House Democrats are inching slowly toward the majority they need to pass the health-care bill, but believe they could be ready for a vote by Sunday. Working frantically to court the roughly three dozen Democrats whose votes are still believed to be in play, House Dems locked in two more on Wednesday from Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Dale Kildee of Michigan—both had expressed serious reservations. Actually passing the bill could require employing several procedural technicalities like budget reconciliation to avoid a filibuster in the Senate. But President Obama said he is not worried. “What I can tell you is that the vote that’s taken in the House will be a vote for health-care reform,” he said. “And if people vote yes, whatever form that takes, that is going to be a vote for health-care reform.”

U.S. officials confirmed Wednesday that a drone strike last week killed a senior al Qaeda trainer in Pakistan. The trainer, Sadam Hussein Al Hussami, also known as Ghazwan Al-Yemeni, had coached Taliban and foreign al Qaeda recruits for attacks on troops in Afghanistan, among others. He was also one of the masterminds behind the strike on a CIA base in the city of Khost, which killed eight CIA staffers. "He's a significant operator," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer now at the Brookings Institution. "And it's another sign that the pressure is substantial." Hussami's death is being trumpeted as a significant blow to al Qaeda, while the organization is praising his "martyrdom" on various Web sites.

More relief is on the way: The Senate voted on Wednesday to pass new job-creation measures. $18 billion in tax breaks to business that hire unemployed workers and $20 billion for highway and transit projects. The measure gained bipartisan support, passing 68-29. The bill now goes to President Obama’s desk for signature.

After more than a year and half of recession, the U.S. stock market may be getting a reprieve. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its highest point since October 2008 on Wednesday. Buoyed by evidence that the economic recovery isn't pushing inflation, the Dow rose for its seventh consecutive session, reaching 10767.98 in the afternoon. Meanwhile, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index grew 0.8 percent to 1169.20. "There's nothing here to stop the stock rally," said one investment strategist. "That comes on the heels of the Fed's statement yesterday that we don't have to tighten because inflation is not an issue."

With outrage over sex abuse by the Catholic Church once again on the rise—courtesy of a fresh set of scandals—Pope Benedict XVI took St. Patrick's Day to express his concern to Irish members of the clergy. In an open letter, he acknowledged the church had been "severely shaken." "I ask all of you to read it for yourselves," he added of the letter. "My hope is that it will help in the process of repentance, healing and renewal." Hours earlier, Cardinal Sean Brady, the ranking member of the church in Ireland, used his St. Patrick's Day sermon to apologize for assisting in the coverup of child abuse allegations in the 1970s and preached introspection to the church. "Looking back, I am ashamed that I have not always upheld the values that I profess and believe in," he said.

After Toyota publicly expressed doubt on yet another "runaway" Prius incident, a California Highway Patrol officer's account seems to support the driver's version of events. The officer, who came to the driver's aid after his 911 call on March 8, said that he appeared to be hitting the brake repeatedly as his car sped up to 90 miles per hour on a freeway. Toyota claimed there was no evidence to that effect. But the officer claimed in his seven-page report, "I could see the driver sat up off his seat indicating that he was possibly applying the brake pedal with his body weight." It was the latest high-profile case of a Toyota speeding out of control after the manufacturer recalled 8.5 million vehicles.

In an effort to mark his own authority, acting Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan dissolved his cabinet Wednesday. Jonathan, the vice president who has filled in since February during President Umaru Yar’Adua’s absence due to illness, appears to have made the unexpected move without presenting a clear reason to the public. It is widely believed that he is simply trying to consolidate power—the cabinet had been picked by Yar’Adua—ahead of next year’s election, which could be moved up by about three months. Nobel Prize-winning writer, Wole Soyinka, however, says he believes the dissolution was the right thing to do, despite his well-documented criticism of Nigerian politics. "I think he's been as delicate as anybody who's in charge of country like Nigeria can be," Soyinka said. "In fact, I think he's erred on the overcautious side. This should have happened a very long time ago."

