Speaking for the second day from his Hawaiian holiday, President Obama said the near-bombing of a plane on Christmas represents "a systemic failure, and I consider that totally unacceptable," and emphasized the importance of learning from the fiasco. The president said the reviews he ordered "began on Sunday and are now under way," emphasizing the urgency of examining Homeland Security flaws—though he did vocalize his continued support of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who has come under fire for her response to the attack. Obama chastised intelligence agencies for failing to share information; if compiled, a fuller "picture of the subject would have emerged" that perhaps would have helped prevent the fiasco. He ended by thanking security workers for their "extraordinary" efforts and promising to "insist on accountability on every level."

The CIA was keeping tabs on a man they called “The Nigerian” who was meeting with “terrorist elements” in August, months before his father contacted the U.S. embassy, concerned his son was getting mixed up with Islamic radicals, CBS News reports. “The Nigerian” was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man who attempted to blow up Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, but the connection was not made among U.S. intelligence authorities until Abdulmutallab’s post-flight arrest at Detroit's airport. The CIA did not dispute the CBS News report. President Obama criticized on Tuesday the "systemic failure" of the nation's security apparatus. 

North Korea announced Tuesday that it is holding an unnamed American citizen, thought to be 28-year-old Arizona missionary Robert Park, who had illegally entered on Christmas Eve. Park is said to have crossed the frozen Tumen River into the country from China in an effort to raise awareness of North Korea's human rights violations. Park's uncle, Machul Cho, and his pastor, John Benson, both said the acknowledgement was good news. "To hear it confirmed is great," said Benson. "He did this to bring awareness to the situation in North Korea... Drastic situations call for drastic measures." South Korean experts have predicted that the North will likely deport Park, as imprisoning him would bring attention to his cause.

Would-be Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was working towards his master’s degree in Dubai when he told his parents he wanted to study Arabic in Yemen for a few weeks. Some weeks passed, and he wrote home to say he wanted to stay there and study sharia (Islamic law) for seven years. His father told him no, and that he would not pay for schooling in Yemen, but the son responded that all his expenses would be taken care of. Abdulmutallab maintained contact with his family until he realized they strongly opposed his staying there, at which point he severed ties via text message. That’s when his family contacted security agencies. Abdulmutallab posted on Facebook and Islamic chatrooms as Farouk1986 and showed an internal struggle between fundamentalism and liberalism. He talked of wanting to study Arabic and to apply to Stanford, and that he felt depressed and lonely. His $2,381 ticket to Detroit from Lagos via Amsterdam was purchased with cash in Accra, Ghana on December 16.

Tongues have been wagging for a while that Tiger Woods would be entering into some sort of rehab, and X17 Online is now reporting that the golfer has checked into a facility in Arizona. It's unclear what Woods is being treated for, though the source speculates that it's likely sex addiction. The source also says that rehab was Woods' handlers' idea, because "they feel that if he blames his cheating on addiction, the public will forgive him." Earlier reports from various media have also alleged that the scandal-ridden athlete was seeking professional help for both his "sexual compulsion" and his use of Vicodin and Ambien.

Avid Levi Johnston fans hoping for more news coverage of the hockey-player-turned-semi-nude-model will likely get their wish after an Alaska judge's ruling to unseal the records from the custody case he's currently waging against his ex-girlfriend, Bristol Palin. Palin, the daughter of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, had asked to close the proceedings and use pseudonyms after filing for sole custody on Nov. 4 (Judge Kari C. Kristiansen had allowed for a temporary limitation of access to the files.) "I do not feel protected against Sarah Palin in a closed proceeding," said Johnston in an affidavit. Bristol's petition, now accessible in the unsealed records, mentions Johnston's "risque" photo shoot and accuses him of substance abuse problems.

At long last, the mystery as to why Vincent van Gogh severed his own ear may have been solved. According to a new theory by van Gogh scholar Martin Bailey, the distraught artist decided to spite his face after learning that his brother Theo was engaged. Bailey based his analysis on the presence of a letter in a painting van Gogh completed soon after the self-inflicted injury. Van Gogh depended on his younger sibling financially and emotionally and the news was more than the mentally unstable van Gogh could bear. The letter in question was sent from Theo in Paris in 1888, alerting his brother of his impending marriage. Earlier claims regarding van Gogh’s drastic Christmas 1888 mutilation blamed mental illness, lead paint fumes, and a failing friendship with Paul Gauguin. Though his psychological state was surely an issue, considering the artist shot himself two years later, Bailey’s in-depth look at van Gogh’s Still Life: Drawing Board With Onions shows it was more despair than insanity that drove him to destruction.

