J.J. McGrath

In an effort to cut gridlock and pollution in Guangzhou, authorities in the capital city of Guangdong province began a one-year trial program on Sunday that will cap the number of new automobiles hitting the streets, according to the state-owned Xinhua news agency.

The European Union's economic sanctions on Iran became fully effective on Sunday, but the Islamic Republic's deputy oil minister claimed the country will have no difficulty finding replacements for recent EU purchasers of its crude.

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) scored its second major win of the week over Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea: 005930) in intellectual-property litigation on Friday, as Apple was granted a court order blocking U.S. sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

Due to health issues, neither Greece's new prime minister, Antonis Samaras, nor the country's new finance minister, Vassilis Rapanos, will attend the European Union summit in Brussels scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

Five years into the most significant global financial crisis since the 1930s, the world's leaders have formulated neither the fiscal policies nor the monetary policies required to deal with it, according to the Bank for International Settlements' 82nd Annual Report, which was released Sunday.

Because of Tropical Storm Debby in the Gulf of Mexico, about 22.7 percent of the gulf's current daily oil production and about 22.9 percent of its current daily natural-gas production has been shut-in, according to the U.S. Interior Department's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

With Tropical Storm Debby more or less dead in the water of the central Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement estimates about 7.8 percent of the gulf's current daily oil production and about 8.16 percent of its current daily natural-gas production are now shut-in.

Both Syria and Turkey now agree the former shot down one of the latter's warplanes, believed to be an F-4E Phantom, over the Mediterranean Sea on Friday. The incident had been the subject of conflicting media reports.

Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo was removed from office by the bicameral National Congress in the space of two days, so that, as of Friday night, he is the former president, according to multiple media sources.

Certain financial-market commentators were -- er, uh -- commentating either early Monday or late Sunday (depending on one's global positioning) about a relief rally in this market or that market allegedly propelled by Greece's election results, which suggest the euro zone will not be falling apart. This week, anyway.

As ballots cast in Egypt's presidential election continue to be counted on Sunday, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of the country's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF, has renewed the military's commitment to hand over power to a civilian authority on July 1.

Leaders of the center-right New Democracy party and the left Syriza party -- Antonis Samaras and Alexis Tsipras, respectively -- agree on one thing: The former party won, and the latter party lost Greece's snap parliamentary elections on Sunday.

The Exxon Mobil Corp. will abandon its shale gas exploration projects in Poland because the company's test wells did not produce commercial quantities of gas, the daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported, according to Bloomberg News.

With French President Francois Hollande's Socialist Party appearing likely to cement its hold on the country's government in elections on Sunday, the Journal du Dimanche has reported that France wants the European Union to agree on growth-boosting measures worth ?120 billion ($151 billion) this year.

U.S. food wholesalers, food retailers, and food-service operators have been advised by the Food and Drug Administration to remove from their distribution chains all clams, mussels, oysters, and scallops -- collectively known as molluscan shellfish -- that have come to the U.S. from South Korea.

Nik Wallenda, a member of the famed Flying Wallendas family of aerialists, completed a historic tightrope crossing through the mist over Niagara Falls Gorge on Friday, stepping from a 2-inch wire onto safe ground in Canada to wild cheers from a crowd of thousands.

The Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) was awarded a contract worth $489.53 million to begin purchasing parts, materials, and components for a seventh batch of 35 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter planes, the U.S. Defense Department announced Friday.

China's easy money and Spain's hard choice to accept a bailout of its cash-strapped financials sector appear to have market participants feeling pretty chipper in the early going on Monday.

GE Capital -- the financial-services unit of the General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) -- may be in for a round of slicing and dicing by its corporate parent, according to an account appearing online in the Wall Street Journal.

Many analysts anticipated China's balance-of-trade figures for May would be OK, but the customs numbers reported Sunday were better than that expectation: Year on year, the country's exports rose 15.3 percent, and its imports rose 12.1 percent.

Combatants on the front lines in the war on cancer have a new weapon in the arsenal, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday OK'd Perjeta -- flanked by Herceptin and docetaxel -- for deployment in a three-pronged attack on the enemy cells in people with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

Developments in Greece and Spain could lead first to rating reviews and then to rating actions on all 17 countries in the euro zone, Moody's Investors Service announced Friday.

Spanish officials appeared hesitant to recognize the reality of their country's situation on Saturday as the nation agreed to accept as much as ?100 billion ($125 billion) in a bailout of its cash-strapped financials sector by one or both of the euro zone's rescue funds.

Missing out on Tennessee's hottest music and arts festival? Didn't wait on the long lines to get into the Comedy Theatre Tent? Fear not, because Comedy Central will be airing Thursday afternoon's stand-up comedy experience on June 23.

A long line of cars backed up the highways in Manchester, Tenn., as thousands waited to drive onto the beloved campgrounds on Bonnaroo's 700-acre farm. Spread across fields or in between trees, those that waited in line patiently cruised onto the land to park for four wild days of dirt, sun, and music.

A hit-and-run took place at Bonnaroo on Friday. No, a golf cart didn't go rogue, knocking out a corn-dog vendor. Instead, Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell, stars of the coming comedy film Hit and Run, made an appearance at the Bonnaroo Cinema Tent.

Five weeks after the Socialist Party's Francois Hollande scored a victory in France's presidential election, public-opinion polls show his fellow party members may soon win either a plurality or even a majority of the seats in the lower house of the country's Parliament.

Asian equity indexes are getting whacked on Monday a lot like European and U.S. stock indexes got whacked on Friday, with all of those open at this time having shed between 1 percent and 3 percent in the early going.

The biggest wildfire in the history of New Mexico continues to burn, but the ghosts of Mogollon appear safe from having their ectoplasm singed, at least for another tourist season. The Catron County Sheriff's Office will lift on Monday an evacuation order for the ghost town.