Defense Secretary Robert Gates put an end to any speculation on a quick exit or a clean break from Afghanistan, saying that the U.S. presence in the country will likely continue for the next two to four years despite a withdrawal date set for 2011. Gates and Hillary Clinton made the rounds of Sunday morning talk shows to explain President Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan and the eventual handover to local security forces. "It's an effort to try and let the Afghans know that while we intend to have a relationship and support them for a long time, the nature of that relationship is going to begin to change in July of 2011," said Gates. Clinton spoke less optimistically about progress between the U.S. and the Taliban: “They have to renounce al Qaeda, renounce violence. They have to be willing to abide by the constitution of Afghanistan and live peacefully… I’m highly skeptical that any of them would.”

On the eve of the international climate summit in Copenhagen, world leaders are hopeful for a credible climate deal. A main focus has been on the divide between developed and developing nations. Entering into the summit, developed countries will likely agree to cut their emissions by 2020 and finance developing countries so that those nations can reach their goals. Those goals include curbing the growth of emissions and agreeing to short-term financing. The U.S., India, and China, the world's largest polluters, have pledged to cut down on emissions, behind countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Japan, and the European Union. A climate economist said the commitments come "very close" to what is needed to avoid catastrophic climate change. Obama's last-minute decision to attend the final stages of the summit makes a positive outcome more likely, as all major world leaders will be present.

Over 20 mothers taking part in an anti-government rally were arrested Saturday, in anticipation of student protests planned for Monday. The regular rally, which has taken place every Saturday since the death of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, has been targeted by Iranian police before, but this was the first time mothers were arrested. Iran clamped down on security and broke up demonstrations in preparation for the National Student Day protests. Officials have also blocked Internet access and warned foreign journalists to refrain from covering the event. Students are planning to hold demonstrations within university walls, where security forces are not allowed to enter. Mir Hossein Mousavi, who lost to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in last summer’s disputed election, threw his support behind the student protests.

White House security breaches like the Salahis’ infamous crashing of the State Dinner aren't new. In fact, the Secret Service has a lengthy history of them dating back to the Carter administration. The Washington Post has obtained a summary of a secret 2003 report, meant to be used as a training guide for the Secret Service, which catalogs these transgressions. The most notorious gatecrasher is Richard C. Weaver, who got past security to shake George W. Bush's hand at his inauguration, slipped into a prayer breakfast attended by then-president George H.W. Bush, and also somehow got access to Clinton's 1997 inaugural luncheon. In a 1982 incident, known as The Family Outing, an uninvited family of four drove up to the White House in a minivan and were let onto the grounds after a simple honk of the horn.

Though an Italian jury has handed down Amanda Knox's conviction, the case that has captured international attention is far from over, and is headed next for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington state appealed to Clinton, who has agreed to a meeting but has not commented on the case. Cantwell said there were "serious questions about the Italian justice system" and expressed concerns about anti-American sentiment at the trial. Knox, a 22-year-old from Washington, was sentenced to 26 years in Italian prison for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher. Knox's Italian lawyer reacted to the news by saying, "That's all we need, Hillary Clinton involved. I have the same political sympathies as Hillary but this sort of thing does not help us in any way."

President Barack Obama made a rare weekend appearance in Congress Sunday, at the special request of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Obama called the health-care bill the "most significant social legislation in decades" and told lawmakers—"don't lose it." He urged liberal and moderate Democrats to work toward a compromise and emphasized that they should do so quickly. Republicans remain staunchly opposed to the bill, saying the government can’t afford it. Liberal Democrats are still holding out for the public option, which Obama did not mention in his speech, despite his earlier vocal support for it.

