J.J. McGrath

Victoria Azarenka became the first Belarusian to win a grand-slam singles title when she claimed the Australian Open title with a crushing 6-3, 6-0 victory over Maria Sharapova of Russia on Saturday.

Fighting sanctions with sanctions in a test of strength with the West over its nuclear ambitions, Iran warned on Friday it may halt oil exports to Europe next week in a move calculated to hurt ailing European economies.

Islamist sect Boko Haram, whose attacks have killed hundreds in oil-rich Nigeria, will continue its campaign until the country is ruled by sharia law, a senior member was quoted as saying on Saturday: We have our sights set on [bringing sharia to] the whole world, not just Nigeria.

The U.S. administration on Friday expanded its main foreclosure-prevention program and pushed to open it to those with loans backed by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a move that could meet resistance from their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

South Korean regulators on Friday endorsed Hana Financial Group Inc.'s 3.9 trillion won ($3.48 billion) acquisition of Korea Exchange Bank, paving the way for U.S. private-equity firm Lone Star's sale of the local lender and closing the final chapter of a drawn out and acrimonious saga.

Swiss police will charge more than 100 demonstrators with breaching the peace after they rallied in Bern Saturday to protest against the World Economic Forum (WEF), which holds its annual meeting in Davos this week.

Gun and bomb attacks by Islamist insurgents in Kano kill at least 178 people, a doctor claims as hospitals struggle to cope with carnage.

Iraq risks sliding back toward authoritarian rule with Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's security forces cracking down on protests, harassing opponents, and torturing detainees, a U.S.-based human-rights monitor said on Sunday.

Mustafa Mohammed Abdul Jalil, the chairman of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council (NTC), warned on Sunday the country could be heading toward a bottomless pit after protesters stormed a government office in Benghazi while he was inside.

The United States has not decided whether to satisfy a request from the Taliban to release five prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan said on Sunday.

After a bruising clash in South Carolina, Republican presidential front-runners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich will take their battle to a bigger stage when the campaign moves to Florida on Sunday. The Palmetto State's primary-election results indicate their fight may last quite a few more rounds.

Appearance Vs. Reality: The recent death of a senior al-Qaida leader as the result of a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan's tribal badlands -- the first such strike in almost two months -- signaled that the U.S.-Pakistan intelligence partnership is still in operation despite political tensions.

As natural-gas prices plunge to their lowest level in a decade, Venezuela plans to tap one of Latin America's biggest gas fields as it seeks to boost power generation and even help revive stagnant oil production.

An appeals court in Washington has dismissed a lawsuit by the financial industry challenging new federal regulations aimed at cracking down on speculation in commodities markets, a move that will likely delay a decision about whether the rules pass muster.

Arab states, divided over how to handle the crisis in Syria, are likely to extend a peace mission there that critics say is handing President Bashar al-Assad more time to kill opponents of his rule.

Nine bodies have been recovered from a passenger vessel that sank off the Iranian coast with 22 people aboard, but five survivors have been rescued, the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday.

Protesters stormed the Benghazi headquarters of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) Saturday while its chairman was still in the building. The attack is a blow to the self-appointed but internationally recognized NTC, and it underscores growing discontent over the way it is running the country.

Brazilian state-controlled oil company Petrobras ousted CEO Jose Sergio Gabrielli, the man who oversaw the discovery of the largest oil find in the Americas in decades, local media reported on Saturday.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Saturday it considered the likely return of U.S. warships to the Persian Gulf more or less routine activity, backing away from previous warnings to Washington not to re-enter the area.

The Muslim Brotherhood won by far the biggest share of seats allocated to party lists in Egypt's first freely elected parliament in decades, final results released on Saturday confirmed, and it named one of its top officials to lead the assembly.

Plans to launch a European ratings agency to compete with Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service, and Fitch Ratings are at an advanced stage, and a new private institution could start business as soon as the first half of this year, German businessman Roland Berger told an Italian newspaper.

No one calls him Sir Allen Stanford anymore. He is inmate number 35017-183. On Monday, the Texas financier heads to court in Houston to battle charges that he operated a $7 billion Ponzi scheme from Stanford International Bank Ltd., his offshore bank on the Caribbean island of Antigua.

The winner of South Carolina's Republican presidential primary has gone on to secure the party's nomination in every election since 1980. Mitt Romney must overcome Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina primary on Saturday to retain his aura of inevitability as the GOP's eventual nominee.

The U.S. Congress has the constitutional right to legislate permits for cross-border oil pipelines such as the TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL, according to a new legal analysis released late on Friday.

The Islamist sect Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for coordinated bomb attacks on security forces in the northern Nigerian city of Kano that killed at least seven people late Friday.

Yemen's parliament approved a law on Saturday granting outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh immunity from prosecution over the killing of protesters, in a bid to push ahead with a plan to ease him out of power and end nearly a year of unrest.

Researchers studying a potentially more lethal, airborne version of the bird-flu virus have suspended their studies because of concerns the mutant virus they have created could be used as a devastating form of bioterrorism or accidentally escape the lab.

European Union ministers meeting on Monday will attempt to reach agreement on a new treaty enforcing stricter budget controls in the Eurozone that could allow the bloc's highest court to fine countries that do not adopt key rules.

Major powers signaled on Friday their willingness to reopen talks about curbing Iran's suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons but said Tehran must show it is serious about any negotiations.