 people have been killed. Fearing a tsunami, thousands fled, while rescue workers had already been digging through collapsed buildings for victims of the first quake. The epicenter was about 180 miles away from Wednesday's stronger quake, which measured 7.9 on the Richter scale and occurred about 30 miles off the coast, near the city of Padang, a city of 900,000. That one killed at least 200. Earlier this week, a third earthquake rocked the Samoan islands, causing a tsunami that killed more than 100 when 20-foot waves smashed buildings and swept some people out to sea. President Obama has declared American Samoa to be a federal disaster area. The first two events were separated by 16 hours and 6,000 miles, and scientists say they're unrelated.

We hope no senators were planning on spending their Columbus Day holiday tanning with John Boehner: Senate Majority Leader has cancelled the Senate’s Columbus Day recess so that senators can focus on passing health-care reform during the week of October 12. “The Columbus Day [recess] is fast approaching,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “It’s the week after next and with all the things going on here, it just would not be right for us to take that week off.” The Senate will work three days that week, taking off Monday and Friday. It will not vote on health care until 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

It’s Joe Wilson all over again, but this time, the roles are reversed. After Florida’s Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson said the GOP’s health-care plan is for the sick to “die quickly,” Republicans called on Grayson to apologize on the House floor—just as Democrats once called for “You Lie!” heckler Joe Wilson to. Wilson and the GOP rebuffed the demand; likewise, Grayson is now refusing the GOP. “I would like to apologize,” said Grayson. “I would like to apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner.” In an interview, Grayson told reporters: “I’m not taking any of it back. I stand by what I said.” He noted that, unlike Wilson, he did not violate House rules.

This will throw a wrench into the Keith Olbermann-Bill O'Reilly cable news feud: Comcast, the enormous cable provider, is reportedly in talks to buy NBC-Universal from General Electric. Bankers for both sides worked through details in a meeting Tuesday, reports The Wrap. Though GE denies it, rumors have been circulating for months that the mega-corporation might be selling the entertainment unit, and in recent weeks, minority shareholder Vivendi has been gearing up to sell its 20 percent share of the company in an IPO. NBC-Universal looks like a much sweeter deal for Comcast these days, because it's lost about $20 billion in value (from $55 billion to $35 billion) in just a year. That's partly because Universal had a bad summer, as several movies with big-name stars— Funny People, Bruno, Land of the Lost—failed to meet box-office expectations. UPDATE: Comcast says there's no deal.

Detroit just can’t catch a break. General Motors announced Wednesday it will close Saturn after Penske Automotive Group changed its mind and refused buy the brand. In June, Penske had agreed to buy Saturn (sans manufacturing operations) but decided against it due to concerns over where it would acquire the vehicles after GM stopped making them. GM is also closing down Pontiac and selling Saab and Hummer lines as part of its bankruptcy reorganization in July. Some of the 350 Saturn dealers had pressed GM to make the Penske deal, which was seen as saving 13,000 jobs.

In an audacious interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel, Iran’s Chief Nuclear Negotiator, Saeed Jalili, defended his nation’s “right to enrich uranium” and dared America to impose new sanctions. “Do you really believe there are sanctions that can hit us that hard?” Jalili asked. “We’ve lived with sanctions for 30 years, and they can’t bring a great nation like Iran to its knees. They do not frighten us. Quite the opposite—we welcome new sanctions.” He went on to explain that “anything that curtails consumption and promotes the development of our self-sufficiency is useful.” Jalili reiterated his nation’s support for nuclear disarmament, but not at the expense of Iran’s nuclear facilities, which the government says are for energy purposes only: “I don’t understand why Europe is worried about a few centrifuges in Iran and not about the nuclear weapons stored in Europe.” He added, “We don’t need a bomb.” Jalili also discussed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s explosive relationship with Israel—“Doesn’t Israel possess nuclear weapons?”—and Iran’s recent contested election—“Differences of opinion are part of democracy.”