It may be time to add more names to the ever-growing list of women Tiger Woods has had affairs with outside of his marriage to Elin Nordegren. Sources are saying that over the past few years, Woods kept himself busy with Cori Rist, another blonde that he met at upscale New York City bars, Mindy Lawton, a 33-year-old Florida waitress who spoke with London’s News of the World as well as Jamie Jungers, a Las Vegas model. “I love Tiger, but he got careless,” said a source. “He’s been doing this for years. He wanted to run with the big dogs.” Rist has issued a resounding “no comment” in response to the story, but Lawton was more than happy to detail her relationship with Woods: “Sometimes, I looked like a rag doll after we’d made love…. He really did like it rough,” she said. Lawton says they met in 2006 and on a scale of 10, she would give him a 12 in the bedroom, but while she wanted to be “the next Mrs. Woods,” all he cared about was a physical relationship.

Iraqi lawmakers made a last-minute save Sunday night to repair the chance for the country's first national elections since 2005. Sectarian divides between Iraq's Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish groups have threatened the multiple iterations of the agreement, which broke down various times over the weekend and threaten the U.S.’s ability to withdraw troops. A November 8 deal on the election law has already fallen through, and the current treaty is tentative as well. Iraq's original election law is said to under-represent Sunnis who have fled the country, and Iraqi lawmakers were angling for the most number of seats in Parliament. American and U.N. officials have stepped in to help broker a compromise, fearing that a delay would interfere with U.S. plans to withdraw troops from the country by August 2010.

White House social secretary Desiree Rogers had been ruffling feathers among the Washington elite long before reality-TV show wannabes Tariq and Michaele Salahi crashed a State Dinner and made Rogers national news. The social secretary’s role has traditionally been a nearly invisible one, but when Rogers breezed into town from Chicago, she made it clear she’d be shaking things up. When she sat down for lunch with social secretaries of administrations past, she drew audible gasps when she mentioned that the White House might not display the traditional manger among its Christmas decorations. The designer gown she wore to the State Dinner was atypically not conservative. And she dared to serve Indian food to the Indian prime minister, despite the potential to fall short. But now that the gatecrashers fiasco has focused so much scrutiny on Rogers, the White House—despite strongly praising her performance—has pushed her out of the spotlight. She has granted no interviews and will not testify before Congress. Rogers, who shunned invisibility, now seems desperate for a little bit of it.

Well, at least they haven't become self-aware: This year's holiday toy sensation, the Zhu Zhu robotic hampster, may contain toxic levels of tin and antimony. Consumer health Web site GoodGuide released a report Friday that found that the stuffed toy hamster contains 93 parts per million of antimony, above the 60 ppm limit enacted by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. Though there are no toy industry standards for tin, GoodGuide also deemed that the toy had potentially unsafe levels of the metal. Cepia LLC, the company that manufactures the line of Zhu Zhu pets, said it is confident that its products are completely safe and compliant with consumer health safety standards.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Bloomberg News that all banks would have failed without a government bailout. "None of them would have survived," he said, countering claims made by Goldman Sachs executives that they could have gotten through the financial crisis without assistance. Geithner also went after Wall Street's high bonuses in an interview with Al Hunt. “It is very important that we change the way these executives are paid, the form of compensation, this year,” Geithner said.

Following last month's politically motivated massacre of 57 civilians, the Philippine government declared martial law Friday. The enactment allows authorities to make arrests without warrants, and those arrested will be charged with rebellion. The Ampatuan family, a politically powerful family in the country's southern region of Maguindanao, has been implicated in orchestrating and directing the massacre. Victims of the massacre had connections to Ismael "Toto" Mangudadatu, who was set to challenge Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. for governor in the May elections. Ampatuan Jr., who has been arrested along with at least five other members of his family, is a known warlord with connections to the Philippine president.

Celebrate with a speculum: As part of a new public-health campaign, CBS is airing ads urging men to purchase Pap smears for the women in their lives for the holidays. “Want to do something special for your woman this Hanukkah? Schedule her Pap smear. Just a schmear could save her life.” The spots have raised more than a few eyebrows but the network is prepared to take the heat. "If your main objective is to offend no one, than [sic] you're on a fast track to being irrelevant,” said Matthew Margo, who produced and wrote the spots. “We knew in order to communicate more effectively, there was a possibility that some viewers—and it's a real minority—might be offended." One blogger summed up the unconventional gift idea, writing “if you open one of these as a gift on Christmas morning, it’s going to result in a serious case of gift face.”

