Friends forever? Vice President Joe Biden opened talks with Israeli leaders on Tuesday by calling the United States’ bond to the country “unshakable.” Speaking with Israeli President Shimon Peres, Biden added, “There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel in terms of Israel’s security. None.” The meeting kicked off a four-month period of U.S.-mediated peace talks between Israel and Palestine after a 14-month silence between the sides. But Biden’s positive remarks were overshadowed by Israel’s plans to build 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem. The development was denounced by Palestine as “a dangerous decision that will torpedo the negotiations and sentence the American efforts to complete failure.” The American Embassy in Tel Aviv also distanced itself from the move. Biden will be in the Middle East for five days and will also meet with Palestinian and Jordanian leaders.

A big business coalition is spending between $4 million and $10 million on ads against President Obama's health-care overhaul, emphasizing that the bill will cost jobs. The coalition, called Employers for a Health Economy and funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups, will take out TV ads targeting several dozen fence-sitting Democrats as another vote on the bill approaches. More than $200 million was spent on health-care ads last year, making it the most expensive single-issue campaign ever. Spending froze when Democrats lost their 60-seat supermajority in the Senate with the election of Scott Brown (R-MA), but as the endgame approaches, advertising will ramp back up. Activists on both sides are also using other means to persuade members of Congress, including a Tea Party demonstration planned for next week in Washington.

Half of all food aid to Somalia never reaches the hungry because it is diverted by contractors, Islamic militants, and local United Nations employees, a new report by the U.N. Security Council finds. The situation is so bad that the report calls for an investigation into the World Food Program's operations in Somalia, and says that the food distribution might need to be scrapped and rebuilt. The aid program serves 2.5 million people and was worth $485 billion last year. Regional Somali officials are working with pirates, and government ministers have auctioned visas to Europe to bidders who may have been militants, the report says. The U.S. is sending Somalia's transitional government aid as it readies for a major military offensive in Mogadishu, the capital taken over by Islamists linked to al Qaeda. Decades of civil war have left Somali security forces "ineffective, disorganized and corrupt," the report says. Recently, a U.S. official said the country's "best hope" is the new head of the Somali military, a 60-year-old former artillery officer who was assistant manager at a German McDonald's only months ago.

Does this mean he won't be appearing on Glenn Beck on Tuesday? According to The Washington Post, former Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) is under investigation for “allegations that he groped multiple male staffers working in his office.” That’s a lot different than the story that Massa told—he said that he was a victim of “political correctness” after a third party reported “salty language” he used at a wedding, and then he went on to charge that he was being forced out of the House by Democratic leaders because he opposed health-care reform. The Post says the information was provided to the House Ethics Committee by Massa’s former deputy chief of staff, Ron Hikel.

Bank of America announced it will end overdraft fees on debit cards this summer, a move that will cost the bank a large amount of revenue and pressure others to follow suit. Customers who don’t have enough cash in their accounts to make a purchase will simply be declined. More than 60 percent of overdraft fees charged by Bank of America come from debit cards. A new federal law is forcing banks to get permission from customers before allowing overdrafts on debit purchases and ATM withdrawals, fees that earned banks $20 billion last year. Regulators became concerned by reports of people paying as much as $40 for a cup of coffee thanks to overdraft fees, and Congress is considering even more restrictive rules. A 2008 study by the FDIC found that while 75 percent of customers are never charged overdraft fees, a small group—14 percent of cardholders—generates 93 percent of the fees.

Feds indicted Colleen R. LaRose, a Pennsylvania woman, for participating in a terrorist plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist, MSNBC reported Tuesday. LaRose—known as JihadJane and Fatima LaRosa—apparently began her involvement with terrorists in June 2008, when she commented on YouTube that she was “desperate to do something to help” Muslims. Six months later, someone offered to join her and to be a martyr. LaRose corresponded with people overseas, investigators say, before traveling to Europe and joining a group that hoped to assassinate Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, on whose head al Qaeda had issued a $100,000 bounty. (In August 2007, a newspaper published Vilks’ cartoon showing the Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog.) LaRose tried to recruit others online while in Europe, but eventually returned home after deciding those in her group weren’t serious enough about their cause. LaRose was arrested last October. Charges against her include conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, making false statements to a government official, and attempted identity theft.

