It’s been a rough couple of weeks for Mitt Romney. The race for the GOP nomination had tightened after former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum swept the Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado primaries on Feb. 7. But now, Romney has some good news coming his way. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is set to announce Thursday that he’s endorsing Romney, who grew up in the Wolverine State. The former governor of Massachusetts swayed Snyder, who was elected in 2010, with his fiscal record and his plan to cut spending. Michigan’s primary will take place Feb. 28. Unfortunately, President Obama is still projected to have a double-digit lead over both GOP candidates in the national election.

Following President Obama’s video message on Saturday urging Congress to pass a longer-term extension of the payroll-tax cut, the House and Senate reached a final agreement on the legislation Wednesday night, paving the way for votes in both chambers this week. Democratic Sen. Max Baucus announced the agreement late on Wednesday, ending a long day of ironing out kinks and discussing details of the $150 billion measure, which will extend a cut in the payroll taxes paid by most Americans and renew jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. Though Republicans have fought the issue for months, they are eager to move on so that, come election time, Obama and other Democrats in Congress can’t claim that the GOP was thwarting a middle-class tax cut.

Following the arrests of three Iranians in Tuesday’s bombings in downtown Bangkok, Thailand’s police chief has said the suspects were planning to attack Israeli diplomats, bolstering Israel’s claims that the group was part of an Iranian-backed terror network. He also confirmed that the explosive found at the blast site on Tuesday—a homemade “sticky” bomb—matched the devices planted on Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia the day before. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the violence, Iran responded by saying the allegations were baseless and blamed Israel for spreading conspiracy theories in an attempt to sour Iran’s relationship with Thailand.

He’s no Mitt Romney when it comes to income, but presidential candidate Rick Santorum has been doing OK lately. The former senator from Pennsylvania released four years—more than any other candidate—of tax returns, covering 2007 to 2010. The Santorums filed jointly, bringing in an adjusted gross income of about $659,000 in 2007, $952,000 in 2008, $1.1 million in 2009, and about $923,000 in 2010. They also paid their share of taxes, forking over between $167,000 and $310,000 per year. ABC News’ Michael Falcone did a “back of the envelope” calculation: in 2010 Santorum paid a 28.4 percent rate, compared with 13.9 percent for Romney.

In one of the largest mass deaths in a prison in decades, 357 died Tuesday night after a fire tore through a penitentiary in Honduras. While officials say there was a short circuit of the electrical system, there are rumors that an inmate set fire to his mattress, starting the blaze, which lasted 40 minutes. Nearly 100 inmates fled after being rescued. Most of the victims choked to death in their cells. Many bodies are destroyed, making the identification process hard. Honduras, which has the highest murder rate in the world, is suffering from overcrowding in prisons (in 2010 the government ordered a state of emergency), with 13,000 inmates housed in 24 institutions that should hold only 8,000. This is partially due to a 2009 coup. President Porfirio Lobo has suspended the director of the prison and the head of the national prison system and ordered an investigation into the incident.

The Obama administration may not be moving to intervene in Syria’s ongoing massacre, but it isn't buying President Bashar al-Assad’s promises of reform. Responding to an announcement by Assad Wednesday that he has ordered a referendum for a new constitution, Press Secretary Jay Carney said the move was “quite laughable” in light of the regime’s daily assault on its citizens. The new constitution pledges to allow additional political parties to participate in Syria’s government, but Carney said Assad never delivered any of the reforms promised thus far.

After weekend protests against new austerity measures, talks for a second bailout have stalled in Greece as leaders butt heads. Euro-zone finance ministers have put off their decision on a more than €100 trillion deal needed to save the country from default until next week, but Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads the gathering of European ministers, said that “substantial further progress” has been made. Tempers flared as Karolos Papoulias, Greece’s president, lashed out at the German finance minister for what Papoulias perceived as slights to his country, saying, “We always had the pride to defend not just our own freedom, not just our own country, but the freedom of all Europe.” It’s another sign that politicians and protesters alike are feeling the pain in Greece as further gouges are taken out of the country’s budget in pursuit of another bailout.

Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili has said the country is ready to resume talks over its nuclear program, according to a letter obtained by the Associated Press. The letter was sent yesterday, prior to Iran’s latest threat to cut off oil exports to Portugal, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Greece in retaliation for European sanctions. Iran coupled its threats on Wednesday with the announcement that it had achieved two major steps toward producing nuclear fuel. The letter, received by world powers on Wednesday, was a response to one sent in October by EU foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton in an attempt to start a dialogue. Beyond being ready to resume talks, the letter offers no concessions. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad oversaw the insertion of the first domestically made fuel rod into a research reactor on Wednesday. The move was perceived in the West as a defiant response to sanctions that are crippling Iran’s economy.

A source briefed on Whitney Houston’s behavior before her tragic death tells CNN that the singer was drinking heavily on two mornings last week. Houston reportedly ordered drinks before 10 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday from the hotel’s bar and pool. The guests who saw this say Houston caused a ruckus, complaining that her beverages were “watered down” or stuffed with ice. The singer was also “disheveled” and wearing mismatched clothing. The source tells CNN that Houston jumped in and out of the pool—and did somersaults. While some of the drinking was done alone, she was also with an entourage and a male companion. On her final day, Saturday, she was seen drinking by the pool in the morning. Houston's funeral service this Saturday will be broadcast live, and jumbo screens will be set up outside the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, N.J.

Kobe and Vanessa Bryant may have submitted their divorce papers, but apparently they still have the hots for each other. The exes were photographed smooching on Valentine’s Day, after Vanessa watched the Lakers defeat the Atlanta Hawks. Though she filed for divorce in December and has already reaped the benefits of a property settlement, taking all three of their Newport Beach estates, it looks as if she and Kobe might be reconciling. The divorce is scheduled to be finalized in mid-June, so they have plenty of time to decide whether they want to give marriage another shot.

Whitney Houston’s godmother, the incomparable Aretha Franklin, will sing at the pop diva’s funeral in New Jersey this weekend. The service will take place at New Hope Baptist Church, where Houston sang in the choir as a child, and will be a private affair. The family had considered having a memorial service at the 18,000-seat Prudential Center, but in the end decided on a more personal ceremony. The event will be invitation-only, though one pool camera will be allowed to broadcast from the funeral and officials are expecting throngs of fans to line the streets around the church.

The boys are back. After taking 2011 away from touring, the Dave Matthews Band, which has sold more than 17 million concert tickets since it began touring in the early 1990s, is hitting the road once again. The last time the band hit the concert circuit was in 2010, when it sold more than a million tickets and grossed $61.2 million. The 2012 tour will begin May 18 in Woodlands, Texas, and continue throughout the country, ending in Mountain View, Calif., on Sept. 9. The Seattle-based band sold more tickets than any other band in the world from 2000 to 2009, moving 11.2 million tickets. The band has returned to the studio to record with producer Steve Lillywhite, which it worked with on its first three studio albums. The new album is due out later this year.

Mitt Romney is in the lead in Arizona, but Rick Santorum isn’t far behind. A new survey by the American Research Group shows that 38 percent of likely Republican primary voters in the state are behind Romney, while 31 percent support Santorum. The findings show a sharp change in voters’ attitudes since January, when Gingrich was tied with Romney at 32 percent. Now Gingrich is in third place with 15 percent. According to the poll Romney has won the support both women and Tea Party supporters, while Santorum is most popular among Arizona’s men. 

The pharmaceutical company Roche is telling hospitals that there’s a fake version of its cancer drug Avastin floating around American markets. This was discovered after counterfeit vials were shown to have none of the active ingredients that combat cancer. The FDA is investigating, though it’s unknown just how much of the fake drug is on the market—and whether any patients have been using it. In regard to the packaging, the fake drugs apparently don’t look much like Avastin: some of text is in French, and the numbers are all wrong. The incident is part of a growing trend, once thought to be confined to developing nations, of fake drugs in the U.S.