Nearly a century and a half after Augustus Tolton escaped slavery in Missouri and became the nation’s first black Roman Catholic priest on record, he will be considered for sainthood. A commission will assess the reverend’s "heroic virtues" and present his case to the Vatican, upon which he could become St. Augustus. After being ordained in Rome because no American seminary would admit him, Tolton returned to Quincy, Illinois, where he preached to an integrated congregation. He eventually moved to Chicago to start a mission for African Americans in the basement of another parish. That eventually became the city’s first black parish. "To think that every seminary in the U.S. was closed to him… but that did not stand in the way of him being able to fulfill his call," said Vanessa White, director of the Tolton Center for African-American Catholics at Catholic Theological Union.

Less than a week after actor Corey Haim died of what appeared to be an accidental overdose, Los Angeles police have charged someone with providing him with illegal prescription drugs. The suspect has not yet been identified, though he or she is believed to be involved in what officials called a "massive" drug ring. Officials added that the investigation into the ring had been under way long before Haim died. So far, investigators have discovered about 5,000 fraudulent prescriptions connected to the drug ring.

One of the most recognizable faces of CNN appears close to defecting. Christiane Amanpour, a longtime foreign correspondent for the network, is expected to become the host of ABC’s political talk show This Week. An announcement could be made as early as tomorrow, though many details still have to be ironed out. One concern is that Amanpour has made her name reporting on foreign affairs, but one ABC News staffer told The New York Times’ Media Decoder blog that they are confident she can adapt to political reporting.

The Senate, once again, fails to reform its worst habits: The body voted 68-29 on Tuesday to defeat a one-year freeze on earmarks. The bill was introduced by Republican Senator Jim DeMint, but even his party was split on measure, with 15 Republican senators voting against and 24 voting for it. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) told DeMint, “All you end up doing if you’re successful is giving all this to Obama,” he said.

Five Americans have been charged with terrorism by a Pakistani court, their lawyer said Wednesday. The suspects, Muslim men from Washington, D.C., are also charged with planning to wage war against countries allied with Pakistan. Attorney Hasan Dastagir says the accused all pleaded not guilty to the charges, for which, if convicted, they could serve life in prison. The men were arrested in Sargodha, a city in Punjab province, in December. They were planning to cross into Afghanistan and had no plans to attack Pakistan, Dastagir said.

Singer Katy Perry is reportedly lending her vocal abilities to another cause besides the Top 40 charts to voice Smurfette in the upcoming animated Smurfs film. Hank Azaria is allegedly joining Perry and Glee guidance counselor Jayma Mays for the full-length feature, which is expected to begin production next month. Azaria, who is best known as the voices of Moe the Bartender and the Kwik-E-Mart's Apu on The Simpsons, will voice Gargamel, the Smurfs' arch-nemesis, and Mays is rumored to be playing the pregnant, but not blue wife of Neil Patrick Harris, who is already attached to the project. Comedians George Lopez and Alan Cumming are also reportedly bringing their humor to the film, which centers on the expectant couple's lives in New York being turned upside-down upon meeting the iconic cartoon creatures.

Another one bites the dust: New York Governor David Paterson’s press secretary, Marissa Shorenstein, quit Wednesday due to her “unwitting involvement in recent news stories.” Paterson is embroiled in a scandal in which he is accused of having asked Shorenstein and another staff member to contact a woman who accused one of his top aides of assault. In a statement, Shorenstein said, "Throughout my career, I have performed my duties professionally and with integrity, basing my actions on what I believed to be true at the time. I therefore tender my resignation as press secretary to the governor."

The afterglow of Sandra Bullock’s Oscar win may be burning off quickly: In an interview with In Touch, a tattoo model named Michelle “Bombshell” McGee says she slept with Bullock’s husband, Jesse James, while Bullock was filming The Blind Side. McGee says the affair lasted for 11 months, “including five weeks of sex,” says In Touch, and that James, whose ex-wife is a porn star, told her that he and Bullock were no longer together. Bullock, meanwhile, has pulled out of the London premiere of The Blind Side due to “unforeseen personal reasons,” according to a statement.