New York State Police First Deputy Superintendent and Interim Superintendent Pedro Perez has resigned in the wake of allegations swirling around Gov. David Paterson. Perez is the fourth official to call it quits after revelations of Paterson's personal involvement in a domestic-violence complaint against one of his top staffers. The police chief's abrupt announcement comes only a week since he stepped in to replace superintendent Harry Corbitt, who himself retired in order to "flee the mushrooming firestorm," the New York Daily News reports. "My retirement is not premised on the current investigation by the attorney general, as I know my decisions were honest and rightly motivated," Perez said in a letter to the governor. Two police unions were preparing for a vote of no confidence in Perez on Tuesday, the newspaper says, at the urging of Paterson allies. Perez will be succeeded by Field Commander John Melville, whom the governor praised as a standup guy Tuesday night.

No laughing matter: Robert Halderman, the television producer accused of attempting to extort David Letterman for $2 million, pleaded guilty to second-degree larceny on Tuesday afternoon. As part of the plea, he'll serve six months in prison, four-and-a-half years probation, and 1,000 hours of community service. Halderman tried to “sell” Letterman a script about a late-night TV host who sleeps with his female employees; at the time, Letterman was sleeping with Halderman’s live-in girlfriend, Stephanie Birkitt. Had he not pleaded, Halderman could have faced up to 15 years behind bards. 

More bad news for Toyota, though, really, he should have tried pulling the e-brake sooner: A driver behind the wheel of one of the recalled models of Prius reached speeds of up to 90 miles per hour when his car was stuck accelerating for 20 minutes. "As I was going, I was trying the brakes... it wasn't stopping," said James Sikes. The car was finally stopped when Sikes called the California Highway Patrol, who told him to pull the emergency brake. It is unclear if Sikes took his car to a dealership in compliance with the recall, and a Toyota spokesman said the company is investigating the incident.

Actress Hilary Duff has inked a deal with Simon & Schuster to write a series of young-adult novels. The first, titled Elixir, will be published in October. The publisher says the book will combine a love triangle, mystery, and international adventure, and focus on a "globe-trotting photojournalist who is a attempting to unravel the mystery of her father's disappearance." Duff will also publish a book about divorce in the spring of 2012.

Andrew Young, author of the John Edwards tell-all, and his wife, Cheri, could spend 75 days behind bars for contempt of court. A judge is considering throwing the couple in jail because the former Edwards aide lied about how many people he had shown a video of his old boss having sex with his mistress. The Youngs, the judge said, were dishonest about how many copies of the tape they made or how many people got to watch it. After Andrew Young had said he showed the sex tape to three people, lawyers for Rielle Hunter produced an affidavit from Robert Draper, a ghost writer who worked for Edwards, saying Draper also saw the tape on Young's laptop, suggesting there was another digital copy in existence. Young's lawyers blamed a memory lapse.

Sarah Palin found herself at the butt end of many jokes on Monday after she said that, as a child, she and her family used to travel across the border to Canada for socialized health care. Now, her father—who was last heard from explaining that his daughter left Hawaii because she was uncomfortable with Asians—is clarifying Palin’s comments. Palin’s family lived in Skagway, Alaska, at the time, and it was difficult to access any American hospitals, says her father Chuck Heath. "There was no road out of there at that time. The ferry schedule was very erratic. We had no doctor in Skagway. The plane schedule was very erratic. The winds dictated whether the planes could come in or not." He said the family only used the Canadian hospital in Whitehorse twice: “We much preferred to use our facilities because my insurance didn't cover anything in Whitehorse. And even though they have socialized medicine, I still had to pay the bill, being an American citizen.” Palin has called President Obama’s health-care reform plan “downright evil.”

A sometimes-heard defense of waterboarding is that American soldiers regularly undergo it as part of their training to resist enemy interrogations. But new details uncovered in government memos show that the “[CIA’s] methods went far beyond anything ever done to a soldier during training.” Whereas U.S. soldiers were generally waterboarded with a cloth over their face once or twice for 20 seconds, the CIA would use six separate 40-second applications over a two-hour period. The CIA also used a special saline solution instead of water, so it could pump detainees full of more liquid without drowning them; it built specialized gurneys to tilt detainees at an angle that would maximize water entering their nasal passages; and it gave interrogators permission to use their hands to “dam the runoff”—that is, prevent water from spilling out detainee’s mouths. Perhaps most gruesome of all: The CIA fed prisoners liquid diets so that they would not choke on their own vomit when waterboarded.