New York Knicks phenom point guard Jeremy Lin isn’t quite ready to prove his critics right. “Linsanity” continued Tuesday, as the Knicks beat the Raptors 90–87, behind Jeremy Lin’s 27 points and 11 rebounds. Lin hit a three-pointer to tie the game with a minute left, then hit another three with less than one second left to put the Knicks ahead for good. The win is the sixth straight for the Knicks, who are 5–0 with Lin. His record-setting NBA debut continues.

A lady was the champ last year, but a male Pekingese named Malachy took home the grand prize at this year’s 136th Westminster Kennel Annual Dog Show. Malachy now has 115 best-in-show ribbons under his belt, having been crowned the top toy of America’s most prestigious dog show on Tuesday night. Among the more famous pooches strutting their furry derrieres in Madison Square Garden this year was a chow chow co-owned by Martha Stewart, who won the best in its breed. For a special Valentine’s Day treat, the owners of another best in breed-winning Tibetan mastiff were married in the backstage benching area surrounded by hundreds of howling purebreds.

Leave it to the Swiss to always be cleaning up everyone else’s mess. Switzerland is taking the matters of outer space into its own intergalactic hands, announcing Wednesday that it will launch an $11 million “janitor satellite” to sweep up an ever-dirtying outer space. The satellite, named CleanSpace One, will launch in the next three to five years and will be tasked with cleaning up “space junk,” including two out-of-use orbiting Swiss satellites. NASA reports that upward of 500,000 pieces of debris—rocket stages, broken satellites—are orbiting earth, many traveling at up to 17,500 miles per hour. Switzerland hopes to eventually “offer and sell a whole family” of janitor satellites.

Three days after Whitney Houston’s death, her ex-husband, Bobby Brown, hasn’t been able to see their daughter, who was hospitalized for anxiety the night that Houston died. Sources tell TMZ that Brown is furious at Cissy Houston, Whitney's mother, who is allegedly keeping him from seeing 18-year-old Bobbi Kristina. Brown flew to Los Angeles on Sunday night to see his daughter, who is being cared for by Cissy and the rest of Whitney’s immediate family at a home in the L.A. area.

A 70-pound teenage Wisconsin girl told police that her father and stepmother had locked her in the basement for more than five years, starving her and forcing her to eat her own feces. Law enforcement picked her up in the Madison area last week. The parents were arrested Friday on suspicion of child abuse and neglect. The 15-year-old girl, who was found barefoot and in her pajamas, said in a police affidavit that she had been made to live in the basement since 2006, and fled the house after her stepmother allegedly threatened to throw her down the stairs. Medical experts told police that the girl’s development had likely been arrested by severe malnutrition.

It looks like there may not be a major showdown over renewing the payroll-tax cut after all. Late Tuesday lawmakers reportedly reached a tentative deal on the payroll tax and jobless benefits. Earlier, House Republican leaders announced they will support an extension of the tax holiday through the end of the year without demanding that it be paid for by cuts elsewhere in the budget, as they had during the fight at the end of last year. The plan came as a surprise to many Republicans, several of whom vocally attacked the deal. Democrats appear warily optimistic, though some, including Nancy Pelosi, say they want to press for the inclusion of benefits, such as unemployment insurance, which the GOP leadership has separated from the tax-cut extension.

Leave it to Vice President Biden to give a straight-talking toast to China's vice president, and likely future leader, Xi Jinping. “As Americans, we welcome competition,” Biden said during a State Department lunch. “But cooperation, as you and I have spoken about, can only be mutually beneficial if the game is fair.” Biden went on to lecture Xi on China's artificially depressed currency, jailed Chinese dissidents, and opposition to a U.N. resolution on Syria. President Obama made similar points during his meeting with Xi, though more diplomatically. Further complicating Xi's visit to the U.S., several rights advocates say a top State Department envoy on religious freedom was blocked from entering the country shortly before Xi's visit. Today Xi meets with Congress.

