Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - Mar 21, 2011

Equal time:

Former AK Gov SARAH PALIN is globe trotting (cue the liberal aneurysms). She's making stops in Israel and India over the weekend in an obvious move to hone her foreign policy chops for future aspirations.
She's due to have a private meeting on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister BANJAMIN NETANYAHU, and visit key holy sites in Jerusalem. (Pacelli)

Two survivors of the Japanese disaster were rescued yesterday, 9 days after the quake struck. They are an 80-year-old woman and her 16-year-old grandson, buried under the wreckage of their flattened home about 50 miles northeast of Sendai, an area ravaged by the tsunami. Eventually the grandson was able to dig out and get to the roof of the house and alert rescuers.
They survived by wrapping themselves in towels and eating yogurt and drinking water, milk and Coke. The grandmother is okay; the teenager may be suffering from hypothermia.
Official numbers as of Sunday evening: almost 8,500 dead; 13-thousand missing, and an estimated 15-thousand people killed in the Miyagi prefecture alone. A half million survivors remain in shelters. (Maiman)

Filling a need:

New for people filing their taxes this year: A host of smart phone applications, including apps that allow you to submit your returns and check up on your refunds.
Turbo Tax has an app called Snap Tax that can pay your taxes from your iPhone or Android phone.
According to Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, you use the phone to take a picture of the W2 form you get from your employer (that lists your annual earnings and your deductions), you answer a few questions and you file your taxes.
You can download Snap Tax for $14.95.
But some apps are free, including one from the IRS called IRS2Go. You can find that app at the agency's website, IRS.gov. It works with both iPhones and Android phones, lets you check on the status of your refund, and features news from the IRS.
Some tax prep firms also have their own free apps.
Editor's note: I'm one of those people who doesn't pay a dime because, unlike you, I just don't believe in overburdening the IRS with large unwieldy tax payments. (Maiman)

Sucking the life out of the wire services:

ELIN NORDEGREN has quite the new bachelorette pad. TMZ.com reports the ex-wife of TIGER WOODS dropped twelve-million-bucks on a place in Palm Beach, Florida. The property features plenty of room to spread out with seventeen-thousand-feet of living space and is located right on the beach. Her philandering ex-husband isn't too close --Tiger bought a place about ten-miles away on Jupiter Island. (Lee)

More Tiger poop:

Tiger's new girlfriend was unveiled over the weekend. She's a blonde, 22-year-old Florida girl named ALYSE LAHTI JOHNSTON. Alyse is currently a student at Ohio-based Northwood University, and Radar Online reports she's the stepdaughter of a major sports-agency exec, and she and Tiger been seeing each other for several weeks.
Her biological father is former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher JEFF LAHTI. She was introduced to Woods by her stepfather, ALISTAIR JOHNSTON.
Editor's note: The question on everybody's mind: would you introduce YOUR daughter to Tiger?

And, while we're on the subject: she's ba-a-a-a-ck! She certainly has under-cover experience!
RACHEL UCHITEL, whose affair with TIGER WOODS helped break up his marriage, has graduated from private-detective school, taken weapons training in Los Angeles and is ready to become a private eye.
The NY Post caught up with her as she was setting up shop in the Big Apple and the 36-year-old said she's searching for a missing person.
One thing she's not interested in: cases which involve cheating husbands: "Obviously, people want to go down the 'cheating' road, and assume it's all about me finding cheating spouses," she said. "But I'm less interested in that.
Rachel is seeking a carry permit for a gun in both New York and California, and will be working for the DGA Detectives Academy in Los Angeles, which runs the private eye school and has associates in New York and Las Vegas.