Call off the repo men: Bank of America reported today that it has now repaid its TARP loans in full, having cut a check to the government for the full $45 billion owed. The bank, which is the United States' biggest lender, said that it funded the repayment in part by selling almost $20 billion in securities, an action still subject to stockholder approval. Once the loan has been repaid, BofA will no longer be under the close scrutiny of the federal government—in particular, the watchful eye of "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg, whose oversight has prevented the company from offering extravagant bonuses to its executives, a factor, some have said, that contributes to the bank's struggle to find a successor to departing CEO Ken Lewis. It's not all good news, though: The payment, according to the company, will cut $4.1 billion off its fourth-quarter net result.

Despite Harry Reid's moderate-wooing compromise on the public option, John Thune predicts that the Senate Majority Leader won't be able to peel off any Republican votes to beat the filibuster. "This is like Groundhog Day," the South Dakota senator said. "It is déjà vu all over again where we wake up every day and there is a new idea to try and figure out how to get 60 votes." Thune said he thought that the expansion of Medicare coverage might be an attempt to win holdout Sen. Joe Lieberman's support, but that he was skeptical of the compromise's ability to help "with moderates on their side who have expressed concern about government-run health care." Reid seems to believe that the most recent compromise has sealed the 60 votes he needs to avoid being filibustered, and is quickly moving the legislation ahead to a vote.

Fighting climate change is going to be expensive. If the Copenhagen negotiations succeed, the world will have to profoundly shift its energy production, change where and how people live, transform the agriculture and forestry industries, and create complex pollution-credit markets at a combined cost of trillions of dollars—a large number, but a small fraction of the total world economic output—over the next few decades. Poorer nations are demanding that richer ones make deeper emissions cuts and contribute funds to help poor countries cope. The New York Times reports that delegates to the climate-change summit are expected to set policies that will cost more than $10 trillion in additional investment from 2010 to 2030, but that new jobs, improved lives, secure energy supplies and reduced danger of climate catastrophe will offset those costs. The global head of Deutsche Bank Asset Management put it bluntly: "The figures people tend to cite don't take into account conservation and efficiency measures that are easily available. And they don't look at the cost of inaction, which is the extinction of the human race." In an admitted bid to influence negotiations at the summit, the World Meteorological Organization released data showing that this decade is the warmest on record, and this year is likely to be the fifth warmest.

David Letterman and John Stamos aren’t the only ones. The Wall Street Journal reports a boom in blackmail and extortion, which many blame on the economic downturn. Private investigators find themselves overwhelmed with high-end clients terrified about personal secrets being revealed. His clients are primarily men hiding extramarital affairs, often being extorted with digital evidence of their dalliances. In one cut-and-dry case, a 55-year-old Connecticut man said women he met on a Web site catering to wealthy men in want of girlfriends threatened to tell his wife he was a member. During the last recession, federal extortion prosecutions spiked by some 30 percent. Though the statistics aren’t yet out for this recession, the Journal's sources say that a second extortion crime wave is under way.

Mark Sanford lives another day: A seven-member South Carolina House subcommittee voted Wednesday to drop efforts to impeach Gov. Sanford. Five members have announced how they will vote: Four will vote against impeachment; one will vote for it. Public Policy Polling points out that Sanford, with a 36 percent approval rating, is still more popular than several of the country’s other governors, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Paterson, and Ed Rendell.

As everyone knows, the best parties result in subpoenas, and the Obama administration's first State Dinner is no exception. Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the budding reality-TV show stars whose party crash of last month's State Dinner became a national news story, will be subpoenaed by the House Homeland Security Committee, which oversees the Secret Service. Even though they will have invitations to the January 20 hearing, the Salahis won't exactly be the life of the party; their lawyer has said that the couple will invoke their Fifth Amendment rights. Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary, will not be subpoenaed; despite encouragement by the ranking Republican, Peter King (R-NY), the committee voted 17-12 not to subpoena the embattled party planner.