Rocker Dave Mustaine is not afraid to speak his mind. The Megadeth frontman has called Barack Obama “the most divisive president we've ever had,” argued that “John Kerry will ruin our country,” and has reportedly insisted that the U.S. should “build a great wall along the Mexican border and not let anybody in.” Naturally, Mustaine has weighed in on the 2012 election and thrown his support behind Rick Santorum. “You know, I think Santorum has some presidential qualities, and I’m hoping that if it does come down to it, we’ll see a Republican in the White House ... and that’s Rick Santorum,” he told MusicRadar.com. “I can’t bear to watch what’s happened to our great country. Everybody’s got their head in the sand. Everybody in the industry is like, ‘Oh, Obama’s doing such a great job ...’ I don’t think so. Not from what I see.”

Johnson & Johnson may have recalled faulty hip implants in the U.S., but they weren't about to let them go to waste. The company sold the implants overseas after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected them in the United States. They also continued to sell a related model that went on the market through a regulatory loophole. Johnson & Johnson formally recalled the models in August 2010 amid reports of high rates of failure in patients abroad, but in August 2009 the FDA had rejected the implant in a confidential letter that Johnson & Johnson never made public. It's not illegal to sell medical products overseas that have been rejected in the U.S., but the company's decision to withhold the FDA letter could damage its brand. Johnson & Johnson has 5,000 lawsuits pending because of the implants, including from patients who were crippled by metallic debris.

At least 357 people are reported dead in Honduras after a fire swept through a prison, the attorney general's office announced. Relatives say some prisoners escaped by breaking through the roof and leaping from the jail. Many died from burns or suffocation in their cells because a guard with keys could not be found. The fire broke out late Tuesday night and took more than an hour to put out. The prison holds more than 800 inmates, much more than its capacity allows. It's not clear what caused the fire.

President Bashar al-Assad says Syria will hold a referendum on a new constitution on Feb. 26, but even as he made this seeming concession, his forces increased their bombardment of opposition towns. Assad had said in January that the referendum would take place in March, but it's unclear how anyone could vote amid the worsening crackdown. The shelling of Homs is now in its 13th day, and regime forces raided Hama, firing on residential neighborhoods with anti-aircraft guns. Assad's forces even raided neighborhoods in Damascus. France is negotiating a new U.N. resolution that would create humanitarian corridors to aid civilians caught up in the violence.

A new New York Times/CBS News poll released Wednesday has found that a majority of Americans support some legal recognition for gay couples and also think an employer should cover contraception for women—even if her employer is a religious institution. Despite the recent high-stakes debate raged last week by conservatives about the government’s insistence that employers—even religious institutions—pay for birth control, the results of the poll suggested that many did not put this issue high up on their agenda. As argued by Andrew Sullivan in this week’s Newsweek, a majority of Catholics—59 percent—support religiously affiliated employers’ covering contraceptives, and 65 percent of Americans overall back the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans cover birth control.

With Rick Santorum surging ahead of Mitt Romney in the polls, the former frontrunner is returning to defend his home state. On Tuesday his campaign bought up nearly $1.3 million in airtime, and the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is bankrolling a new ad attacking Santorum. Romney also wrote an op-ed in The Detroit News defending his early opposition to the auto bailout. Both sides have been trying to lower expectations, with Romney saying he doesn't expect Michigan “to be a landslide,” and a Santorum adviser saying that the campaign is “under no illusions” that a win is likely.

Which Berlusconi trial is this one? The former Italian leader has six cases pending against him in the Milan courts currently, and the prosecutor in the case involving tax fraud isn’t taking it lightly. Fabio De Pasquale recommended on Wednesday that Berlusconi serve five years in prison for paying a British lawyer $600,000 to lie about the former prime minister’s tax evasion and other financial cover-ups involving his media holdings. A statute of limitations is due to expire on the case in July, meaning a verdict must be reached before then. Berlusconi stepped down from office in November amidst the financial downfall in Europe.