Perhaps the health-care fight spooked him a little? President Obama played it safe with his 2010 NCAA tournament bracket, choosing two No. 1 seeds and two No. 2 seeds for the Final Four. His picks are Kansas, Kentucky, Kansas State, and Villanova. He also played it safe in his 2009 bracket, when he chose three No. 1  seeds and a No. 2 for the Final Four. For the first time this year, Obama also filled out a bracket for the women’s tournament, where his Final Four are Connecticut, Stanford, Tennessee, and Notre Dame. Obama will unveil his full brackets on ESPN’s SportsCenter on Wednesday.

Under constant pressure in Pakistan and Afghanistan by CIA operatives, al Qaeda appears to have been thrown into disarray, with top leaders heading deeper into hiding, according to CIA Director Leon Panetta. A recently intercepted message even shows one al Qaeda lieutenant begging Osama bin Laden to send help. "It's pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling," Panetta told The Washington Post. "And that we really do have them on the run." Panetta's comments came on the heels of United States' forces killing a man who was among al Qaeda's top 20 leaders and responsible in part for the Dec. 30 suicide bombing at a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan.

Can David Simon’s new television show, Treme, possibly live up to expectations? By the end of its run, people were calling his last show, The Wire, the best television show in history. In The New York Times Magazine, Wyatt Mason visits the set of Treme and compares it to its predecessor. “Whereas through its five seasons The Wire built a vivid portrait of urban America as seen through the prism of its institutions and professions—the police department, the drug trade, the dockworkers, the local government, the schools, the press— Treme, though no less focused on the workings and failings of 21st-century American urban existence, tells its story not through a city’s institutions but through its individuals.” He continues, “[B]ecause so many of [ The Wire’s] story lines dramatized the futility of any of these characters’ attempts to break through social and economic ceilings, the image of contemporary urban America that the show offered was one in which character wasn’t fate so much as a fait accompli: In the land of the free market, Simon was arguing, free will wasn’t going to get you very far. In Treme, Simon seems to be arguing for the very opposite idea: the triumph of the individual will despite all impediments, a show about people, artists for the most part, whose daily lives depend upon the free exercise of their wills to create—out of nothing, out of moments—something beautiful.”

Though there are already likely a lot of laughs in the home of comedic stars Amy Poehler and Will Arnett, the couple is adding more diapers and drool with the announcement that they’re expecting their second child. A representative for the Parks and Recreation actress broke the news to Us Weekly, but did not announce a due date or the new baby’s gender. Poehler and Arnett, who have been married for over six years, welcomed son Archie 16 months ago.

Wednesday’s episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit will take on an issue all-too-rarely addressed in prime time: the mass wartime rape of women in the Congo, which was called a "sexual massacre" and "sexual terrorism" by speakers at The Daily Beast's Women in the World summit last weekend. "The rampant rape of women and girls in Congo is one of the most despicable human rights violations occurring in the world today,” a show producer said. “ Law & Order: Special Victims Unit brings one woman's inspiring story of survival to audiences who may not be familiar with the plight of millions of victims who are struggling every day to survive unbearable brutality." The episode, titled “Witness,” tells the story of refugee who witnesses a rape and fears she will be deported to Congo, where she would likely again face sexual violence herself. The team must protect her. The show airs tonight, March 17 at 10 p.m. eastern time on NBC.