A group of European scientists announced this week that they’d successfully created a robotic arm that a patient can move and feel with his mind. Pierpaolo Petruzziello, a 26-year-old Italian living in Brazil, had electrodes temporarily implanted into his upper arm (he lost his forearm in a car accident) for a month and learned to make the unattached prosthesis wiggle its fingers, make a fist, and do other movements. Mastering use of the hand took only days, scientists said, and by the end of the experiment, the hand obeyed 95 percent of the time. "It felt almost the same as a real hand," Petruzziello said. Scientists say it will take a few years before the electrodes can be implanted for a longer period of time, but this was an important step in the development of thought-controlled prostheses.

In anticipation of the death of MP3s, Apple Inc. has purchased music retailer LaLa.com, an online song-streaming application. Songs played via LaLa.com are of a lower quality than those from Apple's iTunes, but can be purchased at a cheaper price point, typically 69 cents to iTunes' $1.29. LaLa.com has developed an application in which users can also buy the rights to stream songs for an unlimited time on their iPhones for 10 cents each. The application is not yet available to the public. The Silicon Valley-based company launched in 2006 as a CD-trading site, but underwent a makeover in 2008 as a music retailer.

Sources tell People magazine that a bad breakup may have caused Alexa Ray Joel's breakdown, which led to her hospitalization Saturday. The singer-songwriter reportedly took Traumeel, a homeopathic medication, and then experienced difficulty breathing. Sources say she was "distraught over an argument with her boyfriend." Joel has been public about her struggles with dating and relationships, venting on her MySpace page and telling People last year that she can "get very dark." Joel has been released from the hospital and is with her father, Billy Joel. Her mother is model Christie Brinkley.

How did the president come to one of the most important decisions of his time in office? “I don’t want to be going to Walter Reed for another eight years,” President Obama told his advisers when explaining his thinking about the toll that an escalated war in Afghanistan might bring. In a detailed retelling of the day-to-day thinking behind the decision to add 30,000 troops to a war half a world away, Peter Baker of The New York Times writes that Obama was troubled by human and financial costs. Leaks caused a "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" reaction from the Pentagon. The president warned: “What I’m not going to tolerate is you talking to the press outside of this room." Obama took to reading a book on Vietnam called Lessons in Disaster. Before every meeting, Vice President Biden sent the president a secret memo. Finally by November 29, Obama announced to his team that he had made up his mind, after hours of meetings and private thought. How did he feel? Said one adviser, "He was totally at peace."

Sarah Palin has pulled another trick out of her sleeve, most recently proving her standup comedy chops. The world’s most famous losing candidate spoke as a GOP representative at the Gridiron Dinner, an annual event for Washington elite where speakers are expected to break out their best zingers. Palin said she was honored to be speaking in front of the high-ranking group of intellectuals, “Or as I like to call it, a death panel.” She also had some barbs for the man who beat her out for the vice presidency: “I could be the one overseeing the signing of bailout checks and Vice President Biden could be on the road selling his book, 'Going Rogaine.'” The dinner is typically off-the-record, but as with any Palin event the media took notice and an exception was made to allow coverage. “The view is so much better from inside the bus than under it,” said Palin of her former candidacy.

In the midst of the family-friendly holiday season, Sandra Bullock’s heartwarming new film The Blind Side came in at No. 1 at the box office this weekend with $20.4 million. George Clooney’s corporate drama Up in the Air capitalized on weeks of buzz and was the other big winner, earning $1.2 million in just 15 theaters. Twilight continues to decline in the wake of its huge opening weekend, bringing in $15.7 million in its third weekend, while four new releases failed to live up to expectations— Brothers, Armored, Everybody’s Fine, and Transylmania all opened to less than $10 million each.