Despite having won a a 10th-grade polka competition and confessing to a “lifelong love of ballroom dancing,” Michele Bachmann confirmed today that “the recent rumors are false. I will not be joining Dancing With the Stars.” It’s unclear whether the former presidential hopeful was actually approached by the TV dance competition to appear on the show, but perhaps when she heard her fellow competitor Herman Cain had passed on the contest, she thought it best to follow suit and rule out dancing altogether. 

After being convicted of the rape and murder of a 29-year-old mother more than 30 years ago, Robert Brian Waterhouse is scheduled to be executed in Florida at 6 p.m. Wednesday evening. Waterhouse, who was paroled after serving eight years for the 1966 murder of an elderly woman in New York, came to the attention of police soon after the body Deborah Kammerer was discovered in the Tampa Bay surf in 1980. The intervening years have been taken up by a string of appeals, with the Florida governor first signing Waterhouse’s death warrant in 1985. Waterhouse’s request for a stay of execution was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier on Wednesday.

A source told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday that investigators are likely to hand out subpoenas to Whitney Houston’s doctors and pharmacies to determine if there is any relationship between her death and the prescription drugs found in her hotel room. Authorities have collected several prescription-drug bottles from Houston’s suite at the Beverly Hills Hilton, where she was found dead on Saturday night. A police source would not go into specifics of the case, but said it is standard practice for investigators to look into whether she was receiving too many prescriptions, whether the prescriptions were actually what was in the bottles.

Despite having won a a 10th-grade polka competition and confessing to a “lifelong love of ballroom dancing,” Michele Bachmann confirmed today that “the recent rumors are false. I will not be joining Dancing With the Stars.” It’s unclear whether the former presidential hopeful was actually approached by the TV dance competition to appear on the show, but perhaps when she heard her fellow competitor Herman Cain had passed on the contest, she thought it best to follow suit and rule out dancing altogether. 

Voters are becoming more optimistic about the state of the economy and, at the same time, are viewing the president more positively. A New York Times/CBS News poll finds that President Obama’s approval has hit 50 percent, the highest it’s been since May 2010, as Republican voters are also disillusioned by their party’s candidates for the presidency. However, The New York Times predicts, Obama’s chances in the general election might not be as good once a Republican candidate is selected. 

Rupert Murdoch’s news empire sustained another blow Wednesday as investigators announced that they are looking into “suspected criminality over a sustained period of time” involving alleged payouts by journalists at The Sun to law enforcement. The News Corp. tabloid has come under scrutiny after its own staff, fed up with police and management looking into their sources, lashed out. An anonymous source told Reuters that the investigation is looking into “regular cash payments totaling tens of thousands of pounds a year for several years to public officials, some of whom were effectively on retainers to provide information.” Wednesday’s announcement comes just days after some of the top reporters and editors at The Sun, which has the highest circulation of any newspaper in Britain, were arrested, along with several police officers.

Joseph Kennedy III is about to throw his hat into the race for a Massachusetts congressional seat, according to an anonymous member of his campaign. The grandson of the late Robert F. Kennedy will formally announce his bid on Thursday to take the place of retiring U.S. Rep. Barney Frank. During the New Hampshire primary last month, Kennedy announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to look for a seat in the Fourth Congressional District. He has since moved to Brookline, arranged fundraisers in Washington, and received several big union endorsements, including one on Tuesday from the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy officially entered the 2012 race in a televised interview Wednesday night after delaying the announcement for months. “I am a candidate for the presidential election,” Sarkozy responded to a point-blank question, silencing a growing murmur about whether he would run for reelection. Polls have consistently shown Sarkozy, who is deeply unpopular with the French public, trailing socialist challenger François Hollande. A spokesman for the Parti Socialiste brushed off the announcement. “When Nicolas Sarkozy speaks, there are no flashing red lights, it’s just another mundane event.”