Despite his domestic-abuse woes and alleged alcoholism, at least 17.5 million Americans are still fans of watching Charlie Sheen on prime-time TV. The actor's show, Two and a Half Men, was the highest-rated show Monday night and scored its highest numbers in three years. CBS outpaced Fox and ABC with the help of The Big Bang Theory's 16.3 million viewers, and the closest competitor was Fox's House at a distant 12.8 million viewers. The news of last night’s blockbuster ratings comes on the same day as reports that Sheen plans to leave rehab (which he entered voluntarily as a “preventative measure”) and resume production on his show on March 19. The news, however, is not all good. Sheen faces a March 15 court date in connection with the alleged domestic abuse of his wife, Brooke Mueller, and the district attorney has said that he will not entertain any plea deal that does not include a felony charge. CBS is monitoring the situation closely, of course, as Two and a Half Men is a moneymaker of epic proportions, and Sheen commands $900,000 per episode.

Can someone please hold him to this? Rush Limbaugh has announced he will leave the country if the health-care bill passes. “I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented—I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica,” Limbaugh said on his radio show on Tuesday. Politico’s Ben Smith points out that “Costa Rica has a fairly well-developed system of government-financed health care.”

When Alexander McQueen killed himself last month, he had not yet unveiled his final collection for Fall 2010. Those clothes will not be shown on the runway; instead, there will be a private memorial for McQueen during Paris Fashion Week. However, photos of the collection, which makes use of regal reds, golds, and browns, have been released. Bloggers Tom & Lorenzo call it, “a stunningly beautiful collection of looks that serve to illustrate his unique vision and the giant hole he left behind in the world of fashion.”

There is officially a cheese grosser than casu marzu, otherwise known as “maggot cheese”: Chef Daniel Angerer of Klee Brasserie in New York City is serving cheese made from his wife’s breast milk. “It tastes like cow’s-milk cheese, kind of sweet,” he tells the New York Post, and notes that its flavor depends on “what the mother eats.” Customers began demanding the cheese after Angerer wrote about it on his blog. Says the milk supplier, Angerer’s wife Lori Mason, “I think a lot of the criticism has to do with the combination of sex and cheese, but ... the breast is there to make food."

Given that J. Lo, Britney Spears, Sarah Jessica Parker, and even Kim Kardashian have their own fragrances, the only surprising news in Jennifer Aniston's decision to join the club is how long it took her. The former Friends sweetheart and current rom-com queen has reportedly inked a deal with the Falic Group—the company that also manages Eva Longoria Parker's upcoming fragrance. Reports indicate that the actress wanted to call her perfume "Aniston," but that the idea was rejected by advertising consultants who found it entirely unsexy. Regardless of what it's finally named, Aniston's perfume will probably be launched later this year.

Four Muslim men and three Muslim women were arrested in Ireland on Tuesday for plotting to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist who drew the Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog. Al Qaeda had put a $100,000 bounty on the head of the cartoonist, Lars Vilks, with an additional $50,000 if he were “slaughtered like a lamb” by having his throat cut and another $50,000 for killing the editor of the paper that printed the cartoon. The arrested are not believed to be members of al Qaeda; some are Irish citizens and some are converts to Islam. The investigation into his would-be assassins involved both the CIA and the FBI. Vilks lives with police protection in an isolated area of Sweden.

Congratulations Sinjoyla Townsend and Angelisa Young: You are the first gay couple to marry in Washington, D.C. After being together for 12 years, the couple was the first in line to apply for a marriage license in Washington last week and became the first to actually marry on Tuesday, the first day that marriage for gays became legal in D.C. Townsend and Young were one of 100 couples that applied for licenses. Five other states (Vermont, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire) also allow gay marriage.

Is a deal in the works to placate House Democrats who oppose health-care reform without strict abortion-coverage provisions? On Monday night, Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, the leader of the anti-abortion charge, said, “I'm more optimistic than I was a week ago. The president says he doesn't want to expand or restrict current law. Neither do I. That's never been our position. So is there some language that we can agree on that hits both points—we don't restrict, we don't expand abortion rights? I think we can get there." Stupak says he has a bloc of 12 Democrats who will not vote for health-care reform without the abortion-related changes.

Update: Toyota says reported recall is already months old. 

