The never-ending story of Senate Democrats' health-care wrangling took another step to the right on Monday, when Sen. Max Baucus came out of a 90-minute closed-door meeting and told reporters that scrapping the controversial Medicare buy-in proposal is looking likely. The provision would allow people between the ages of 55 and 64 to purchase Medicare coverage; Majority Leader Harry Reid suggested the idea as a compromise to the public option. Though many support the plan, the lone Democratic caucus sticker—Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent—remains stalwart, even as critics point to his support, during his 2000 VP run alongside Al Gore, of a similar plan. "Put me down tonight as encouraged about the direction these talks are going," Lieberman said after the meeting.

Maybe next time they can carpool? The CEOs of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and the chairman of Citigroup missed their meeting with President Obama on Monday after their commercial flight was held on the tarmac due to fog. The meeting, in which Obama is expected to pressure banks to loosen up their lending, had already lost some of its luster when Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit pulled out and announced he would be sending the chairman in his stead. All three men were able to participate, however, by conference call. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon flew by private jet and was expected to be there on time.

Tiger Woods is in the dog house for cheating—is A-Rod the next sports star to lose love over his free-loving ways? Reports that Yankee star Alex Rodriguez is splitting with girlfriend Kate Hudson are all over the Internet, and witnesses say Rodriguez was seen getting a little too friendly with a female friend at an Armani Exchange party in Miami. Rumors about A-Rod’s relations with his Miami friend range from he "flirted with a blonde" to he was "just being friendly," sources tell People magazine. Neither of the stars’ reps have commented.

Following the trend of Citigroup and Bank of America, Wells Fargo received the Treasury Department's authorization to leave TARP after agreeing to repay the entire $25 billion the bank was given in bailout funds last year. The bank’s president and chief executive, John Stumpf, said TARP "stabilized our country’s financial system when confidence in financial markets around the world was being tested unlike any other period in our history," but that the bank is now ready "to fully repay TARP in a way that serves the interests of the U.S. taxpayer, as well as our customers, team members, and investors.” A portion of the money will come from $10.4 billion in stock sales, and they will aim to raise $1.35 billion through the issuance of common stock to Wells Fargo benefit plans. Additionally, the bank plans to increase equity by $1.5 billion through asset sales, if approved by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.

President Obama is, apparently, hosting an intervention: Politico is reporting that the White House is encouraging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to cut a deal with Joe Lieberman after the Connecticut independent said he would filibuster any legislation that included a Medicare buy-in for people over the age of 55. However, Reid is apparently so frustrated with Lieberman that he is not ready to kill the measure and wants first to receive a cost analysis of the buy-in, which is expected early this week. "There is a weariness and a lot of frustration that one person is holding up the will of 59 others," an official close to the negotiations said. “There is still too much anger and confusion at one particular senator’s reversal.”

Computer technicians found 22 million emails from the Bush White House showing that "the Bush administration lied when they said no emails were missing," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. All recovered emails will go through the National Archives' process for releasing presidential records, meaning these documents will not be available until 2014 at the earliest, says the Associated Press. CREW and the National Security Archive filed a lawsuit in 2007 over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record-keeping system, even though documents show the Bush administration was aware of the problem, and even called Microsoft to help find electronic messages in October 2003. "We may never discover the full story of what happened here," said Sloan. "It seems like they just didn't want the emails preserved."

The attack on Silvio Berlusconi may have been more serious than it originally appeared: The Italian prime minister will need three weeks to recover and will have to miss the climate-change conference at Copenhagen next week. The 73-year-old lost about a pint of blood and is having difficult feeding himself after an assailant hit him in the face with a statuette of a cathedral. His attacker, Massimo Tartaglia, has a history of mental illness and is on suicide watch in prison. “Berlusconi is beginning to feel the effects of the blow, but the premier is a lion," his spokesman said.

Citigroup, the last large bank left with the Treasury designation of "exceptional assistance," has reached an agreement with the Treasury Department and regulators on how it will repay $20 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. The bank will sell $20.5 billion of capital and debt and $17 billion of common stock, while the U.S. Treasury will concurrently sell as much as $5 billion of the common stock it owns. According to Citigroup, the company will also substitute "substantial common stock" for cash compensation. The returned funds will contribute to the $136 billion already returned by bailed-out banks, including $45 billion from Bank of America Corp., which exited from TARP last week. This big-ticket payback comes just in time for President Obama's meeting with chiefs of the nation's biggest banks on Monday, where he will encourage the banks to help speed up economic recovery by providing more loans to homeowners and small banks. “We have to get them off the sidelines and get them to play a more active role in our economic recovery,” said the White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Just days before he hands over his anchor chair to Diane Sawyer, Charlie Gibson on Wednesday will interview Barack Obama at the White House. The interview will cover the wars, the economy, and the president's reflections on his first year in office, and Gibson will anchor the broadcast from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He will say goodbye to World News on Friday.

