To veterans of past social movements, the Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York and spread nationwide have been a welcome response to corporate greed and the enfeebled economy. But whether the energy of protesters can be tapped to transform the political climate remains to be seen.

With combative speeches at the United Nations, the Palestinian and Israeli leaders have locked themselves into positions that seem to preclude a resumption of peace talks and usher in a season of confrontation over a Palestinian state.

Treated to a hero's welcome in Egypt this week and flexing his military muscle in the eastern Mediterranean, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is basking in growing popularity in an Arab world being transformed by revolution and war.

The real takeaway from U.S. President Barack Obama's jobs agenda?

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's autobiography presents a robust defense of his push for the U.S. invasion of Iraq without critically examining two issues central to America's near-failure in the war: The Bush administration's decisions to disband the country's army and to banish all members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

Like his five predecessors, Japan's new prime minister is unlikely to last much more than a year unless he can unify his divided party and persuade the opposition to help solve the country's myriad problems.

Vines creep across Tomioka's empty streets, its prim gardens overgrown with waist-high weeds and meadow flowers. Dead cows rot where they were left to starve in their pens. Chicken coops writhe with maggots, a sickening stench hanging in the air.

It was the week the eurozone debt crisis reached France, one of the twin pillars of the European currency alongside Germany.

Rick Perry, the Republican governor of Texas who's likely to soon join the race for the party's presidential nomination, cast his lot and burnished his credentials this weekend with the vastly important base of evangelical Christians and social conservatives.

Facing tenacious uprisings, the leaders of Syria, Libya and Yemen must have thought of their own possible fates when they saw their one-time peer Hosni Mubarak in a defendants cage, on trial for charges that could carry a death sentence.