The instances of sexual assault reported in the U.S. military rose 11 percent over the past year, according to the Department of Defense. Over 3,000 sexual-assault reports were filed involving military personnel as either the assailants or the victims over the last year. A Pentagon official said more than half of the assaults were by service members on other service members: Most cases (87 percent) were male on female and 7 percent were male on male. Combat areas, mainly Iraq and Afghanistan, saw an even higher increase of 16 percent, according to the report. The Pentagon attributed the rise to the increased tendency to report such incidents, but offered no evidence to support their claim. Since 2004, however, the Department of Defense has altered the way it deals with sexual abuse and has encouraged victims to come forward, which could explain previous increases from 2007 to 2008, for example.

A year and a half before September 11, 2001, the C.I.A. tried to recruit an Iraqi terrorist thought to be secretly gay, The New York Observer reports. If the agency had been successful, the terrorist attack perhaps could have been prevented. The C.I.A. hoped Ahmad Hikmat Shakir could be an “access agent”—someone without high-level knowledge but who could arrange contacts with people who do. Short, fat and jolly, he perhaps could have been flipped by threats to reveal his sexuality. In January 2000, al Qaeda was meeting in Kuala Lumpur, and Shakir picked up an eventual 9/11 hijacker, Khalid al-Mihdhar, at the airport. Al Mihdar had a multiple-entry visa to the U.S., but the C.I.A. didn’t inform the F.B.I., who could have put him on a watch list or questioned him. An F.B.I. agent was drafting a memo to alert bosses about Mihdar’s likely visit to the U.S., but the C.I.A. told him to hold off. The F.B.I. wasn’t alerted to his presence stateside until August 2001. The C.I.A.’s actions are one of the biggest mysteries of the attacks, but the Observer speculates that proceeding with the alert could have exposed the agency’s attempts to convert Shakir.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki alleged that the national electoral commission was fixing vote tallies from Iraq’s parliamentary elections March 7 and demanded a recount in Baghdad. Perhaps not coincidentally, Maliki’s lead is slipping. About 79 percent of ballots have been counted, and former Prime Minister Ayad Alawi’s secular Iraqiya coalition is inching ahead, with reports indicating it has captured the popular vote. (It’s still behind in the province-by-province vote, which is how parliamentary seats are apportioned.) Though the election commission has faced hundreds of fraud accusations already, this is the first time the prime minister has commented. A slim lead would make forming a coalition government tougher for Maliki. A U.S. official said Iraq’s electoral system is “too complicated to rig,” The Washington Post reports, and other Western diplomats dismissed the fraud charges as “irregularities” that would not affect the election outcome.

Make sure to charge your iPod before traveling: American Airlines has filed for a temporary exemption from the new federal rule limiting the time passengers can be made to wait on the tarmac. The airline says the closure of the main runway at New York’s JFK airport would cause delays, thus costing millions in fines. JetBlue and Delta airlines have also asked for exemptions for the same reason. The rule, which takes effect in April, means airlines would incur up to $27,500 per passenger in fines if a plane sits on the tarmac for more than three hours. That could mean almost $4 million for a single Boeing 737, and $8.9 million for a Boeing 777. American Airlines warned that the inevitable traffic jams will cause them to cancel flights rather than rack up huge fines.

The Queen of Talk is taking the stand: Oprah Winfrey is due to spend two weeks defending herself in a Philadelphia court after a federal judge refused to throw out defamation charges stemming from sex-abuse charges at her girls school in South Africa. The former headmistress of the school, Nomvuyo Mzamane, is suing Oprah for making her appear “culpable” for the abuse, which was carried out by a dormitory matron, in statements Oprah made—for example, "I'm going to find a new head of the academy for the school. ... Dorm parents are gone, (Mzamane) is gone." Oprah has rearranged her TV-production schedule so she can appear and is expected to be called on as a witness.

Backgammon may be considered a mere amusement by most these days, but in the 1960s and 70s, the ancient game enjoyed a revival. Tim Holland was considered the best backgammon player in the world during that time, winning world championships in 1967, 1968, and 1971 (no tournaments were held in 1969 or 1970); he died on March 10 at the age of 79. “He did not speak; he did not smile; his eyes rarely left the table,” Jon Bradshaw wrote in Fast Company. “There was a palpable arrogance in his play. He rolled the dice and moved the men about the board with the poise of a man who knows that victory is only a matter of time.” Between 1969 and 1974, the number of Americans who played backgammon skyrocketed from 200,000 to 2 million.