At this point, Toyota should just start giving its customers Hondas: The auto company is recalling all 2004 through 2009-model Priuses, the day after a driver in California was stuck accelerating for nearly 20 minutes. “As I was going, I was trying the brakes … it wasn’t stopping,” said the driver James Sikes, who drove a 2008 model. The car finally stopped when a cop told Sikes to pull the emergency break. The Priuses will be recalled to prevent pedal entrapment.

It may not be enough to send cartographers scrambling, but in geological terms, the city of Concepcion, Chile, took a gigantic slip west during last month’s 8.8-magnitude earthquake: It shifted by a full 10 feet. The fifth-largest earthquake ever recorded also moved the capital city of Santiago 11 inches west. Even Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina nearly 800 miles away from the epicenter, is said to have shifted by an inch. These figures were published by Ohio State earth scientist Mike Bevis, who has been using global positioning systems to track movements on the particularly active section of the Earth’s crust under Chile since 1993.

Maybe she also deserves Lindsey Vonn’s gold medal? Lindsay Lohan is suing the website E-Trade for $100 million because she says an ad featuring a baby named “Lindsay” who is a “milkaholic” and steals another baby’s boyfriend must be based on her. "Many celebrities are known by one name only, and E-Trade is using that knowledge to profit," said Lohan’s lawyer. “They used the name Lindsay. They're using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn't they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody's talking about it and saying it's Lindsay Lohan."

In his first post-Oscars column, legendary film critic Roger Ebert uses his space in the Chicago Sun-Times to lambast Hollywood trade paper Variety for firing Todd McCarthy, a film critic there for the last 31 years. He was dismissed Monday as the industry publication announced that it would switch its policy to only publish movie reviews on a freelance basis as a cost-cutting measure. Ebert argues that as the chief critic for Variety and its longest-tenured staffer, McCarthy became “the bellwether of a film's future.” Ebert also writes that Variety could be signaling the end of an era for film commentary: “The glory days of the famous Variety critics are finished.”

The news just keeps getting worse for Florida Governor and Senate candidate Charlie Crist: Republican leaders who endorsed Crist months ago—when he was considered a lock to be the next senator from Florida—are now walking back their endorsements in light of the challenge mounted to Crist by rightwinger Marco Rubio. “Selfishly, given the limited resources we have and the national scope of our responsibilities here, I didn’t want to have to spend any money in Florida if we didn’t have to,” said NRSC chairman John Cornyn, explaining his endorsement. “So Charlie Crist seemed like the ideal candidate. This had nothing to do with Marco Rubio, whom I subsequently met and have a lot of respect for.” A new poll by Public Policy Polling shows that, not only would a mere 14 percent of Republicans like to see Crist in the Senate next year; but only 19 percent would like to see him still as governor, and 56 percent want him out of elected office altogether.

Google was supposed to revolutionize the smart-phone market by selling its phone, the Nexus One, directly to consumers online. What, exactly, has gone wrong? Goldman Sachs has revised its estimate for Nexus One sales downward from 3.5 million phones sold in 2010 to just 1 million. In its first month, the Nexus One sold just 100,000 units. Goldman says Google can boost sales to 2 million in 2011 if it launches a second phone, spends more on marketing, and sells its phones in retail stores as well.

Human-rights groups say anywhere from 200 to 500 Christians were killed by Muslim herdsmen in Nigeria over the weekend. The attacks took place near the central city of Jos and were apparently retaliation for attacks on Muslims in January. As the main city on the fault line between Nigeria’s Muslim north and Christian south, Jos has long been a hotbed of religious violence. Victims from the sectarian violence were placed in mass graves in central Nigeria. Survivors recalled gruesome stories of the previous day’s events. The attackers had placed nets and traps outside the huts of villagers and attacked them with machetes. Unlike previous clashes, this year's attacks have been planned out, leaving hundred dead including babies, the elderly, and anyone else unable to flee.

The next stage of the war in Afghanistan is in the works: Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with General Stanley McChrystal and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on Monday to review plans for a new American-led offensive. The campaign will target Kandahar, the city that gave birth to the Taliban. McChrystal said he thinks that there will be enough Afghan and American forces for the assault by early summer; so far, only 6,000 of the 30,000-troop surge that President Obama have arrived. He also stressed that it will not be a dramatic offensive. “There won’t be a D-Day that is climactic,” McChrystal said. “It will be a rising tide of security as it comes.”