Ladies, start your engines. After months of speculation about a rumored relationship with Twilight costar Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson has finally confessed his relationship status: He's single. In an interview with Italian Vanity Fair, the teen heart throb said, "I am single... almost everything that came out about my private life was false." Why the rampant false rumors? "I think it happens because, really, there is not much to say about what I'm doing. While I am filming, I live practically [like a] recluse in [a] hotel. I come out only to work, and sometimes to go for dinner." The burden of being a megawatt wallflower, he claims, is dealing with idle speculation.

Though she is appealing her conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher, Amanda Knox has said she believes her trial was "correct," expressing faith in the Italian legal system. The trial did not turn out as Knox expected, however: "I thought I would be home for Christmas. But instead I have to wait," she said. Luciano Ghirga, one of Knox's lawyers, also rejected criticism of the Italian legal system. "Amanda's rights were respected during the trial," said Ghirga. "I rule out the fact that the jury could have been influenced by the media in a negative sense."

Sometimes, an international outcry works: Uganda will drop the death penalty and life imprisonment as punishment for homosexuality in an anti-gay bill that will be presented to the country’s parliament in two weeks. However, the anti-gay bill will go forward—now with the support of religious leaders who opposed the most extreme punishments. The Ugandan government supports the bill because it says homosexuality is “repugnant to the Ugandan culture."

Life is not exactly a Cabaret for Broadway star Liza Minnelli, who’s reportedly struck a covert deal ending a $100 million sexual-harassment lawsuit filed by her former trusted chauffeur. In 2004, M’Hammed Soumayah filed the lawsuit against Minnelli, claiming he was sexually and physically assaulted—and even spit on—during her alcohol-induced fits. According to his lawsuit, after Minnelli’s multiple attempts to persuade Soumayah, a married father of two, to sleep with her, he “eventually succumbed” after Minnelli threatened to fire him. The plaintiff also claimed he had “physical evidence” of his sexual relationship with the Oscar-winning actress. Minnelli battled her former employee of 10 years in court and filed a $250,000 countersuit for violating their confidentiality agreement, but she was forced to answer questions about their relationship under oath last month. On November 13, they struck an undisclosed deal and the presiding judge says the case is “settled and discontinued.” Minnelli’s lawyers declined to comment.

Pakistani police arrested five Americans who are believed to have gone missing from the Washington, D.C., area last month. The men, all between the ages of 18 and 20, were picked up Wednesday in the raid of a house in Sarghoda in the province of Punjab. Three of the men are of Pakistani descent; one is of Egyptian descent; and the fifth is of Yemeni descent. One student is believed to have left a video saying they went to Pakistan to defend Islam. A Pakistani newspaper says the home the men were captured in belongs to a member of the terrorist group Jaish-e-Muhammad. The paper names the students as Ahmed Abdullah, Waqar Hassan Khan, Eman Hassan, and Yasir and Rami Zamzam, but it differs on their ethnic backgrounds. 

The government isn’t ready to pull its prop out from under financial markets: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner moved to extend the $700 billion financial bailout on Wednesday until 2010. Geithner said the extension will be limited to the housing market, capital for small banks, and other efforts to boost small-business lending. He pledged to use no more than $550 billion of the package and wants to use the other $150 billion to pay down the federal debt.

The speculation that George Stephanopoulos will replace Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America is true, Politico reports. ABC News will announce Stephanopoulos as the new anchor on Thursday and he could join Robin Roberts behind the anchor desk as soon as Monday, according to Mike Allen. Sawyer has her last day on the show on Friday, and will begin to anchor World News on Dec. 21. In the meantime, Stephanopoulos may be keeping his Sunday show This Week for a transition period, as network brass don’t want to mess with something that is doing well. Eventually, a new This Week host would be named.

They don’t write them much better than this: Rod Jetton, the former Missouri House Speaker who was charged on Monday with choking and beating his girlfriend after she failed to use the “safe word,” fired a state lawmaker from his committee chairmanship in 2007 after that man wanted to end a state ban on gay sex. In an op-ed at the time, Jetton attacked the man for wanting to allow “deviate sexual intercourse.” The safe word that Jetton’s girlfriend allegedly failed to utter was “green balloons.”