After Umar Abdelmutallab nearly managed to set off a bomb on a Christmas Day passenger flight, Gizmodo’s Joel Johnson makes the case to “stop pretending the TSA is making us safer,” by eliminating the federal Transit Security Authority entirely. In the piece, he lambastes TSA airline-security measures—such as banning passengers from having anything in their laps for the last hour of a flight—as inefficient, a waste of taxpayer money, and demoralizing for passengers, calling them a “failure” and a “farce.” Johnson points to such measures as evidence that the TSA “can’t prevent terrorists from getting explosives on airplanes,” and quotes security expert Bruce Schneier as saying, “Only two things have made flying safer [since the 9/11 attacks]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.” Given what Johnson views as the “wildly irrational response” of the TSA to the recent terror attempt, he urges Barack Obama to depart from the agency’s current methods and to divert funding to other programs such as intelligence.

Gone are the days of conspiracy theorists hiding in bunkers and religious zealots storing canned goods. Newsweek's Jessica Bennett characterizes America's new survivalists—who call themselves "preppers"—as "homemaking skills [in] overdrive." Among urban and suburban families, stark memories of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and post-9/11 New York City are argument enough to stock up on the goods they need to survive—and the modern luxuries they say they can't do without, like organic foods. Y2K was the first disaster to draw survivalism to the mainstream. "Between the media and the Internet, many people have built up a sense that there's this calamity out there that needs to be avoided," said one cognitive psychologist. "I consider it more of a reaction than a movement," said the 32-year-old founder of the American Preppers Network. His Web site sees some 5,000 viewers per day.

One American soldier is dead and two Italian service members are wounded after an Afghan soldier fired on fellow servicemen at a shared Afghan and foreign base. Like Malik Hasan at Fort Hood, the soldier is believed to be mentally unstable. The shooter hails from northern Afghanistan, which typically has a smaller Taliban presence than the rest of the country but has seen a recent increase, and the Taliban claimed responsibility after a similar incident at a British base last month. NATO and U.S. spokespeople have yet to comment further than to announce the casualty.

Republicans have wasted no time in attacking President Obama and Democrats over the intelligence and screening failures that led to the failed Christmas Day bombing on a Detroit-bound flight. “In the past six weeks, you’ve had the Fort Hood attack, the D.C. Five and now the attempted attack on the plane in Detroit … and they all underscored the clear philosophical difference between the administration and us,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Senator Jim DeMint meanwhile—whose hold on the White House’s nominee for the head of TSA meant the airline-safety organization was without a head when the attack was attempted—is also attacking Obama. “[S]oft talk about engagement, closing Gitmo, these things are not going to appease the terrorists,” he said. “They’re going to keep coming after us, and we can’t have politics as usual in Washington, and I’m afraid that’s what we’ve got right now with airport security.”

Yemen needs more counterterrorism support from the U.S. and the E.U., according to its foreign minister, Abu Bakr al Qirbi. In an interview with the BBC, the Yemeni diplomat estimated that the al Qaeda members operating in Yemen numbered in the hundreds, and that they could be plotting further attacks after the failed Christmas Day plane attack in Detroit. Though Al Qirbi was careful to downplay what he called "exaggerated" claims about the dangers posed by Yemeni terrorism, he did say that his country "need[s] more training" and that "the United States can do a lot, Britain can do a lot, the European Union can do a lot in that regard."

Capitol Hill staffers were briefly on lockdown Tuesday afternoon after a report that a person with a gun had descended on the Capitol complex. Politico's Glenn Thrush published a 3:24 p.m. email to all House of Representatives staffers announcing "A lock down has been initiated for all buildings in the Capitol complex due to the investigation of a man with a gun." The situation has since been "stabilized," and the lockdown will be called off.

Can’t they trace his IP address or something? A British fugitive named Craig “Lazie” Lynch has been taunting police on Facebook with pictures and status updates. Since breaking out in early September, Lynch has posted updates that say things like “YES YES i fuckin made it to Xmas i beat their fuckn system and i love it” and “If any of you was doubtin my freedom. Here's proof. How the fuck could i get my hands on a bird like this in jail. ha ha.” At last count, he has 1,300 friends and 7,300 fans. He was serving a seven-year sentence for armed robbery.