Come for the beaches, stay for the Jews? Jamaica is embracing its Jewish history in hopes of attracting new tourists—this, in spite of the fact that the island currently has one synagogue, no rabbis, and only 200 or so Jews. Still, the island claims to have once harbored a Jewish pirate named Moses, and Jews began arriving on the island in the 17th century during the Inquisition. By the end of the 19th century, Jamaica had six synagogues and over 2,000 Jews. A recent conference on Judeo-Caribbean history included stops at Kingston’s Hillel School, 20 of whose 750 students are Jewish, and a visit to a resort owned by Chris Blackwell, a music-label founder whose mother was Jewish.

Vice President Joe Biden has touched down in Israel as a special envoy announced that Israelis and Palestinians are ready to open an indirect dialogue. One potential wrinkle: A State Department spokesman said Monday that a new Israeli settlement in the West Bank does not violate the recently announced 10-month ban on building there, which experts say may imperil the U.S.'s role in getting both sides to talk directly. Israel says the 112 new apartments were approved before the moratorium went through. The U.S. says the talks can last four months before they announce the results. A breakthrough in the negotiations would be a surprise.

One person was killed and two others were injured during a shooting on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus early Tuesday morning, according to police. No students were involved and the victims have not yet been identified. One of the surviving victims is said to be in critical condition, while the other is stable. Police say they have the suspect in custody. The shooting occurred inside a maintenance building near the campus power plant.

In a possible strategic move to regain the "ethical high ground," House Democratic leaders are floating the idea of a party-wide ban on earmarks for the remainder of the year. The idea was mentioned by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but would most likely face resistance from those who use earmarks as a way to send placating pork back home in a tough year for incumbents. But scrapping them now might be a strategic coup, as gridlock in the Senate means House spending bills could get tied up there, and their earmarks could get cut anyway. The decision to proceed with this strategy would have to come soon as earmark requests are due to the Appropriations panel by March 19. Nearly 9,500 earmarks worth $15.9 billion have already been secured by both parties in this fiscal year alone.

A large union pension fund has figured out a way to do more than just criticize investment banks for overpaying its executives. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers pension fund filed a lawsuit against Goldman Sachs Monday, trying to prevent the Wall Street giant from allocating around 47 percent of 2009 net revenue as compensation. The suit says such allocations "vastly overcompensate management and constitute corporate waste," particularly after the bank took government-bailout funds in 2008. The union hopes to recover more money for shareholders that have invested in the company.

The Eric Massa show is quickly turning into a field day for Republicans, as the disgraced Democratic congressman continues to take pot shots at his own party. Over the weekend, he slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, whom he called “son of the devil’s spawn.” But Massa isn’t done yet. Glenn Beck has him booked for the full hour on Tuesday because, Beck tweeted, “all Americans need to hear him.” Rush Limbaugh has also promised to make a “national story” out of Massa’s claim that he was set up by his own party. But Democrats say the Republicans should be careful. “If the stories that are circulating are true about what really happened, the Republicans are going to hold up someone as the cause célèbre who harassed male members of his staff,” a senior Democratic strategist told Politico. “Is that really where they want to be?”

Despite months of beating the drum against President Obama’s health-care plan—warning the country not to take that step into socialism—Sarah Palin admitted over the weekend that she’s been on the receiving end of nationalized health care. After all, growing up in Alaska, it was right there over the Canadian border. Speaking in Calgary, Palin said that her family routinely went to Canada for medical reasons. “I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now,” Palin said Saturday. “Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.”

Gabourey Sidibe missed winning the Oscar for Best Actress, but she's already moved on: The Precious star is set to guest star in Showtime's new series The Big C, the network announced Tuesday. The show is a "dark comedy" about an affluent suburb in Connecticut, and stars Laura Linney as a teacher who's rebounding from cancer. Oliver Platt will play her husband, and Sibide a "smart-alecky" student in her class. The Big C will start shooting in May—but isn't set to premiere until late summer.

Somehow, we think Glenn Beck won’t believe him. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says that Rep. Eric Massa’s charge that Democrats have pushed him out of the House because he opposed health-care reform is “absurd” and “absolutely untrue.” Speaking to reporters, Hoyer read from Massa’s resignation letter, in which Massa took responsibility for an ethics complaint against him. Massa has been charged by an aide with sexual harassment. Massa will also be appearing on Beck’s program for the full hour on Tuesday evening.