Colossal waves pounding on Oahu’s famous North Shore allowed surfers to exclaim “cowabunga” for the first time in five years on Tuesday with rarely seen extreme conditions. The one-day surfing competition, called “The Eddie,” is only held when waves top 20 feet on Waimea Bay. With Tuesday’s 30-foot waves, spectators watched on as the world’s best surfers took to the sea for only the eighth time since the contest’s inception in 1984. Professional surfers like Kelly Slater made up many of the 28 competing in “The Eddie,” which is named for a legendary Hawaiian surfer and lifeguard, Eddie Aikau, who died at age 31 in 1978 on a canoe voyage. His brother and winner of the competition in 1987 vied for the title again at age 60, but Greg Long took home the top honor and $55,000. “I’m humbled to be even in this event,” Long said of competing against those whom he has plastered on his bedroom wall.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced a “broad agreement” on health care on Tuesday night, and while he was short on specifics, other senators went ahead and filled the press in on the details: The public option is, for all intents and purposes, dead. It could be replaced by a “trigger public option,” which will kick in only if private insurers fail to offer an affordable national health-insurance plan similar to that offer to members of Congress. As compensation to liberals for killing the public option, the agreement will allow for a Medicare buy-in, letting people between the ages of 55 and 64 buy into the program. The Huffington Post reports that the Medicare buy-in could be available as soon as next year.

If they can do it over there, why can’t we here? Britain announced on Wednesday a one-time tax that will take 50 percent of all bonuses above $40,800. It will be imposed on the pool of bonuses and paid by the banks, not by the individual recipients of bonuses. It affects all banks, regardless of whether or not they took government assistance. The New York Times calls it “the most direct attack on bank bonuses anywhere in the world.”

Rachel Uchitel has broken her silence … but there’s not much dirt here. “I have very good qualities,” Tiger’s alleged mistress number one tells OK!. “When you’re judged by the nation, it’s really difficult. It’s horrible.” OK! then teases readers with a promise of “the obstacles she’s overcome in her life” and “what she’s looking forward to in her future.” Presumably she won’t be talking about the report in Star Magazine that says Tiger’s wife, Elin Nordegren, confronted Uchitel, calling her on Tiger’s cell phone, yelling “I know everything,” and then hurling the phone at her husband 90 minutes before he crashed his car.

Get the shoulder pads ready: Gisele Bunchden has given birth to a baby boy. She and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady married in February. It’s the first baby for the couple; Brady has a two-year-old son with actress Bridget Moynahan. The name of the child has not yet been announced.

“With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point,” begins Sarah Palin’s latest op-ed in The Washington Post. Skip her piece though, and go to Marc Ambinder’s blog post, which debunks Palin’s argument claim by claim. “[The climate-change scientists] ‘actions’ here consist of insulting climate change skeptics, immature name-calling, and, at worst, devising a strategy to keep the climate change deniers out of debates and peer-reviewed journals,” Ambinder writes. “The ‘concerns’ that Palin speaks of are the result of years of accumulated science denialism that now, conveniently, has been seemingly ‘validated’ by the fog of a grand conspiracy, suddenly revealed.” The Huffington Post, meanwhile, surveys the attacks on The Washington Post op-ed page for running its second piece by Palin in five months.

Just another day in conservative talk radio. Glenn Beck asked his listeners on Tuesday, “Do you believe Tiger Woods may actually be O.J. Simpson?” Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh said the “black frame of mind” is “terrible,” in part thanks to “Tiger Woods' choice of females.”

Turns out that pictures are worth way more than a thousand words. At a Christie's auction in London, a rare chalk drawing of a woman's head by Raphael—a figure that shows up in the background of his seminal 1511 Vatican-library fresco "Parnassus"—sold for $48 million, the most paid for a work of art all year. The Raphael painting, which sold for double its high estimate, eclipsed the auction's expected star, a 1658 portrait of a man in a sash by Rembrandt van Rijn that hadn't been publicly seen for 40 years, which sold for $33.2 million, well over its low estimate of $28 million. The sales signal that art buyers are willing to shell out for old masterpieces even though the market for living artists remains shaky. On Wednesday, rival Sotheby's will auction a portrait by Sir Peter Paul Rubens dating to around 1603, and that is expected to fetch at least $6.5 million.

