Tens of thousands of gay-rights activists marched on Washington Sunday, demanding the right to marry and serve openly in the military, one day after President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to those goals in a speech. Movement leaders have acknowledged a schism within the gay community between those who demand radical change in the legal status of gays and those who think patience is needed. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), an openly gay member of the House, said that the march would be "useless." "We're no longer happy with a handful of rights in a handful of states," said Kip Williams, who helped organize the march. "There is no exception to the equal-protection clause... I'm not ready to wait." President Obama promised to end Don't Ask,Don't Tell last night while addressing the largest gay-rights group at a dinner, and also said he would ask Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Pakistani police warned the military in July that the audacious raid on their headquarters was being planned, intelligence officials said Sunday. The mastermind of the attack also planned two other major attacks in the past two years, including the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore earlier this year. Nine men wearing army uniforms held dozens hostage for 20 hours until a raid ended the siege on Saturday. Eight of the attackers were killed, leaving only Muhammad Aqeel, who officials say is the mastermind of the attack. The criminal investigation department of the police wrote a letter warning that the military’s headquarters would be attacked. The letter was reprinted in the leading newspaper on October 5. The fact that the military was warned further calls into question their ability to fight off militants and keep their nuclear arsenal safe from the Taliban, The New York Times reports, though Hillary Clinton brushed aside the question of the nukes’ safety on Sunday. One of the attackers wore a suicide bomb jacket, but was killed in the siege before he could detonate himself. Another suicide bomber did blow himself up, bringing down the roof and injuring some captives. In all, 16 people were killed.

The Democratic National Committee has agreed to cancel a television ad touting bipartisan support for health-care reform when former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole objected to being mentioned. Dole is quoted saying: "I want this to pass. ... We've got to do something," in the ad, which also quotes Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. "I just didn't think it was fair, when I've tried to be helpful in encouraging a bipartisan solution, for the DNC to run an ad that I interpreted and I know others did as a backhanded comment about Republicans," Dole said on Sunday. Dole complained to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who told the DNC to stop the ad from running. President Obama cited Dole's support for reform in his weekly address last week. "I still believe a compromise is there. No one I know is flatly against health-care reform," Dole said.

Sen. John McCain is back in the news today, appearing on State of the Union to claim that the reported deployment request for 10,000 to 20,000 military personnel to be sent to Afghanistan is “an error of historic proportions.” The former presidential hopeful said he does not believe the war could be won with fewer than 40,000 troops. As Obama and his top advisers continue to review the status of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal is pushing for a counterinsurgency strategy similar to the “surge” in Iraq, which McCain supports. McCain also spoke of former running mate Sarah Palin and her hopes for a 2012 run: "I have great affection for her… Did we always agree on everything in the past? Will we in the future? No." His statement comes on the heels of last week’s sniping by McCain’s former top strategist, Steve Schmidt, who said Palin’s nomination would have a “catastrophic election result.”

A notorious hijacker who commandeered a plane of passengers to Havana 40 years ago has been caught in Cuba, where he’s been hiding the past four decades, officials say. Luis Armando Peña Soltren, 66, is the U.S.’s longest wanted fugitive. He burst into the cockpit of a Pan Am flight in November 1968 and demanded that it be flown to Cuba, authorities said. Prosecutors say Soltren, two other men, and a fourth female accomplice were armed with guns and knives that the woman had stuffed into a diaper bag. Soltren will be arraigned tomorrow. His wife and children live in the United States, and Soltren made it known to U.S. officials that he wanted to come home and face charges. The three other people involved have already been tried—one was acquitted and two were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Microsoft admitted over the weekend that a technical problem has resulted in the loss of contacts, photos, and other data for unlucky T-Mobile Sidekick users. For more than a week, many Sidekick users have had trouble accessing the Internet, phone contacts, and calendar appointments that are stored on servers operated by Microsoft. Now, online access is restored, but many subscribers might not ever be able to recover their personal data. People who reset their Sidekicks by removing the battery or allowing all the power to drain away are most at risk of losing the phone's information. There are more than a million Sidekick users. The snafu is an embarrassment for Microsoft, which has been trying to turn around its reputation in the cellphone industry.