Karl Rove, former right-hand man to President George W. Bush, and his wife of 24 years, Darby, are going their separate ways. They were granted a divorce in Texas last week, according to family spokesperson Dana Perino (also a Bush White House veteran), who said: "The couple came to the decision mutually and amicably, and they maintain a close relationship and a strong friendship." The two still spent Christmas as a family with their son, and a friend says that "they plan to spend time together in the future."

Argentina has joined the small handful of countries that allow gay marriage. Jose Maria Di Bello and Alex Freyre, both gay rights activists, were married in a civil ceremony in Ushuaia, the world's southernmost city, after a judge in Buenos Aires had rejected their initial attempt. The union makes Di Bello and Freyre Latin America's first same-sex married couple. Argentina's constitution doesn't specifically define marriage as between a man and woman, leaving the issue up to provincial and city officials. In Ushuaia, governor Fabiana Rios approved the marriage on the basis of a ruling by a judge who had declared two provisions of the constitution discriminatory. A bill to legalize gay marriage is currently pending in Argentina's congress.

David Levine, the illustrator whose expressive and often unflattering caricatures were the iconic images of The New York Review of Books, died Tuesday morning in Manhattan. The New York Times writes that the 83-year-old’s portraits “betrayed the mind of an artist concerned, worriedly concerned, about the world in which he lived.” His most famous images include Lyndon B. Johnson revealing the scar from his gallbladder surgery in the shape of Vietnam and Henry Kissinger having sex beneath an American flag with a woman whose head is in the shape of a globe—a depiction, Levine said, of what Kissinger had done to the world. His favorite subject was Richard Nixon, whom he drew 66 times.

Who was Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab? The Washington Post has reviewed 300 online posts believed to be made by Abdulmutallab under the name “farouk1986” between 2005 and 2007. "I have no one to speak too [sic]," he wrote in 2005 as a student at boarding school. "No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems." In June 2005, he wrote of a three-month Arabic course he took in Yemen, which he said was “just great.” He also wrote of wanting to attend Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, or the California Institute of Technology, but complained that his SAT scores were too low. He also wrote of the tension, as a Muslim, "between liberalism and extremism.”

A police affidavit released Monday confirmed TMZ's report that Charlie Sheen used a knife to threaten wife Brooke Mueller at a home in Aspen, Colorado. Mueller told a police officer that after telling Sheen she wanted a divorce, he grabbed her neck and held a medium-sized folding knife to her throat while saying, "You better be in fear. If you tell anybody, I'll kill you." Sheen was later taken to jail for second-degree assault—not the first time he was involved in a domestic-violence dispute—and although he was released on $8,500 bond late Christmas night, prosecutors will not decide his charges until his next court appearance February 8. Threatening a woman may not be unheard of for Sheen, but the actor still claims he did not push or strike her, and that her alleged alcohol problem is a likely explanation for her remarks to the police.

The man whom Rahm Emanuel once said “made nerdy sexy” has gone ahead and done just that: President Obama’s budget director, Peter Orszag, got engaged over lunch on Monday to his girlfriend of six months, ABC reporter Bianna Golodryga. The two met in May at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. When he was unable to secure a ticket for her to President Obama’s first state dinner, he skipped the event altogether. Orszag said he loves her because “She’s a Russian Jew who gets up earlier than I do.” The two will probably wed in October.

Revelations that superstar golfer Tiger Woods had more than a dozen mistresses may have cost him his wife, but it may also have lost some $12 billion to shareholders in companies with which he had sponsorship deals. A study released Monday calculated that those who own stock in companies like Nike, AT&T, and Gatorade may have collectively lost $12 billion. The study, which measured Woods-associated companies' stock prices against the market, found that Gatorade, Nike, and Electronic Arts were the worst off, dropping 4.3 percent, while management consulting firm Accenture didn't suffer a loss.

Wondering where the TSA chief has been since the attempted Christmas bombing? There is no TSA chief: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has a hold on the White House's nominee for the position, Erroll Southers, citing fears that Southers would allow TSA workers to join a labor union. Southers has passed through two Senate committees, but DeMint's hold prevents his nomination from being subjected to a full Senate vote, and the Senator's demands for testimony about unionization would likely mean at least three days of debate and test votes. DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton blamed Democrats, saying that "President Obama waited 243 days in office before making a nomination"; DeMint, in a statement, had said the Christmas day terror attempt was a "perfect example of why the Obama administration should not unionize the TSA."

