For now, the 1,000 pages of dirt Nancy Pelosi said she’d dig up on Newt Gingrich will likely take a back seat to the latest news surrounding Mitt Romney. Reuters has learned that Romney went to great lengths to hide his records as governor of Massachusetts, spending nearly $100,000 in state funds to replace computers in his office at the end of his term before launching an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. State officials say the move was legal, but acknowledge laws are vague when it comes to technology. Before he left office, Romney’s staff had emails deleted from state servers, erasing much of the internal documentation from his four-year tenure as governor.

After Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia Party appeared to have won less than 50 percent of the vote in Sunday's parliamentary elections, several thousand people took to the streets of Moscow on Monday shouting “Down with Putin,” as the international community speculated on electoral violations. An official from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the election was “well organized” but admitted the counting process was “slanted in favor of the ruling party.” While President Dmitry Medvedev insisted the election had been fair, White House press secretary Jay Carney expressed “serious concerns.” Police detained more than 300 protesters, who cried for a revolution.

Credit-rating service Standard & Poor's announced today that it's putting the entire euro zone on "credit watch negative," which signifies 50-50 odds for a downgrade within 90 days. Earlier, Angela Merkel of Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy of France called for a new European Union treaty to try to keep the euro intact. The continent’s debt crisis has put the common currency in jeopardy, and the two leaders want to ensure that it never happens again. Merkel and Sarkozy, who met in Paris, want all 27 members to agree on automatic sanctions for countries that fail to keep their deficits in check. Other European leaders will join Merkel and Sarkozy in Brussels this week for a crucial summit to find a way out of the crisis. Meanwhile, Asian shares dropped on the news.

Pull up a chair: it’s on between two seasoned lawmakers. Newt Gingrich is firing back at House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s claim that she has dirt on him. Pelosi told Talking Points Memo that she served on a House committee that investigated him, and she has “a thousand pages of his stuff.” Gingrich responded Monday afternoon: “I want to thank Speaker Pelosi for what I regard as an early Christmas gift,” he said. “If she suggested that she's going to use material that she developed when she was on the ethics committee, that is a fundamental violation of the rules of the House, and I would hope that members would immediately file charges against her the second she does it.” And to think that the two were chummy in a 2008 ad together when the two urged action on … global warming.

The world is on the hook to help Afghanistan until 2030, according to comments from President Hamid Karzai at an international conference Monday dedicated to planning the country’s future. “We will need your steadfast support for at least another decade,” said Karzai—long past the 2014 date on which American troops are scheduled to pull out. He also called for money to help pay for security forces until 2030. The conference, in Bonn, Germany, was a bit of a letdown given that Pakistan refused to show up, more fallout from a deadly NATO raid on its soldiers last week.

Newt Gingrich is up big in Iowa in The Washington Post's latest poll, but can he raise enough money for the long haul? Having been one of the weakest fundraisers in the race, Gingrich is now scrambling to get his act together. On Monday he held a fundraiser and news conference at Manhattan’s Union League Club—an old-school gentlemen’s club popular among wealthy conservatives—followed by private meetings with potential donors. He then moved on to make his campaign debut before the weekly “Monday Meeting” at the Grand Hyatt, which generally draws a mixed crowd of rich conservatives and intellectuals known for their fundraising prowess.

In a major blow to former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky’s defense, all eight of the boys who were allegedly sexually abused by him are coming forward to testify, ABC News reports. Sandusky’s lawyer had said that one of the boys, named Victim 2 in the grand-jury report, had denied he was abused. The cases are alleged to have happened over 15 years. On Saturday The New York Times published an interview with Sandusky in which he says that former football coach Joe Paterno never confronted him about the accusations.

The 65-year-old head of the Federal Aviation Administration was placed on administrative leave Monday after being arrested for drunken driving Sunday night in northern Virginia. Randy Babbitt was driving on the wrong side of the Old Lee Highway outside the District of Columbia when he was stopped by police and charged with driving while intoxicated. The White House and Department of Transportation learned of the arrest Monday afternoon, and announced in a statement that the FAA's deputy administrator would take Babbitt's position until his employment status is settled.

Looks like life beyond Earth may not be so far off after all—just 600 light-years. Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet outside our solar system, called Kepler 22b. It is big enough and far enough away from its own star to be considered “habitable,” and is considered the “Goldilocks” of a five-year search for a planet that is the right temperature to maintain oceans on its surface, such as Earth. “This is a phenomenal discovery in the course of human history,” said one Kepler investigator. The planet “is the smallest, most nearly Earth-size planet ever found in the lukewarm zone around another sun where life could thrive.”