The real story of Andrew Young’s long-speculated relationship as John Edwards’ “special assistant” will soon be revealed in the aide’s upcoming tell-all book—and new leaked details suggest it’ll be a doozy. Whether it was fetching Diet Coke or booking Disney World vacations, Young was allegedly indispensable to the man he worshipped, but who eventually allegedly betrayed him. “It’s not enough to say that he idolized the guy,” a person who was close to Young said. “There’s something deeper and weirder than that.” Young reportedly helped facilitate Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter, leading to a child for whom he claimed paternity. “He was glad to do it,” said Young’s friend, Bill Walser. “The deal as I understood it later was that after the election results were final, that John would step up and straighten out the issue. That didn’t happen.” Some say Young is now writing the book since Edwards never set the record straight; others say it’s for financial reasons. Nevertheless, the leaked St. Martin’s Press proposal claims Young has details of Edwards’ promises to Hunter as well as stories of other affairs. Young also may be in possession of an explicit videotape of the senator and the reported mother of his child.

Start salivating: Jeremy Horwitz at iLounge has new details on Apple’s upcoming tablet device from a reliable source. According to the source, it will have a 10.7-inch screen, will run on the iPhone OS, and will look like an iPhone 3G. Apple also is planning to announce it on or before January 19, 2010, and it will hit the market in May or June. It’s still awaiting Steve Jobs’ approval.

“Where do these nut jobs come from?” RNC Chairman Michael Steele said on Thursday when asked about Thomas Friedman’s latest column. He was not taking up Friedman’s theme—which was about the dangerous rise of right-wing extremism in the United States—but was attacking Friedman himself. Friedman’s column said that the current political climate reminds him of the political climate in Israel in 1995, shortly before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. “[S]omething very dangerous is happening,” Friedman wrote. “Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.”

Tensions were high at Boston’s Logan Airport in Boston on Wednesday afternoon after a note reading “Bomb on board, Boston to Miami flight” was found in the bathroom of American Airlines Flight 1037, which was headed from Boston to Miami at 2:30 p.m., airline officials told the Boston Globe. An American Airlines flight attendant found the note while conducting a routine inspection as passengers were boarding the 757. Passengers were told to disembark the plane after the note’s discovery, and the plane is being checked at Logan Airport.

The two earthquakes that shook the Indonesian island of Sumatra and caused tsunami waves to crash into the Samoan islands this week were unrelated, according to scientists at the University of Utah's Seismograph Stations. The events were separated by 16 hours and 6,000 miles. The epicenter of the Indonesian earthquake, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, occurred about 30 miles off the coast, near the city of Padang, a city of 900,000. A hospital was among the destroyed buildings in the city and the roof of the Padang airport also reportedly collapsed. The Samoan tsunami killed more than 100 when 20-foot waves smashed buildings and swept some people out to sea, and President Obama has declared American Samoa to be a federal disaster area.

It’s a good day for female fans of Justin Timberlake. Us Weekly heralds the end of his three-year relationship with actress Jessica Biel on their new cover, out Wednesday. The singer/actor/designer reportedly called it off on a phone call with Esquire’s 2005 Sexiest Woman of the Year last month. The 28-year-old Timberlake “was clearly on the hunt” while in NYC this month to promote his William Rast clothing line at Fashion Week, a mutual friend of the couple told Us, dirty dancing with a blonde while Biel, 27, was nowhere in sight. “It’s over,” Timberlake told the mutual friend. Or is it? “There’s no way of knowing if it’s a firm breakup, because with them it’s so hot and cold,” said another source.

It may not feature a twist ending, but the quality of writing is probably about the same: Sarah Palin’s upcoming memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, has shot to No. 1 on Barnes & Noble's bestseller list, supplanting The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. Brown is hanging on to the top spot, however, at Amazon, though Palin has surged to the No. 2 spot. Earlier today, she passed Glenn Beck, whose Arguing With Idiots is now No. 3 at Amazon.

An earthquake shook the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Wednesday, destroying buildings, bridges, and lives—at least 75 people are dead and thousands more are trapped beneath debris from the disaster, according to Reuters. The epicenter of the earthquake, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, occurred about 30 miles off the coast, near the city of Padang, a city of 900,000. Officials and local media say a hospital was among the destroyed buildings in the city and the roof of the Padang airport also reportedly collapsed. The quake comes a day after a tsunami, sparked by a quake in the South Pacific, killed over 100 in Samoa.

