ASCENDANT MARCH 7-13 FUR The News: For the first time in two decades, a majority of fashion designers, and almost two-thirds of those in New York, are using fur in their work, according to a review of more than 130 collections shown on Style.com. Behind the News: The trend back toward fur, an expensive material long shunned because of protests by animal-rights activists, seemed surprising in a recession. But fur breeders and furriers have been courting designers aggressively with samples, junkets and technical help for a decade, especially those too young to remember the peak of anti-fur activism in the 1980s and '90s. FINANCIAL MARKETS The News: On the anniversary of hitting 12-year lows a year ago last week, the major stock indexes in the United States had rebounded by 50 to 70 percent, among the strongest 12-month performances on record. Behind the News: To many investors, the market gains felt more like recouped losses; make that, partly recouped losses. Though the broadest of the major indexes, the Nasdaq composite, reached new 18-month highs last week, it remained down by more than half from its peak, set at the height of the dot-com bubble 10 years ago last Wednesday. BILLIONAIRES: The News: Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico passed Bill Gates and Warren E. Buffett to top Forbes magazine's annual list of billionaires, the first person outside the United States to do so in 16 years. Behind the News Slim's immense net worth (estimated at $53.5 billion) is built mainly on phones: when Mexico privatized its telecommunications monopoly in 1990, Slim was the winning bidder. He is also in retailing, banking and construction, and has a minor stake in The New York Times Co. Rounding out the top five were two industrialists from India, Mukesh Ambani and Lakshmi Mittal. TIGER WOODS: The News: Tiger Woods, who has not played in a golf tournament since mid-November, was said to be planning to return to competition at the Masters in April, and to have hired a new public relations consultant to help with his return: Ari Fleischer, formerly George W. Bush's press secretary. Behind the News: Woods himself wasn't talking, but the reports, attributed to unidentified people in his camp, were not denied. Fleischer has done public relations work for sports figures, including helping Mark McGwire, the steroid-tainted slugger, return to baseball this spring as a hitting instructor. RENAISSANCE MAVERICK: The News: Caravaggio, the Italian Renaissance master of hyper-realistic painting, has overtaken Michelangelo as a subject of academic study, a University of Toronto art historian says. Behind the News: The historian, Philip Sohm, said it was not that scholars had run out of fresh things to say about Michelangelo. Rather, he said, the classically steeped work of Michelangelo, with its ideal human forms and epic scenes, may seem less germane to modern eyes than the work of the bohemian Caravaggio, whose off-of-the-street models and authentic subjects challenged Renaissance painting. LAUGH LINES JAY LENO I love this. Radio host Rush Limbaugh says he will leave the United States if health care reform passes. Well, if that doesn't get the Democrats to rally, nothing will. Record ratings for the Oscars last night. Kathryn Bigelow won best director for her film about the Iraq war. But in her speech, she forgot to thank the two people without whom this film could never have been made -- Bush and Cheney. Earlier today, the president of Haiti was at the White House to meet with President Obama. He said the people of his country need jobs, they need places to live, and they need health care. And then the president of Haiti spoke. DAVID LETTERMAN Tomorrow on 'The Early Show,' host Harry Smith is having a live colonoscopy. I know what you're thinking: Finally, real breakfast fun. JIMMY FALLON This is cool. President Obama is going to hold a major space conference to unveil an ambitious new plan for NASA. Obama called it 'one small step for man, one giant distraction from health care, two wars, and the recession.' 