What happens in the jungle doesn’t stay in the jungle: Two stars of the U.K. version of I’m a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here! are being charged with animal cruelty for killing and eating rats during their time on the show. Chef Gino D’Acampo and actor Stuart Manning were filmed dishing up the rodents for the reality show, and though producers usually have animal-welfare officers on set, they were not present at the time. Animal-rights activists have been up in arms over the stunt, and the two men could face a maximum of three years in prison. “The killing of a rat for a performance is not acceptable. The concern is this was done purely for the cameras,” said a spokesperson from the New South Wales RSPCA. The television network, D’Acampo, and Stuart have yet to comment on the incident.

The Queen is putting out the word that snatched shots of Britain's royal family will no longer be acceptable and is seeking advice from a leading privacy attorney to explore options about preventing paparazzi from sneaking compromising shots. In recent years, the Queen was caught by a lensman wringing the neck of a dead bird and Prince Edward was photographed appearing to lash a dog with his walking stick. "They feel that being photographed going about their everyday lives is no longer acceptable," a palace spokesman said.

Threats against Barack Obama's life have leveled off after a spike just before his inauguration and another in the first months of his presidency, The New York Times reports in a chilling article that recounts several threat scenarios. In one of many troubling cases, a young Marine, Kody Brittingham, pleaded guilty in August to threatening to kill the president in a chilling plan that was meticulously laid out with maps and photographs. Brittingham wrote that he'd taken an oath to "protect against all enemies, both foreign and domestic," and signed a "letter of intent" in which he identified a "domestic enemy" in President Obama. Now that the threats have slowed, Obama gets about as many as his two predecessors. But there's still enough reason for concern for officials, particularly those concerning the president's race. Homeland Security has expanded its Internet Threat Desk, which investigates online threats, and each month Obama's chief of staff reviews the latest threats with agency head Janet Napolitano.

Maybe they thought they were voting for Bloomberg? Charles Montgomery Burns, the evil billionaire tycoon known as Mr. Burns on The Simpsons, received more write-in votes than any other for New York City mayor. Burns received 27 of the 299 write-in votes casts. He—along with fellow write-in candidates Mickey Mouse, Sleeping Beauty, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Rudy Giuliani—ultimately lost to incumbent mayor and real-life billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

An openly gay bishop was elected Saturday by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, the first since the national church lifted a ban on gays and lesbians from its highest ordained ministry after the 2003 ordination of the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Meeting for their annual convention, clergy and lay leaders selected the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, who has been in a committed relationship with a woman since 1988. Robinson's election six years ago threw the church into turmoil, as members of the Anglican Communion around the world reacted strongly against the ordination of a gay person. The Episcopal Church sought to limit the rise of gay and lesbian priests for a time, in order to prevent a civil war within the church, but the move did not stem the growing disenchantment of conservatives. Glasspool, along with the Rev. Canon Diane Jardine Bruce, who was selected Friday, also became one of the first two women to be elected of bishops of the diocese in its 114-year history.

In a startling admission, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. has not had any intelligence on Osama bin Laden's whereabouts in "years" on ABC's This Week. Gates could not confirm reports that a detainee in Pakistan claimed he had seen the al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan earlier this year.

In the wake of 22-year-old Amanda Knox’s conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher, the mood surrounding the trial is a somber one. Kercher’s brother recently described the conviction as “not a time for celebration… not a moment of triumph,” and jurors on the case are now talking to the press about the difficulty of their decision. “No one slept the night before the verdict was handed down, and I think we were all—judges included—in tears before the verdict was announced,” said one juror, adding that everyone involved was “emotionally drained” by the process. “Knowing what happened to Meredith, combined with having Knox and Sollecito sit in front of us every day made this psychologically tough,” said another juror. “I don’t see them as evil people, not like some of the Mafia killers on trial for massacring people. What mattered was the evidence, which you can’t ignore.”

Welcome to the neighborhood? Terrorism suspects now being kept at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will most likely be relocated to a state prison in Thomson, Illinois. The move would come over the vocal objections of congressional Republicans who do not want to see the prisoners land on American soil. Prison officials briefed members of the Illinois congressional delegation last week about the relocation. The rural Illinois town expects 3,000 jobs from the deal and is said to favor the move. When might the prisoners arrive in Thomson? "Soon," an administration official told the Illinois delegation. He said it with a smile, according to The Washington Post.