Will Michelle Obama's gold-medal powers of persuasion be enough to land the 2016 Olympics in Chicago? The first lady arrived in Copenhagen Wednesday morning, stopping briefly at a welcoming party to talk with the ambassador, kiss the Chicago mayor on the cheek, and dole out a few hugs before getting to work. As head of Chicago's delegation, and representative of her husband until his Friday arrival, she'll meet with as many members of the International Olympic Committee as she can fit in. Although IOC president Jacques Rogge has stressed that heads of state don't have to attend the final pitches, it's believed that Tony Blair tipped the 2012 vote in London's favor, while Vladimir Putin did the same thing when Sochi won the 2014 Olympics. Last week, senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett met with Blair to get advice on how to get the most out of the final few days. All Michelle will say of the final presentation to the IOC, which will include her husband is, "We're not going to sing together or anything."

Your New York Times news may soon come at a cost—but specifics of the inevitable pay model is still up in the air. Despite numerous meetings on both the business and editorial sides, no one has pulled together a clear proposal for how the company could charge for nytimes.com. “In the end, I think it will come down to a gut call about what we think the audience will accept and how we think the market will evolve,” Executive Editor Bill Keller told The New York Observer. “Everybody wants it to be a well-informed, well-considered gut call, but it’s a gut call.”

Can there ever be too much George Clooney? This fall, two rival studios will both be releasing films starring the actor within one week of each other, a situation that's left nobody happy, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Currently, Overture has scheduled its war-themed dark comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats for a Nov. 6 release while Paramount has scheduled its dramatic comedy Up in the Air for a limited release one week later. Clooney is a producer on Goats, which may explain that in this game of chicken, but Overture is standing its ground for Nov. 6. The Hollywood Reporter speculates that Air will probably push back its limited release to Nov. 27 to avoid a glut of Clooney-themed advertising.

If need be, she could always downgrade to the bar mitzvah circuit: The New York Post reports that the Washington Speakers Bureau—which also represents George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and Condoleezza Rice—is having a hard time convincing potential clients to book Sarah Palin for $100,000 a pop. One industry expert tells the Post: “The big lecture buyers in the U.S. are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot.” Palin is believed to have quit her job as governor of Alaska early, in part, to earn more money. According to the source, many big lecture circuits are subscription series, and bookers are afraid of ticking off subscribers by putting her on the roster.

Perhaps they'll be some news on Obama's war strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan soon. According to Politico, the president is scheduled to meet with his national security team on Afghanistan for three hours in the Situation Room Wednesday, a follow-up to his Sunday meeting with the principal players. Biden, Hillary, Robert Gates, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, CIA Director Leon Panetta and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke will also attend.

Town-hall protestors may be crazy ,but Congress is hoping they at least have the courtesy to RSVP: $500,000 is being set aside for a pilot program for senators to send out town-hall-meeting reminders as part of a 5.8 percent budget boost that Congress recently gave itself. Other items in the $4.7 billion budget include $30,000 for receptions for foreign dignitaries and $4 million for consultants, with Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell allowed nine each. The largest increases dealt with infrastructure; the House office building budget jumped by 128 percent to $84 million, some of which will go to replace a roof at the Rayburn House building and renovate the Cannon House, while the Government Printing Office will nab 155 percent more than last year, a total of $12.7 million for technology upgrades and repairs. The bill heads to the Senate this week, where it's likely to be approved.

“Hasn’t he suffered enough already?” Roman Polanski’s defenders ask. If this is suffering, sign us up: The New York Daily News checks out Polanski’s lifestyle in Europe, where he split time between a penthouse apartment on the Avenue Montaigne, one of Paris’ swankiest streets, and at a chalet he called the “Milky Way” at a Swiss ski resort. Polanski, meanwhile, has hired a hotshot lawyer who’s a close friend of Attorney General Eric Holder. Also, a bevy of A-list directors, including Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and David Lynch, have signed a petition protesting Polanski’s detention.

