The Treasury Department announced Monday that it will begin deploying "SWAT teams" to monitor mortgage companies, in light of the administration's losing battle against home foreclosures. Seventy-one companies receiving $75 billion will be under the government's watchful eye. Mortgage companies have been too relaxed about recruiting eligible homeowners to have their mortgage rates reduced to as low as 2 percent for five years, administration officials say. Part of the problem is that some mortgage companies have come up against difficulty getting borrowers to complete the necessary paperwork for the administration's loan modification program. Also, because participation in the program is voluntary, the government has little recourse to get companies to comply, besides shaming the industry. The administration's new tough-love strategy will include a public list of mortgage companies that are behind on turning over eligible borrowers.

After much negotiation and speculation, the magic number appears to be 34,000 and focus may be the magic word. President Barack Obama is expected to announce in his Tuesday Afghanistan speech a plan to deploy 34,000 new troops, bringing the total number of troops in Afghanistan to 100,000, more than half of which will have been sent under Obama's watch. The president will also ask NATO to provide an additional 5,000 troops, bringing the total just shy of the 40,000 requested by General Stanley McChrystal. But the real change, ABC's Jake Tapper reports, will be a focus on local solutions and working directly in dangerous provinces. This method seeks not only to deter global terror, but also to allow the U.S. government to sidestep Afghan President Hamid Karzai if he fails to clean up his corrupt government. American deployments will begin in January and continue in stages. Obama will also address the transfer of security responsibility to Afghanistan in Tuesday's address.

First Iran announced it will build 10 new nuclear facilities over the weekend, now this: Iran detained five British sailors on Monday after the Iranian navy stopped their racing yacht. Apparently, the men strayed into Iranian waters as they sailed from Bahrain to Dubai. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that his government is in contact with the Iranians.

Can the Karzai administration be trusted? American attempts to install a "high representative" in Kabul may indicate "no." On the eve of Obama's speech addressing the next stage of military operations in Afghanistan, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke is pushing for the appointment of an Afghan chief executive to watch over the oft-criticized, corrupt government run by president Hamid Karzai, reports The Guardian. In addition to a chief executive, the proposed plans also include a "contact group" to facilitate international cooperation. The measures are intended to support the surge of U.S. troops being sent to the region, but critics warn that the move would signal the Kabul government's further loss of legitimacy.

The suspect in the killings of four cops in a Washington state coffee shop on Sunday has so far eluded arrest. A SWAT team stormed a Seattle home on Monday where suspect Maurice Clemmons was believed to be holed up, but it turns out that the house was empty. Hundreds of police are now searching the neighborhood with dogs, and authorities have offered a $125,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. Clemmons, who has a long criminal history, had his sentence commuted by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee nearly 10 years ago.

Twi-hards, brace yourself for details about a fifth Twilight movie: Following in the footsteps of the Harry Potter blockbuster franchise, the Twilight movies may double down on the final installment in the series. In its first two weeks, New Moon, the second Twilight film, grossed $481 million worldwide. Summit Entertainment has gone only so far as to book screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg for Breaking Dawn, but will still have to convince the director of New Moon, Chris Weitz, and the actors to return for back-to-back shooting. Splitting the finale will also mean having to renegotiate with the series' author, Stephenie Meyer, and rewriting contracts with the actors—particularly Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner—who would end up with even fatter paychecks than what they've already seen.

Tareq and Michaele Salahi turned over an email correspondence with Pentagon official Michele Jones today—friends say the emails will clear them of wrongdoing in their State Dinner party crash, but Jones says it's a lie. The Washington Post reports that Jones is special assistant to the secretary of Defense and the White House's Pentagon liaison; she is apparently friends with the Salahis' lawyer. While Team Salahi maintains that the emails prove the sharp-elbowed pair believed they had permission to attend the dinner, Jones is adamant: "I did not state at any time, or imply that I had tickets for ANY portion of the evening's events. I specifically stated that they did not have tickets and in fact that I did not have the authority to authorize attendance, admittance, or access to any part of the evening's activities." Jones is a former top sergeant major in the Army and was a featured speaker at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Her military career included being the first female class president at the U.S. Sergeant Major Academy.

Katie Holmes has been the target of criticism after her 3-year-old daughter, Suri, was spotted prancing around in kitten heels this fall, and now Katie’s striking back. Holmes defended her purchase by explaining that the heels Suri sports are actually supportive ballroom dancing shoes. The explanation came at an event for the ironically named Dizzy Feet Foundation, an organization Holmes co-founded to help underprivileged youth become professional dancers. Parenting magazines and Web sites have criticized Suri’s high heels, citing concerns about what wearing heels would do to a child's growth.

Good news for the competition: Tiger Woods announced Monday that injuries from his car crash on Friday will prevent him from participating in this week’s Chevron World Challenge—a golf tournament that he hosts and which benefits his foundation. "I am extremely disappointed that I will not be at my tournament this week," Woods said in a statement on his Web site. "I am certain it will be an outstanding event and I'm very sorry that I can't be there." Tiger will not participate in another tournament until 2010. Meanwhile, TMZ reports that the Florida Highway Patrol is seeking a warrant to seize medical records from the hospital that treated Woods in order to determine whether his injuries were caused by his car accident or, as has been rumored, by his wife during a domestic dispute. The decision to obtain a warrant suggests that authorities believe they can show probable cause that a crime was committed.