After being forced to flee Afghanistan in 2001, Mullah Mohammed Omar has slowly regained power as a major leader of the Taliban. Omar, who earned his nearly mythical reputation for fighting in the 1980s and 1990s when he lost an eye to Soviet shrapnel, heads up the Taliban’s leadership council. “He’s staged one of the most remarkable military comebacks in modern history,” said former CIA officer and Daily Beast contributor Bruce Riedel. It is unclear, however, how close he remains to al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden himself has worked to curry favor from Omar—only four of five people can pass messages to the secretive man whose whereabouts are unknown—but some argue that the Taliban may seek more legitimacy as a government by distancing itself from bin Laden’s network, and Omar recently said that the Taliban would “not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others.” The statement could be a publicity move, and some U.S. officials maintain that ties between al Qaeda and Taliban forces remain strong. “We’ve been trying for 13 years to get the Taliban to break with al Qaeda and turn over bin Laden, and they haven’t done it,” said Riedel. “Whatever the bond is between them, it’s stood the test of time.”

Three defendants have been sentenced to death in Iran’s mass trial of opposition figures accused of stirring up unrest after the country’s June 12 election. More than 100 prominent activists are being tried for crimes—from rioting to planning a “soft overthrow” of the Iranian government—related to post-election street protests, which were triggered by allegations of fraud. These are the first death sentences since the trial began in August; all were convicted of ties to opposition groups, and the defendants’ names were not released. Amnesty International says one of them is Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani, 37, who confessed to meeting an American spy named Frank in Iraqi Kurdistan and giving him information on Tehran and student movements in exchange for money and a phone. Rights groups say these confessions are coerced and the proceedings are a show trial.

California’s economy may be tanking, but for megachurches, business is booming. Megachurches—huge, unconventional houses of worship that draw in members with Christian rock, giant TV screens, and a more casual atmosphere—have been cropping up around the country over the past several years, and have proven especially popular in the Golden State. Some have ministries for specific demographics, ranging from dog lovers to those struggling with eating disorders. "They are essentially re-creating a small-town milieu and giving folks…a place to plug in and share experiences with like-minded people," said a sociologist studying the phenomenon. California now has 193 churches with more than 2,000 congregants each, and some, like the nondenominational Shepherd of the Hills, can attract up to 8,000 people at a time, leading smaller congregations to complain of losing attendees to their flashier counterparts.

It’s drawn cringes and ruthless reviews across the board, but Vince Vaughn’s latest laugh-a-minute vehicle, Couples Retreat, managed to top the box office this weekend, taking in $35 million. Even prior to its release, the comedy was subject to public flogging, garnering a meager 16 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film was so bad it reportedly led to the firing of the executives at Universal responsible for greenlighting it. This weekend’s unexpected success is likely to drop off in the coming weeks, and if the mounting buzz and numbers for Paranormal Activity are any indication, horror might overtake the box-office crown soon enough. The Blair Witch-esque film took in $6.5 million from only 159 theaters, and is set to open in wide release on October 16.

Maybe the higher-ups can hold off on joining Monster.com after all. As Comcast continues talks with General Electric to acquire an ownership share of NBC Universal, there's some good news for the corner office. CEO Jeffrey Zucker and his management team would likely be kept at the head of the media company, sources tell Bloomberg News. The decision to sell a majority stake of NBC Universal could come as early as this week. The 44-year-old Zucker has spent his entire career at the entertainment giant, where in 1992 he was the youngest person to serve as the executive producer of the Today show at the green age of 26.

For 22 hours, hostages were trapped inside the headquarters of the Pakistani army before commandos raided the building and set them free from Islamist militants. Three captives and four hostage-takers were killed, as were two of the rescuers, in the raid which ended the standoff. The initial assault, an audacious show of force by fighters with ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban, came ahead of a planned expansion of the Pakistani army's efforts to secure the Afghani border in South Waziristan.

Nearly 100 banks have failed this year, straining the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which has had to seize their assets. Worsening commercial real-estate loans are crippling small banks, whose balance sheets are not improving at the same rate as large institutions like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and U.S. Bancorp. Almost every Friday, the FDIC has swooped in to handle troubled lenders, causing its fund, which had $50 billion just two years ago, to fall into the red. The FDIC has sought new ways to replenish the fund by asking for higher and earlier payments from healthy banks. Its chairman, Sheila Bair, defends the high amount of bank closures, saying that although bank failures are painful in the short term, a bank on the edge of collapse is unlikely to lend, and “that’s not good for the economy.”