President Obama may have to put his trip to Indonesia, Guam, and Australia on hold again: Several lawmakers tell Politico that Obama’s trip, which he already delayed from Friday to Monday so he could continue to fight for health-care reform, is interfering with their plans again, especially after the Democratic House Whip James Clyburn said the vote might not place until Easter or after. “This trip is really getting in the way of things,” says one anonymous congressman. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, however, disputed Clyburn’s timeline, saying his “expectation is that we will do healthcare reform later in the week.”

Several states, most of them red, have been adopting resolutions emphasizing their own rights or denouncing federal authority. South Dakota and Wyoming have declared federal gun laws invalid if the gun is made and used within the state; the Oklahoma House has passed a resolution saying they should be able to vote on opting out of federal health-care reform; Utah’s legislature has said the federal government cannot enact health-care reform without its permission, and also said the state has the power to seize federal land under eminent domain; and Alabama, Tennessee, and Washington are all considering measure to assert local police’s power over federal authorities. Much of this legislation has been championed and pushed by Tea Parties, but it’s unlikely much of it will last. “Article 6 says that that federal law is supreme and that if there’s a conflict, federal law prevails,” says one constitutional-law professor. “It’s pretty difficult to imagine a way in which a state could prevail on many of these.”

"Talks are under way" for a documentary of Conan O'Brien's 30-city comedy tour in the wake of his getting the boot from NBC, Deadline New York reports. Media Rights Capital has been in talks to finance the movie, with Rodman Flender to direct. The move wouldn't violate O'Brien's agreement with his former bosses. The tour, called The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour, comes to Radio City Music Hall and Madison Square Garden in June, and tickets are already sold out.

Last week, two students at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, jumped from bridges to their deaths. They were the fifth and sixth suicides this academic year at the university, and school officials are worried Cornell will become known as a “suicide school” after years of trying to distance itself from that reputation. Police and security guards have been posted on all the bridges on the campus, known for its gorges, and campus counseling services now have extended hours. Staffers checked on the door of every single student over the weekend, and are urging students to keep grades in perspective. The last suicides were in 2005, three years after the university stepped up its suicide-prevention program. From 1996 to 2002, there were 11. Administrators have long tried to ease Cornell’s reputation for suicides. They say there are not more at the school than other colleges, but suicides in the gorges are very public, getting more media attention than others would.

Vice President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone on Tuesday in a bid to diffuse the tensions that suddenly flared up after Israel announced new construction plans in East Jerusalem during Biden’s visit last week. Things could get frosty again soon, though: Netanyahu is expected to call Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again as early as Wednesday to deliver his formal response to Clinton’s list of demands, which included cancellation of the construction project and goodwill gestures towards the Palestinians. In the meantime, Israel has announced a second building project in East Jerusalem.

Major flooding is forecast for one-third of the U.S. in the next few weeks—and truckloads of sandbags are headed to cities across the Midwest. The risk extends from West Texas through the South and up to the southern part of New England. Central Texas, with its thin, rocky soil, is particularly in danger: Austin has already weathered 3 more inches of rain than it usually gets in a year. El Niño, expected to continue through the spring, has left many areas soggy after a snowy winter. This year’s snowpack ranks among the Top 10 since the 1940s. "We are looking at potentially historic flooding," a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official said. "It's a terrible case of déjà vu, but this time the flooding will likely be more widespread."

Five more Democrats announced they will be voting against health care on Tuesday—leaving House opponents just 11 votes shy of the majority needed to kill the bill—but there’s one former “no” whom President Obama can now count on to say “yes”: Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich, who had opposed the bill from the left, flew with Obama on Air Force One on Monday before the president gave a speech in his district.