After going rogue, is Sarah Palin going racist? Palin posted a letter to her Facebook page Sunday by a 95-year-old man calling Barack Obama “son.” “I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life,” Harold B. Estes wrote in the letter that Palin posted, “but you’re the commander in chief now, son.” Anticipating Obama’s speech Tuesday, Palin writes, “I ask the president to reassure us that the administration is in this war on terror to win.”

The nation may not know until Tuesday night what President Obama’s war plans are, but the wheels are already in motion: Obama has issued new orders for the war in Afghanistan to General Stanley McChrystal. He finalized the orders after meeting on Sunday night with Adm. Mike Mullen, Gens. James Cartwright and David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Obama also spoke Sunday afternoon with Hillary Clinton and will speak on Monday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Chelsea Clinton became engaged to longtime boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky over Thanksgiving weekend. With political bonafides himself, Mezvinsky seems a good match for the 29-year-old only child of former President Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Mezvinsky is the son of former Iowa Congressman Ed Mezvinsky and former Pennsylvania congresswoman Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, both Democrats. Mezvinsky currently works for Goldman Sachs. In 2002, his father pleaded guilty to defrauding investors of more than $10 million. Chelsea and Mezvinsky reportedly met in 1996 in Washington, D.C. when colleagues of their parents introduced them, but became closer friends during their time at Stanford University. They announced their engagement, which took place in New York, via email on Friday morning, writing that "despite stories to the contrary" they hadn't gotten secretly hitched this summer, but we are looking toward next summer and hope you all will be there to celebrate with us."

Hollywood is on the “cusp of a new chapter,” writes Sharon Waxman, “in which a smaller group of major entertainment companies, fortified by bigger libraries and deeper distribution channels, will hold a larger concentration of power.” With Comcast set to acquire NBC-Universal and Time Warner and News Corp. fighting over MGM, power is being consolidated. Comcast, for example, will have the largest cable subscriber base in the country, plus control of a movie studio, a broadcast TV network, and several cable networks. “The combined power of content and distribution,” Waxman writes, “creates a new kind of player.”

Is this the closest that President Obama, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chavez have come to sitting down in the same room? The New Yorker has published 44 portraits of world leaders taken by Platon during the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September. They include leaders great and small, ranging from the president of Kiribati to Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and Asif Zardari of Pakistan. In addition to Ahmadinejad and Chavez, men like Robert Mugabe and Muammar Gaddafi also sat down. Platon descrbies Ahmadinejad as a “childlike figure … He giggles like a little boy.”

Let’s hope he does better with the national economy: The Boston Globe took a look Sunday at the investment strategy of President Obama’s top economic advisor, Larry Summers, when he was president of Harvard. It isn’t pretty: Harvard lost $1.8 billion in basic operating funds when the market crashed in 2008. It was so exposed because of the aggressive strategy pursued by Summers when he presided over the school from 2001 to 2006: He argued to invest 100 percent of Harvard’s cash alongside the endowment and was eventually talked down to 80 percent. The head of Harvard’s endowment, Jack Meyer, “repeatedly warned Summers and other Harvard officials that the school was being too aggressive with billions in cash,” according to the Globe, but he was ignored.

A few expletives and a threat are worth $82,500, the amount Serena Williams is being fined for her verbal tirade against a lineswoman after a foot-fault call during her U.S. Open semifinal loss this year. In addition to the record fine, Williams will undergo a "probationary period" over the next two years and could be suspended from the tournament if she has another "major offense" during that time. A second incident at a major championship during probation would result in a $175,000 fine and a ban on play in the following U.S. Open. The previous highest fine for a Grand Slam faux pas was a roughly $48,000 penalty to Jeff Tarango in the 1990s.

The Tiger hunt is on: According to TMZ, two Florida Highway Patrol troopers visited the hospital where Tiger Woods was taken Friday morning after his car accident. According to people at the hospital, the troopers were looking to find out whether Tiger’s wounds were caused by his car accident or a domestic dispute with his wife Elin. A FHP spokesman has said that the department is not pursuing a search warrant, but TMZ says that it is still seeking one.

The Salahis may not have been invited to the White House, but they have an invitation now to the Capitol: The couple has been asked to testify before the House Committee on Homeland Security on Thursday about their crashing of President Obama’s first state dinner last week. "Thursday’s hearing will focus on the breakdown in security arrangements on the evening of Tuesday, November 24, deficiencies in security planning leading up to the State Dinner, actions taken to correct the vulnerabilities and identify any violations of Secret Service policy or management failures at the agency," says a release from the committee.

On Monday, the Supreme Court threw out a ruling by a lower court ordering the disclosure of photographs of detainee abuse by the United States. The Court cited a recent change in federal law that allows the pictures to be withheld. President Obama originally supported the release of the photos but then changed his mind when he feared the photos would stir anti-American feelings abroad.