Elton John first met 14-month-old Ukrainian toddler Lev in September, but was refused permission to adopt the boy due to his age (he is 62) and marriage status (though Britain recognizes his gay union, the Ukraine does not). Partner David Furnish says the "massively gutted" musician has, however, channeled some energy into productive action: The pair are working to ensure that Lev and his brother "have the best health care, education, and family options available to them." Furnish noted that the pair intend to campaign for a change to Ukrainian law.

Are Nicolas Cage’s financial woes contagious? Christina Fulton, the mother of Cage’s 18-year-old child, is suing the actor for $13 million, saying that she’s become entangled in his financial troubles and is herself $1.2 million in debt. Cage owes $6.3 million in back taxes, recently defaulted on a $2 million loan, and has begun selling off his homes and cars. Fulton was living in a Los Angeles home she thought Cage had given her in exchange for raising their child, until recently when Cage served her with a 60-day notice to move out.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said it would take his forces five years to take control of security throughout the country, and that Afghan forces would need heavy U.S. financial and technical help for 15 to 20 years. The statement came during a joint news conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who emphasized that he hoped the Afghan military could be ready sooner, and stressed that the U.S. would begin troop withdrawal from the country in 2011, in accordance with President Obama's recently unveiled troop-surge plan, although the drawdown itself will take several years. For his part, Karzai is set to unveil his cabinet next week and has signaled that he intends to exclude notorious warlords from the list. Meanwhile, in Washington, top U.S. commander Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal told the Senate and House Armed Services Committees that the U.S. needed to signal a long-term commitment in Afghanistan in order to banish the Taliban-led insurgency.

Massachusetts came one step closer to figuring out who will replace Edward Kennedy in the Senate. With 94 percent of precincts reporting, state attorney general Martha Coakley looked sure to win Tuesday's Democratic primary, while state senator Scott Brown won the Republican nomination. Brown will likely face an uphill battle to win the Jan. 19 general election, as only 11 percent of the state's 4.1 million voters are registered Republicans, and a recent poll predicted that Coakley, whose office was among the first nationwide to pursue financial firms for allegedly misusing subprime mortgages, would trounce him. Coakley targeted female voters in the primary and received many contributions from women outside of the state. If elected, she'd be Massachusetts' first female senator, and would bring the number of women sitting in the Senate to a record of 18.

After all the flak he’s taken, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner must be happy after the bailout watchdog said the government’s $700 billion bailout helped avert economic disaster. However, it wasn’t all roses for Geithner, as the watchdog panel also said that the program has failed to meet many of the targets that Congress set. "Congress set goals for (the bailouts) that went well beyond short-term financial stability, and by that measure problems remain," said panel chair and Harvard Law school professor Elizabeth Warren. Among the problem? Limited credit, continued bank failures, weakness at some large banks, unemployment, foreclosures, and the banking system's continued reliance on government support. The panel also called on the Treasury, as it has every month since December, to makes its actions more transparent.

Get ready for some travel delays. An intense winter storm pummeled the Upper Midwest and New England on Wednesday, closing hundreds of schools and canceling flights as it moved eastward. The National Weather Service warned of "extremely dangerous blizzard conditions" and near-whiteout driving conditions in parts of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa, where gusts up to 50 mph could create snow drifts 8 to 15 feet high. On Tuesday, hundreds of flights out of O'Hare International Airport in Chicago were canceled, along with all flights out of Ceder Rapids, Iowa. Northern New York and parts of New England are expecting up to a foot of snow, while areas near the Great Lakes may receive as many as 36 inches by week's end. The storm is the same one that drenched California, dumped snow the mountain West, and whipped up 100-mph winds in New Mexico earlier this week.