U.S. intelligence remains convinced that Iran halted its development of nuclear weapons in 2003 and that, as of 2007, it has not restarted its program. But its counterpart across the pond is saying otherwise: British intelligence services are saying that Iran has been designing a nuclear warhead “since late 2004 or early 2005.” The disclosure comes before talks between Iran and world powers on Thursday. Of the talks, Iran’s chief nuclear official said, “We will never bargain about our sovereign rights.”

Tell us what you really think, Gore Vidal. Obama’s doing “dreadfully,” he says in an interview with the Times of London. “I was hopeful. … But he’s inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters.” He says he maintains some hope in Obama, since he’s not a “liar,” but wishes we had gone with Hillary. “Hillary knows more about the world and what to do with the generals. History has proven when the girls get involved, they’re good at it.” He also says the Republican Party is “a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred” and that America’s lack of an intellectual class means “We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together.”

The Senate Finance Committee may have shot down amendments to add the public option to the health-care package, but the White House holds the power to keep the option alive. After endless debate in Congress, and a schism between moderates and liberals, Democratic factions are looking to President Obama to pull the party back together. Obama could have the final say on whether the public option ends up in the eventual House-Senate compromise bill. However, Obama has said that though he supports the option, it's only one method of many to keep health-care costs down. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) remains upbeat: "[The public option] was given up for dead a few weeks ago, but what we find is every time we debate it... we pick up more support. Every day I am more optimistic..." The deciding factor may be whether the president wants to pass a bill with 60 votes—which would have the patina of bipartisanship—or with 51. The latter may be the public option's only realistic hope.

It's been nearly one year since the assault that killed 163 people in Mumbai last November, but the militant network that executed the terrorist attack is as strong and determined as ever. Vanity Fair's Marie Brenner captures the drama of the day in a must-read narrative piece describing India's 9/11. However, little has addressed the root cause of the bombing. According to Indian and Pakistan dossiers on the Mumbai investigations, The New York Times reports, the Lashkar network, which trained the 10 militants involved in the Mumbai bombing, is as strong as ever. Ties between the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, Pakistan's spy agency, and the Lashkar are still strong. The ISI created Lakshar about 20 years ago as part of its bid to take back Kashmir in the proxy war between Pakisan and India.

Most troops dream of being home in time for the winter holidays, but some will now be home in time for Halloween: The United States is speeding up its military withdrawal from Iraq, bringing an extra 4,000 troops home before the end of October. That will reduce the total number of soldiers in Iraq from 124,000 to 120,000. Testifying on the hill yesterday, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, said troop levels are on pace to fall to 115,000 by the end of the year, and to roughly 50,000 by mid-2010.

The times, they are a-changin' indeed. Bob Dylan's Christmas album, to be released next month, will be offered early to Citibank customers as a banking tie-in. Reuters reports that Citibank will make "Christmas in the Heart" available to its 13 million rewards customers the week before the album's October 13 release. But Dylan hasn't entirely abandoned his socially conscious 1960s aesthetic—he's donating all his proceeds from the Columbia Records release to charities that feed the needy.

A 7.6 earthquake in Indonesia set off a round of temporary Tsunami warnings Wednesday morning following seismic disasters in Samoa. On Tuesday, a tsunami killed at least 141 people in Samoa, a nation of about 220,000 people, and American Samoa, a nearby U.S. territory with a population of 65,000, following a massive 8.0 earthquake 120 miles off the coast. Mud, debris, and large fish covered roads in populated areas. The Wall Street Journal reports that President Obama declared a "major disaster" and ordered federal aid to American Samoa. In Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa, water surged 100 yards inland, causing electrical shortages, while in Samoa, waves destroyed resorts and small villages in remote areas.

Perhaps they should stick to escaping explosions. Hugh Jackman of Wolverine fame and Daniel Craig, better known as James Bond appear in the new play A Steady Rain which opened on Tuesday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. The New York Times is lukewarm on the whole performance, which it calls a "small, wobbly pedestal on which two gods of the screen may stand in order to be worshiped." While both were "just fine in their parts," as two friends from childhood on different sides of the law and in love with the same woman, the performances are hardly likely to help audiences forget about Wolverine or Mr. Bond.