Count this one as a guaranteed bestseller: Amanda Knox has signed with Robert Barnett, the same literary agent who brokered deals for such big names as President Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney, among others. While few details have been revealed, Knoxovists will be eager to hear her side of the story, after she spent four years in an Italian prison before being acquitted of murdering her British roommate in Italy, Meredith Kercher. Knox’s boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, who was also accused and subsequently cleared of the murder, has signed a book deal with Sharlene Martin, who has signed several New York Times bestselling authors.

Nearly $4 million in cars piled up Sunday in Japan when eight Ferraris, three Mercedes, and a Lamborghini crashed on a wet highway. A pack of 20 supercars were traveling when the lead Ferrari hit the median guardrail; the cars behind it were then unable to brake in time. Fourteen cars ended up crashing, including two Toyotas. The cars were speeding, according to police, and 10 people sustained minor injuries. 

The U.S. Postal Service is planning to eliminate next-day delivery as part of an overhaul to save $3 billion. The USPS will close nearly half of its 500 mail-processing centers next year, meaning mail will have to travel farther from the post office to a processing center. As a result, first-class mail will no longer be delivered the next day, even within a community; it will take two to three days. Delivery of periodicals will take longer, between two and nine days.

Vladimir Putin may want to reconsider his run for president next year: his United Russia party took an unexpected drubbing at the polls over the weekend, receiving just under 50 percent of the vote. That’s not enough to oust the party from power in Parliament, but it does eliminate the two-thirds majority that allowed it to change the Constitution unchallenged. Opposition parties and European observers, meanwhile, are alleging widespread fraud, including ballot stuffing and bribing voters. The head of Russia’s Electoral Commission said United Russia should have a slim majority in Parliament, with 238 out of 450 seats.

“Sexting” may be as bogus a trend as it seemed all along: a new study in the journal Pediatrics says only 1 percent of kids ages 10 to 17 have shared nude photos, with an equal number saying they’ve shared suggestive but less graphic photos. While previous reports indicated as many as 20 percent of kids “sexted,” these studies often included subjects in their late teens and early 20s, and they also sometimes counted text messages that did not included photos. The study did suggest, however, that such photos do spread beyond their intended recipient: 7 percent of students said they’ve received such photos.

Looks as though his new mantra is Newt-Newt-Newt. Fox 5 Atlanta reports that former GOP candidate Herman Cain will endorse current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich for the presidential nomination. The news comes a day after Cain quoted a Pokémon movie and “suspended” his race. Meanwhile, Iowa polls show that Gingrich has a strong 26 percent of the vote, while Mitt Romney has only 18 percent. Ater Cain dropped out, several candidates, including Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul, made their case for why Cain supporters should vote for them.

The bunga-bunga days are over: Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Monti, unveiled a 30-billion-euro austerity package Monday. Monti proposed to raise 10 billion euros with a new property tax, a new tax on luxury items like yachts, a hike in the value-added tax, and an increase in the pension age; the rest of the money will be saved through budget tightening and economy-boosting measures. Monti issued the package as an emergency decree, meaning the measures will take effect immediately; however, he will need legislative approval within 60 days for them to continue.

He’s back. Tiger Woods sank a six-foot birdie putt on the last hole to win his first tournament in two years Sunday. At the start of the final day of the Chevron World Challenge—which the golfer hosts—Woods trailed American Zach Johnson by one stroke. After clinching the victory, Woods did his signature fist pump, something his fans haven’t seen in quite a while. It’s the 95th win of his career, and first since the 2009 Australian Open.

All that time spent harassing illegal immigrants may come at the expense of investigating other crimes. America’s self-described “toughest sheriff,” Arizona’s Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sex crimes between 2004 and 2007, according to the Associated Press. In just the town of El Mirage, where Arpaio’s office provided contract police services, he never followed through on 32 reported child molestations, even though suspects were known in all but six cases. A spokesman for Arpaio’s office declined to say why the cases weren’t investigated, saying only, “There are policy violations that have occurred here.”

Madonna is set to perform during the Super Bowl’s halftime show on Feb. 5. NBC made the announcement during Sunday’s Detroit–New Orleans game. The singer will collaborate with a team from Cirque du Soleil and others for the performance in Indianapolis. More than 162 million people tuned in to watch the Black-Eyed Peas perform from Dallas in February.

