WORLD

Sixteen months after stepping down from power, ex-president Hosni Mubarak is still dictating the course of Egyptian politics.

The pizza CEO-turned GOP hopeful-turned pundit will be taking over the time slot of radio talk show host Neal Boortz, who announced he was retiring from his four-decade career Monday morning

Iran has finally admitted, though not officially, that its top military force is operating in Syria. But how are the elite soldiers of the Quds Force helping the Assad regime? And what will they do as the crisis develops?

Move over, George Clooney. The Obama campaign is taking full advantage of star power from two famous fashion icons to raise money, an effort being mocked by the Republican Party as pretentious and out of touch.

Polls show Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin slightly ahead of his Democratic rival on the eve of a recall election that has attracted national attention and a tsunami of outside spending.

She will journey to Georgia on Tuesday, travel to Azerbaijan on Wednesday, and then move on to Turkey.

Speaking at a conference in Italy over the weekend, Soros said: The Greek crisis is liable to come to a climax in the fall.

A 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia's West Java province at 6:18 p.m. local time Monday, sending shock waves through the capital of Jakarta, about 100 miles from the epicenter.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is expected to be pressured on the Syrian crisis when he meets with European leaders in St. Petersburg on Monday.

He asserted, there is no need for the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to visit the country and monitor its weapons programs.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said two weeks ago he expected a framework co-operation deal to be signed with Iran when he returned to Vienna from a rare trip to Tehran.

Further straining the trade ties between both the countries, China has issued an advisory cautioning its citizens against traveling to India in response to an Indian embassy's warning last week to its traders against doing business with Chinese sellers.

Petrol price woes in India are not going to end anytime soon. Oil companies, which had raised Rs 7.5 per liter over a week ago, announced a rollback of Rs 2 Saturday after wide protests against the hike. However, the companies Monday said that the prices would be reviewed June 15.

An unmanned US aerial strike targeting a militant base in Pakistan's northwestern tribal area Monday morning killed at least 15 terrorists, Pakistani media reported citing security officials.

Falling global oil prices as well as declining core inflation and growth in India give the Reserve Bank of India room to adjust interest rates, a deputy governor said, two weeks before a policy review for which expectations have been growing for a rate cut.

Japan's Topix Index slumped to its lowest level in 28 years as investor confidence was severely hit by disappointing U.S. jobs data, the increasing euro zone debt crisis and the weakening Chinese economy.

China's non-manufacturing sector grew at a slower pace in May compared to the previous month, raising concerns about the slowdown in the country's economic growth.

Tea Party members and other conservatives would like Americans to believe that the United States? problems started in 2009, but nothing could be further from the truth. Three major policy errors by President George W. Bush last decade substantially worsened the U.S.?s fiscal condition, and the nation has been trying to recover ever since.

Advisers to President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney turns assigning blame for May's grim jobs figures on Fox News Sunday, as the candidates try to spin a paltry 69,000 new jobs into a positive talking point for the incumbent and his Republican challenger.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appeared in person Sunday to deny that his forces were responsible for the Houla massacre.

Egyptians continued protesting into Sunday, outraged that a court spared Mubarak's life.

China's official news agency on Sunday warned US against muddying the waters in the disputed zones of South China Sea, responding to Washington's statement that it would increase its military presence in the region.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy proposed on Saturday that the 17 countries in the euro zone create a common fiscal authority, with each surrendering a significant amount of its national sovereignty to send a signal to financial markets about the certainty of their single-currency experiment.

Mitt Romney would not offer relief for the 11.5 million U.S. homeowners with underwater mortgages if he were elected president, one of his advisers said Saturday. The assertion contrasts with Romney's own words in January: The idea that somehow this is going to cure itself by itself is probably not real.

Florida state officials will continue their quest to purge purportedly ineligible people from voter-registration rolls, a representative of Secretary of State Ken Detzner said Saturday.

The recent discoveries of gas in the eastern Mediterranean creates a whole new energy paradigm for two nations -- Cyprus and Israel -- which formerly were believed to possess no natural resources at all. Their subsequent alliance has further upset the geopolitical balance in the Near East.

American military machines are endangered by phony components from China. No one has been hurt yet as a result, but solving the problem will be a herculean task.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Saturday that the country will shift most of its warships to the Asia-Pacific region by 2020 as part of a new military strategy.

According to the judge who sentenced Mubarak, last year's uprisings ended 30 years of intense darkness -- black, black, black, the blackness of a chilly winter night.