China confirmed that it executed British subject Akmal Shaikh by lethal injection on Tuesday, drawing sharp criticism from Prime Minister Gordon Brown over Shaikh's mental health status. According to Shaikh's family, the 53-year-old had been living on the street in Poland before being enticed to China by men who used his dream of recording a song for world peace; he was arrested in China in 2007 after getting off a plane from Tajikistan carrying a suitcase with almost nine pounds of heroin. He denied the suitcase was his and said he didn't know about the drugs, but Chinese courts convicted him in 2008 after a half-hour trial. "There is no reason to cast doubt on Akmal Shaikh's mental status," said the Chinese Supreme Court.

If you can’t influence the federal government, work around it. The health-care industry has been working the state houses to gin up opposition to health-care reform. In Florida, it made outsized donations totaling $765,000 in 2008 to nearly all 42 Republican co-sponsors who are trying to amend the state constitution to block, at least symbolically, much of the health-care overhaul. In fact, during the 2008 election, health-care providers donated more at the state level than they did at the federal level—$102 million versus $89 million. The pharmaceutical trade group is officially backing health-care reform, but industry lobbyists tell The New York Times that they are preparing to fight Congressional proposals to help states meet their Medicare obligations by saving money on drugs.

Annie Moore set foot on Ellis Island on her 15th birthday on January 1, 1892. It was then believed that Moore, much celebrated in song and in statues, went west to Texas. Now, relatives have found photos of a woman whom they say is Moore and they indicate that Moore never left New York. She lived in New York’s Lower East Side and died in 1924. One photo shows Moore with a baby in her lap; another is of “Ma Schayer,” Schayer being Moore’s married name.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Civilination founder Andrea Weckerle blame the Internet for a rise in “behavior that ranges from the carelessly rude to the intentionally abusive,” a problem they say is caused largely by the speed with which uncivil missives can be sent out on social networking sites. In response to “sites [that] exist solely as a place for mean-spirited individuals to congregate and spew their venomous verbiage,” the two moguls encourage users to have a “sense of accountability and responsibility” about their online activity, citing a number of teen suicides that have been directly linked to online bullying. They also propose uniform federal legislation on the laws surrounding online harassment, and the creation of a network for victims of cyberbullying to receive “emotional support… and practical advice.”

They may have shared a first name, but it seems country singer Taylor Swift and Twilight star Taylor Lautner couldn't find much else in common. After dating for three months, the pair has called it quits, according to Us Weekly. Despite meeting on the set of Valentine's Day, "[t]here was no chemistry, and it felt contrived," a source and friend of Swift's said. "It wasn't really developing into anything, and wasn't going to, so they decided they were better as friends." Unlike Swift's relationship with Joe Jonas, whose breakup inspired an angry song, this split was amicable. Swift and Lautner will also likely reunite to promote their movie together.

Irish singer Van Morrison announced the birth of his son, George Ivan Morrison III, on his Web site Monday, describing the boy as "the spitting image of his daddy." Gigi Lee, Morrison's manager, is the mother of the infant, who Morrison said is "a dual citizen of Northern Ireland/United Kingdom and the United States." The new baby is the 64-year-old Morrison's second child; his first, Shana Morrison, daughter of his former wife Janet Minto, is 39. No word on whether or not the newborn was conceived in the green grass, behind the stadium.

Following al Qaeda's statement taking responsibility for the Christmas Day attack on Northwest Flight 253, ABC News reports that two of the bomb plot's masterminds were former Guantanamo Bay detainees, freed in November 2007 and sent back to their home nation of Saudi Arabia. Guantanamo prisoner No. 333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi (who has since changed his name to Muhamad al-Awfi), and prisoner No. 372, Said Ali Shari, have since been described as al Qaeda commanders and appear in propaganda videos filmed in 2009. After their release, the former prisoners entered an "art therapy rehabilitation program" in Saudi Arabia, then are believed to have migrated to Yemen where they joined a growing hotbed of al Qaeda-networked terrorist organizations. One U.S. diplomat said Saudi Arabia's "so-called rehabilitation programs are a joke," and ABC News notes that a similar repatriation program in Yemen was abandoned after authorities concluded participants were funneling straight back into terrorism.