National: The Bank of America has agreed to pay $10 billion to Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Assoc.) to settle claims over sour mortgages. Fannie Mae, which was established during The Great Depression to help Americans buy homes, had claimed that the B of A subsidiary Countrywide had misrepresent billions of dollars in mortgages that ultimately went bad.

• Protesters gathered in Steubenville, Ohio over the weekend to object to the handling of what has become a nationally controversial rape case involving the high school football team last August. Two sophomores are accused of dragging an unconscious girl from party to party, sexually assaulting her and taking pictures. The girl did not report anything for a couple of days because she did not remember, she told investigators, and by then important evidence was lost. But pictures and videos surfaced. Some say the popular high school football town in this old steel town has been given a major break. Steubenville’s police chief said, “Nobody had the morals to say, ‘Hey, stop it, that isn’t right.’ If you could charge people for not being decent human beings, a lot of people could have been charged that night.”

World: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad vowed on Sunday to keep fighting the rebels he refers to as terrorists and proposed a peace agreement that would keep him in power. Assad offered elections and a new constitution, but that has been previously rejected as not enough while he’s in power. With rebels closing in on Damascus in a seesaw battle that has left 60,000 dead in two years, Assad says the rebellion is in part a foreign plot.

Pigskin News:  Notre Dame plays Alabama for the national college football championship today at 8pm EST. The NFL is down to 8 teams with two more playoff rounds to determine the Super Bowl matchup.

The Box:  Lowbrow beat highbrow at the box office over the weekend. Texas Chainsaw 3D at $23 million finished first over Django Unchained. Les Miserables, which has no chainsaws, finished fourth.

Kim-She: Recent photos of the wife of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have led to speculation that she might quietly have had a baby. Previous pictures seemed to show that Ri Sol-ju was pregnant, but on New Year’s day she was noticeably slimmer. Suggested names include Lil’ Kim. Yung-un and Sum Yung Kim. The name Kim Kardashian is already taken.

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