ELECTIONS

The previous opposition alliance comprised four parties, including the biggest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which is also part of the new coalition.

Environmental advocacy group the Sierra Club endorsed President Obama Wednesday, supporting his 2012 reelection campaign.

Former Mali President Amadou Toumani Toure was ousted last month following a military coup

France plans new measures to clamp down on media and social networks that publish exit polls and partial results of Sunday's presidential election ahead of their official release, and will not hesitate to sue lawbreakers, the country's poll watchdog said.

With just four days before the first round of voting, Former town planning minister Fadela Amara announced she would vote for frontrunner Hollande.

The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council disbanded a task force that had advocated for “Stand Your Ground” laws in states as well as voter identification laws.

Nobel Prize Laureate and opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, plans to leave Myanmar to visit Europe - her first time out of the country in 24 years.

The U.S. economic outlook for next year is being shadowed by what economists are calling the fiscal cliff of 2013 -- the expiration of enormous tax cuts and transfer payments.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, an influential conservative organization that helps craft state-level legislation, announced on Tuesday that it would halt its work on a Public Safety and Elections Task Force that had formulated voter identification and gun laws.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy denied allegations that he tried for years to sell a nuclear reactor to former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Former conservative French President Jacques Chirac will vote for the socialist Francois Hollande in Sunday's presidential elections instead of his successor and one-time protege, the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

Former guerrilla freedom fighter Taur Matan Ruak won the East Timor presidential elections held Monday, according to the preliminary results announced Tuesday.

Australia is planning to pull out most of its troops by 2013, a year earlier than planned. Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced Tuesday that the mission in Afghanistan was nearly completed and most of its troops would be back home by 2013, smh.com reported.

Senate Republicans on Monday afternoon blocked President Barack Obama's Buffett Rule legislation, which would have put a 30-percent minimum tax on millionaires.

Seven years ago, The Huffington Post was largely considered to be an aggregation blog. This year, the empire and brainchild of Arianna Huffington won its first Pulitzer for David Wood's ten-part series about wounded veterans, Beyond the Battlefield.

If he holds out long enough, Angus King could become a kingmaker. The insistently independent Senatorial candidate from Maine is adding extra angst to this November's closely contested Congressional elections.

Among those banned are former dictator Hosni Mubarak's spy chief Omar Suleiman, Muslim Brotherhood chief strategist Khairat el-Shater and hard-line Islamist Hazem Abu Ismail.

I can announce that we are lifting sanctions considerably, Carr said.

East Timor is holding the presidential run-off elections Monday and more than 700,000 eligible voters are expected to cast their votes in 650 polling booths. Two former freedom fighters -Francisco Guterres and Taur Matan Ruak - are in a close race in the run-off.

Three top contenders for Egypt's presidency were scrambling to stay in the race Sunday after the authorities disqualified them.

It's been 14 months since protests forced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to resign, but a number of his former ministers are still wielding real power, and they could holding onto it for the foreseeable future.