Rupert Murdoch, who has for ages been muttering about putting all of the content produced by News Corp. behind a pay wall in order to keep it away from Google, is attempting to force the company to change its attitude toward new media using a decidedly old-fashioned tactic: making them nervous about the competition. According to the Financial Times, Murdoch has been talking to Microsoft about being paid to remove its news content from Google’s search engine and making it available on Microsoft's search engine, the relatively uncool Bing. Says the FT:

Philippe Jannet, chief executive of Le Monde Interactif, said News Corp’s move was “crafty”. “Murdoch is playing on competition between Bing and Google. What he is doing is remarkable because it is a commercial solution. The French media, on the other hand, instinctively turn towards the state [for help].”

If the modern-day cougar, as Emily Nussbaum recently wrote in New York, is classically defined as a "vain, horny, lacquered, mouthy" older woman, unapologetic about getting what she wants, then Danielle Chiesi is a prime example of the breed, according to today's oddly slut-shamey Bloomberg article on the 44-year-old New Castle analyst, who was recently charged as part of the Galleon insider-trading ring. According to her friends and former co-workers, Chiesi was the life of the party, a brash, "blond, blue-eyed former beauty queen" with the mouth of a truck driver. She flaunted her sexuality. For instance:

When she worked at New York brokerage Furman Selz LLC in the early 1990s, she would show up in a tight red suit with red fishnet stockings, says a person who worked there at the time. She dated a man on the trading desk and didn’t try to hide it, the person says.

And she wasn't above using her looks to get what she wanted — namely, insider-trading information to funnel to Raj Rajaratnam.

As part of NBC's "Ephemeral News Obsessions of the Year" "People of the Year" special airing this Thursday, Matt Lauer spoke to Nadya "Octomom" Suleman, Susan Boyle, and hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger, whose wife unexpectedly provided couples worldwide with a bit of helpful relationship advice. It turns out that all a guy needs to do to spark up his sleepy marriage is execute the most celebrated aircraft landing in the history of man.

In the magazine this week, seven writers imagine moments in the lives of political figures, from Barack Obama to Rod Blagojevich. But we know that you, the readers, are more than capable of dreaming up some fictional scenarios of your own. So we want you to join in on the fun by sending us your own short stories — or movie treatments, or miniature one-act plays, or whatever format you desire — about a politician of your choosing. We'll publish them online all week and reward the best three with prizes like a night at Washington, D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel and dinner at Blue Hill. Check out all the guidelines here, and then get started. Based on your creativity in the comments section, we expect big things from some of you.

The Political Fictions Project [NYM]
The Political Fictions Contest [NYM]

Last week, as you know, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein apologized for "participating in things that were clearly wrong" that they "have reason to regret." As we predicted, no one found this mea culpa particularly satisfactory. The Times, in particular, after thinking through it for a few days, ripped the firm a new one this weekend. The apology, they said in an editorial, was "hollow," especially so long as Goldman continued to insist they did not need the $12.9 billion funneled to them via the taxpayer bailout of AIG, claims that the paper called "absurd."

On Saturday, all 58 Democrats and 2 independents in the Senate voted as one to bring the health-care bill to the floor for debate. As a Barack Obama staffer tweeted for the president, "America is now closer to real reform than ever in our history." Yes — so close. And yet so very far away. There are three Democrats, and Joe Lieberman, who, despite voting to begin debate on the bill, may not actually vote for the bill itself. There's Nebraska's Ben Nelson, who has delivered an itemized list of requested changes to Majority Leader Harry Reid. There's Joe Lieberman, who still insists he'll join a Republican filibuster on any bill that includes the public option. There's Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, for whom $300 million in state Medicaid funding was apparently enough to secure her vote to begin debate but not enough to overcome her concerns about the public option. And finally, there's Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, who, facing reelection in 2010, said she would not vote for the current version of the public option. At the same time, Vermont independent Bernie Sanders is warning that he and other liberals will withhold support if the bill lacks a public option — making the solution to this riddle quite elusive indeed. And we haven't even solved the abortion thing yet!

Senate Health Care Bill: What's Next [AP via HuffPo]
How health care reform could fall apart [Politico]