Ignore the haters, Jacob Weisberg says in Slate: President Obama’s first year has been “brilliant.” Should he achieve health-care reform before his one-year anniversary on January 20, as it appears he will, then “he will deliver his first State of the Union address having accomplished more than any other postwar American president at a comparable point in his presidency.” Weisberg goes on, “Through the summer, Obama caught flak for letting Congress lead the process, as opposed to setting out his own proposal. Now his political strategy is being vindicated.”

How long until she has a show? Page Six reports that Oprah has taken Dr. Anne Dranistaris under her wing in the same way that she did Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. Dranistaris is a clinical psychotherapist whose therapeutic approach, according to her Web site, “includes looking at thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviors.” For her debut, Dranistaris will write an article in the January issue of O magazine about how women can analyze their strengths and weaknesses to take control of their careers and love lives.

The Murdochs may end up with more than one media empire under their belts. Lachlan Murdoch the eldest son of mogul Rupert Murdoch, is part of a joint offer to buy a group of trade magazines that includes Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter, in what will be his second deal in as many weeks. Illyria, Murdoch's investment company, is bidding with Pluribus Capital Management, a new organization that includes James Finkelstein, who publishes The Hill and Who's Who, Matthew Doull, former publisher of Wired, and George Green, former publisher of Hearst International. The bid for most of Nielsen Business Media could be announced as early as this week. Nielsen is reportedly seeking $70 million for its magazines and trade shows in a disposal that could precede an initial public offering.

“I really hope we can stay away from all this talk of an exit strategy,” Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said on Sunday. He had better not tune into President Obama’s speech on Tuesday night: According to The New York Times, Obama will lay out a timeframe for the United States’ commitment to Afghanistan. “He wants to give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down,” a senior official tells The Times. Withdrawal will not be tied to specific conditions on the ground nor would it be as firm as the current schedule for withdrawal in Iraq. Apparently, the United States will maintain a presence in part to reassure Pakistan that India will not fill the power vacuum created by a withdrawal.

Have Somali pirates landed their best bounty yet? They have hijacked an oil tanker headed to the United States, posing a huge environmental and security threat to the region. The Greek-owned Maran Centaurus has the capacity to hold 300,000 tons of crude oil, though the size of its cargo is unclear. Still, it is likely to be worth millions of dollars. "You're sitting on a huge ship filled with flammable liquid. You don't want somebody with a gun on top of that," said a piracy expert.

Though Roman Polanski will be monitored by an electronic bracelet and confined to his residence when he posts $4.5 million in bail, that residence just happens to be an Alpine chalet. The surroundings will be a dramatic change of scenery from Polanski's current Zurich-area jail cell. Included among the director's newfound liberties will be unlimited—although monitored—phone calls, email, Internet, and the ability to throw lavish parties. "He is completely free to determine his daily schedule," one Swiss justice minister said. After repeated denials, a Swiss court finally ruled last week that the director, held on charges of having sex with a 13-year-old, could be set free on bail. Polanski is waiting to hear whether he will be extradited to Los Angeles for his case.

A community service organization by any other name would still be attacked by the GOP, according to an internal ACORN memo obtained by Politico. According to the memo, picked by Republicans from a dumpster outside a San Diego ACORN branch, ACORN might as well keep its name since it "spent 39 years building [its] reputation and track record"; the scandals are likely to "blow over" in a few years; and "right-wing attackers will say we are ACORN in disguise," negating the advantages of a new name. On the other hand, the group currently finds it "much harder" to work with elected officials, gain funding from foundations, and work with organizations and individuals because of the political stigma attached to ACORN. This year, ACORN weathered several scandals, from voter registration fraud allegations to an undercover investigation that showed employees offering advice on establishing a brothel and evading taxes, charges that resulted in a law cutting off the group's funding.

Perhaps this explains the Salahis unwelcome appearance at President Obama’s first state dinner? Newsweek reports that the woman in charge of supervising the guest list for state dinners quit in June after she was stripped of most of her responsibilities. Cathy Hargraves, the former assistant for arrangements, says that Obama’s social secretary, Desiree Rogers, took away her responsibilities and that, had she been present, she’d have likely been at the entrance supervising the guest list.

If you tell Iran it can’t do something, it only makes Iran want to do it more: On Monday, a top Tehran official said that Iran never would have built 10 new uranium-enrichment facilities, had the United Nations not rebuked it. Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi said that the decision to build the 10 new sites was a response to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s demand on Friday that Iran halt construction of its one existing facility. "We had no intention of building many facilities like the Natanz site, but apparently the West doesn't want to understand Iran's peaceful message," Salehi said.

What, no Sahalis? President Obama has invited a host of big names such as Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Disney chief Bob Iger to his jobs summit this Thursday, the day before the government's November jobs report is released. The summit, aimed at solving the labor crisis that has spiked unemployment and cost the country 7.3 million jobs since the beginning of 2008, will have about 130 participants, including the CEOs of AT&T, Comcast, Boeing, and FedEx, according to a partial guest list. In addition to captains of industry, eggheads such as Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and former Fed vice Chairman Alan Blinter will attend.