More news out of Iran: the country is supposedly testing a neutron initiator, a key nuclear bomb component that triggers a blast. According to confidential documents obtained by The Times of London, Iran had a four-year plan to test the device, and worked on it as recently as early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its nuclear program. The document mentions uranium deuteride, a neutron source that independent experts say has no possible civilian or military use other than a nuclear weapon. Pakistan, where Iran obtained its bomb blueprints, also uses uranium deuteride in its bombs. A senior source at the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that the documents have been passed along to the U.N., which will discuss sanctions against Iran in the wake of its September admission that it had a secret uranium enrichment facility in Qom.

Courtney Love’s train-wreck lifestyle backfired Friday when she lost guardianship of her 17-year-old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. Love’s only child, whose father was late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, was taken away from her legally and the court appointed guardianship to Cobain’s mother, Wendy O’Connor, and sister, Kimberly Dawn Cobain. The guardianship, typically established when a parent is incapable of appropriately caring for his or her child, is in regard to Frances Bean both personally and financially. Her two new guardians, however, do not have control over the trust established after Cobain’s death in 1994.

New Orleans police shot 10 civilians in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, killing four of them, but police officials conducted only cursory investigations of the incidents, reveals a joint reporting effort by The New Orleans Times-Picayune, ProPublica, and PBS's Frontline. Officers were exonerated despite having failed (with their fellow officers) to gather evidence after the shootings, such as bullet casings and weapons, and the names and phone numbers of witnesses weren't taken, nor were statements. In one incident, a detective investigating a fatal shooting didn't bother to read the coroner's report—which revealed the victim had been shot in the back, contradicting the officer's testimony. Weeks after the shootings, investigators often only talked to police involved in the shootings, and some interviews lasted as little as seven minutes. A federal grand jury is looking into the death of a man who died in police custody in 2005: His burnt body was found in a car near a police station. The New Orleans Police Department didn't launch an investigation of the death until it was reported in the press in late 2008.

Someone call Bill Clinton: Iran has announced that it will try three American hikers it has charged with espionage after they strayed into the country in July. "They have entered Iran with suspicious aims. The judiciary will try them," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said of Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal. Under Islamic sharia law, espionage can be punishable by death.

After a boycott led by African nations early on Monday, the Copenhagen climate-change talks have resumed. The point of contention was over whether or not to keep the Kyoto protocol as part of a new deal or replace it with a new treaty. The developing countries, including China, India, and Brazil, want to keep Kyoto because it requires poor nations to cut fewer emissions than developed ones; developed countries want to bind emerging economies to targets. “We can never accept the killing of the Kyoto protocol,” said the chief delegate for Mali.

As awards season gears up, American war thriller The Hurt Locker is creeping to the top of the shortlist, winning the best film award from the New York Film Critics Circle on Monday. The film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, also took home the best director prize. Critical darlings George Clooney ( Up in the Air and Fantastic Mr. Fox) and Meryl Streep ( Julie & Julia) earned best actor and actress awards. Supporting honors went to Mo’nique, for her frighteningly abusive role in Precious, and Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds for playing the übersmug Nazi official. The NYFCC awards come just one day before the 67th annual Golden Globe Awards announces its nominees.

It’s a far cry from The Legend of Zorro: Catherine Zeta-Jones has made a strong Broadway debut in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music—the first since the original production in 1973. The Hollywood Reporter calls her performance as glamorous actress Desiree Armfeldt "captivating," adding that "she has terrific stage presence, unlike so many movie stars who tread the boards, and she sings and moves beautifully." Veteran stage star Angela Lansbury is apparently a hoot as Madame Armfeldt, but otherwise the production is patchy; the eight-piece orchestra doesn't do justice to Sondheim's Tony-winning score, and the drab sets and costumes add "an unnecessary level of literal darkness to the proceedings."

Last week, Jon Stewart blasted Beck for extolling gold on his television program while being identified as a "paid spokesman" for gold-coin seller Goldline International. Was a conflict of interest at play? According to Fox News senior vice president of development Joel Cheatwood, such a paid gig would be "problematic without question." Beck's representatives told the network that the talk-show host is not a paid spokesman. For its part, Goldline is apparently a longtime advertiser on Beck's syndicated radio show and has continued to advertise on his television program. As for the "paid spokesman" designation on Goldline's website, the president of the coin-selling company said they used the term "because we felt it was important to tell people that there is a payment going to somebody," but that Goldline did not pay Beck on an individual basis to promote the company. Beck's designation on the Goldline website has since changed to "radio sponsor."