President Obama addressed the largest gay-rights group Saturday night, raising huge applause when he promised to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell and to tell Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. Obama said his commitment was "unwavering" to achieving equal rights for the gay community and that a time will come when relationships between same-sex couples are acknowledged as "just as real and admirable" as heterosexual relationships. "It's not for me to tell you to be patient," he told the Human Rights Campaign on Saturday, addressing frustration that his administration has moved too slowly on issues like Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act. Obama did not include a timeline for repealing either of the policies. Thousands are expected to march on Washington to demand gay equality on Sunday. Obama highlighted the soon-to-be-passed hate-crime legislation that will redefine a hate crime to include attacks based on gender and sexual orientation, but raised the most applause when he said he will end the Don't Ask, Don't Tell military policy and when he said he would call on Congress to end the Defense of Marriage Act.

One resort needs to rethink its slogan that it will “absolutely change your life.” An Arizona resort is under investigation after two people died and 19 landed in the hospital in critical condition this week. The resort-goers had been in a two-hour session in the resort’s sweat lodge, which is similar to a sauna. Investigators have ruled out carbon-monoxide poisoning as a possible cause, and are investigating the self-help guru, James Arthur Ray, and his resort staff for the possibility of criminal negligence.

Turkey and Armenia have agreed to establish normal diplomatic negotiations, after the deal was nearly thwarted by last-minute wrangling over its language. The neighboring countries have had chilly relations for a century, in large part because of mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had planned to merely witness the signing ceremony in Switzerland, but when she arrived, the deal was crumbling. Clinton worked frantically till the last minute to resolve differences, and the countries’ foreign ministers eventually shook hands. Many Armenians insist there should be no agreement until Turkey admits the World War I-era killings were a genocide, which Turkey denies. The agreement stipulates that both countries will establish an international commission to research the war’s archives to clarify what really happened.

New Jersey icon Bruce Springsteen paid a final tribute to Giants Stadium this weekend, his ultimate concert in the venue before its scheduled demolition next year. Springsteen, who is on tour with his E Street Band, commemorated the occasion by playing the entirety of his classic Born in the USA album, including perennial favorite “Dancing in the Dark.” Fittingly, he also included a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time.”

Book your tickets to Johannesburg: The United States men's soccer team has clinched a berth in the World Cup, the global soccer tournament, which takes place next summer in the South Africa. With a victory in Honduras Saturday night, the American team secured its sixth consecutive trip to the World Cup. "It never gets old, that's for sure," team star Landon Donovan told reporters. "After what most of us would say was a very disappointing 2006 World Cup, we now have a chance at redemption."

At the young age of 33, singer and U.K media staple Stephen Gately died this weekend while on vacation in Majorca. Gately had achieved huge success as a member of the band Boyzone in the 1990s with four No. 1 albums, and was working with the band on an album to be released in 2010. He also stayed in the spotlight with a variety of other gigs, including a stint on Dancing on Ice. Gately publicly announced he was gay at the height of his success in 1999—unheard of at the time for a boy band member—and later was married in a civil partnership in London. No cause of death has been made public.

Senators John Kerry and Lindsey Graham took to the pages of The New York Times on Sunday to declare that the Senate is on "a road to 60 votes" on the upcoming climate-change bill. Saying the climate change is a challenge to America's economy and security, the senators—one Democrat and the other Republican—advocated for lowering carbon emissions. They called for investing in alternative energies and lowering our dependence on foreign oil. The bipartisan message of optimism came with a threat: Failure to pass a bill will lead to Environmental Protection Agency regulations that will be tougher than many senators who oppose the current legislation would wish to see. Their message is simple: Get in line or suffer the consequences.

For years, teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other government employees could count on a pension to help them get through retirement. The financial crisis has changed that—perhaps forever—as officials are confronting insurmountable losses and rethinking how benefits are paid out and how pension funds make money. State and local governments have a choice: Either drastically lower retirement benefits or make increasingly risky investments to pursue high returns. In The Washington Post, Warren Buffett called pensions “ticking time bombs” and looked at how widespread and significant these pension troubles are.