More trouble for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant: a pool of water was found to be contaminated, containing 300 times the level of radioactive cesium permitted. Officials say the leak will not disturb the cooling process of the facility, but it increases concerns that radioactive contaminants are entering the Pacific Ocean. A local report estimates that 220 metric tons of water has leaked from the factory to the ocean.

Two more men have accused a late former Boston Red Sox clubhouse manager of sexual abuse. The two say Donald Fitzpatrick, who died in 2005, molested them in the clubhouse at Fenway Park in 1991 when they were teenagers. The statute of limitations has expired for them to seek criminal charges, but they are asking the Red Sox for a $5 million settlement each. Fitzpatrick was also accused of molestation beginning in the 1970s, and settled with seven men in 2003.

Nancy Pelosi is downright gleeful that Newt Gingrich is surging in the polls, promising to reveal some damaging information about him if he clinches the Republican presidential nomination. “I know a lot about him,” the House minority leader told Talking Points Memo. “I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.” Pelosi promised to dump the information “when the time’s right.” Gingrich, meanwhile, is heading to Donald Trump’s Manhattan home to curry favor with the future debate moderator.

Scientists have long imagined “supermassive” black holes at the center of many galaxies, but they never realized just how big they could be. Until now. A team of U.S. scientists has spotted the two biggest black holes ever discovered in the center of two galaxies that are near ours. Each of them is nearly 10 billion times the mass of the sun, and thousands of times bigger than the black hole that sits at the center of the Milky Way. Scientists believe that in the early days of the universe, quasars—galactic light sources—were powered by these massive black holes.

A slew of journalists are coming out to draw attention to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s testy, guarded relationship with the press. Romney rarely grants interviews, much to the chagrin of Time’s Joe Klein. And when he does, as he did with Fox’s Bret Baier last week, he complained and said the interview was “overly aggressive.” Juan Williams called the interview “disastrous.” And The New York Times's Jim Rutenberg, who was invited by Fox to go backstage at the Mike Huckabee forum Saturday night, said Romney’s staff was defensive and difficult, insisting that Rutenberg “not physically approach Mr. Romney.” All this bad press is not helping him against the surging Newt Gingrich.

The E! network host hasn’t had it easy. Giuliana Rancic told NBC’s Today show Monday that she will undergo a double mastectomy—removing both her breasts—because other treatments have failed to eradicate her cancer. “For me, it was important to get the cancer out,” Rancic said. “Just get it out.” She also said that her husband. Bill, who has a reality show on Style Network with her, told her, “I just need you around for the next 50 years, kid.” Their show, Giuliana and Bill, chronicles their struggles to have children, and that wish did play a part in the mastectomy—medication that would follow more lumpectomy and radiation would delay parenthood for years.

Ginger White dealt a death blow to Herman Cain’s campaign by alleging a 13-year affair. As Cain officially bows out of the race, White tells The Daily Beast’s Leslie Bennetts how Cain’s arrogance persuaded her to go public and how she sees him as a sexist who thought “the man was always right”—and provides new details on his alleged financial support of her family. In the extensive interview, White rebukes Cain’s claim that he never had sex with her. “One time we were having sex,” she said. “And I was looking up at the ceiling, thinking about, ‘What am I going to buy at the grocery store tomorrow?’” She also dishes on why she thinks Cain’s wife engaged in willful self-denial.

Violence gripped Iraq on Monday during Ashura commemorations, one of the holiest Shiite ceremonies. Three bombs targeted Shiite pilgrims in Iraq’s Hilla city, killing at least 22—mostly women and children—and wounded 60 more. And in the capital of Baghdad, at least seven people were killed and another 13 wounded by a roadside bomb—Shiites were also the target. Ashura commemorates the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson and defines Shiites, presenting an easy target for Sunnis who wish to inflame sectarian tensions. A Sunni insurgent group with links to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party said on Monday it would attack U.S. personnel even after troops withdraw at the end of the month.

President Obama delivered a statement Monday urging Congress to immediately pass a payroll-tax-cut extension before the measure expires by year’s end. After he wrapped up his remarks, the White House unveiled a “If Congress Doesn’t Act” countdown clock on its website to accompany its “How It Affects You” calculator, where the public can see how much money they can save if the cuts are extended. Obama blamed Senate Republicans for punting the plan, which he said would harm the economy. “It’s the right thing to do,” Obama said. He also urged lawmakers to approve long-term unemployment insurance before they go on their holiday break.