In a surprise bailout, Abu Dhabi gave $10 billion to its debt-ridden neighbor Dubai to keep its flagship company, Dubai World, afloat through the end of April. As a condition of the loan, Dubai World, which rocked global markets when it asked creditors to freeze $26 billion in debt linked to two property firms on November 25, will need to persuade creditors to agree to a standstill on restructuring. About $4.1 billion of the funds will be used to repay the company's property developer, whose bond comes due on Monday, with the rest going to sustain the company, earning it some breathing room. The conditions surrounding the bailout are unclear, although on Monday there had been speculation that Dubai would have to hand over prized assets such as Emirates airlines to its neighbor. Dubai has said it intends to set up a new bankruptcy law, effective immediately, similar to the U.S. and British laws, which protect failing companies from creditors.

Perhaps he’ll actually play the king of the world this time? Leonardo DiCaprio is set to star in Mel Gibson’s next film, an untitled project about the Vikings. DiCaprio, Variety reports, has “long been fascinated by Viking culture,” while the subject figures to settle nicely into Gibson’s oeuvre of incredibly violent historical films. William Monahan, who wrote The Departed, will be penning the new film.

The world won't be seeing Tiger Woods' putter anytime soon. Playgirl has declined nude cell-phone photos that are allegedly of Woods. As Playgirl director of marketing Daniel Nardicio put it, the photos were "impossible to 100 percent verify, hence the unwillingness to go there." Nardicio added that Playgirl generally prefers willing subjects, such as Levi Johnston.

Apparently, Chris Brown’s latest album features tiny violins: The singer recently took to Twitter to complain about his new album’s lackluster sales. "Major stores blackballing my CD. Not stockin the shelves and lying to customers. What the [bleep] do i gotta do," Brown tweeted, adding, "The industry can kiss my [bleep]." Brown’s album, Graffiti, is expected to be third on this week’s Billboard chart behind Susan Boyle’s I Dreamed a Dream and the second Glee soundtrack.

A man threw a statuette of the Duomo at Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the end of a rally Sunday, leaving Berlusconi with a “small fracture” of the nose, two broken teeth, a bloodied lip, and bruises. Following the incident, the scandal-plagued Berlusconi was swiftly ushered into a car, but he quickly got out to show the crowd that he wasn’t badly injured. Berlusconi was “very shaken and demoralized,” a spokesperson said. “He didn’t understand very well what happened to him.” The attacker, Massimo Tartaglia, was immediately taken into police custody, but not before getting off a few autographs.

Maybe he should bring Bo? In an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday night, President Obama attacked “fat cat bankers,” saying "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.” He went on to attack the banks for lobbying against financial-regulatory reform and said that he and Larry Summers would have a “serious talk” with the banks on Monday. But Politico reports that Obama will take a “measured tone with the bankers, telling them he wants to have a candid and constructive conversation and doesn’t want to vilify anyone.” Obama will pressure the banks to increase lending, and the banks, Politico says, plan to tell Obama that they’re willing to “step up.”

Joe Lieberman is up to his old tricks again. The Connecticut senator threatened Sunday to oppose the health-care bill if it allows uninsured people as young as 55 to purchase Medicare. Democratic aides also said that Lieberman told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he would join a Republican-led filibuster against the bill. Lieberman could provide the 60th crucial vote needed to end debate on the measure, and Reid has been counting on his support. Appearing on CBS, Lieberman said, “Though I don’t know exactly what’s in it, from what I hear, I certainly would have a hard time voting for it because it has some of the same infirmities that the public option did.” Lieberman says he opposes the added costs to taxpayers and increase to the deficit, though the CBO is expected to announce that the Medicare buy-in would be deficit neutral.

Two years after Rupert Murdoch bought The Wall Street Journal, has the media mogul tainted the newspaper with his outspoken conservative politics, as many feared he would? Several current and former employees of the Journal’s Washington bureau tell The New York Times’ David Carr that the Journal’s top editor, Robert Thomson, and its deputy managing editor, Gerard Baker, have taken a more conservative tone, editing headlines and articles to take on the Obama administration. Reporters in Washington complain that, under Baker, the health-care debate has been framed in terms of costs instead of benefits—the phrase “health care reform” is “generally forbidden,” writes Carr—and there’s been an open ear for climate-change skeptics.

Need evidence that Joe Lieberman is trying to kill health-care reform? Just three months ago, Lieberman wrote in support of a Medicare buy-in for people over the age of 55—the same provision that he now says has led him to join a Republican filibuster of the health-care bill. In a September interview with the Connecticut Post, Lieberman suggested a Medicare buy-in as an alternative to the public option. The Post summarized, “By allowing citizens who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid to buy in for a rate below the private market, the government can extend coverage to more of those who are currently uninsured," he said.