Denny Farhan's List: DNRT World News

Lawmakers on Tuesday spared auto dealers from new scrutiny and neared agreement on trading limits for banks as they raced to complete the biggest overhaul of the financial rule book since the 1930s.

Negotiators signed off on new consumer protections as they resolved some of the most contentious sticking points in the sweeping rewrite of Wall Street rules.

With the scrawl of a pen, GOP Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona awakened the dormant but explosive issue of illegal immigration, sending shock waves across the political spectrum in an election year when both parties had hoped to sidestep the topic.

Two months after Brewer signed a law instructing police to demand proof of a questionable person's legal status, voters have refocused on a topic that had faded into the background after Congress failed to overhaul the immigration system in 2007.

SEOUL (AFP) – North Korea's ruling communist party will convene a rare meeting of its political bureau in September to elect new leaders, Pyongyang's official media reported Saturday.

It will be only the third such meeting of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) since the communist state was founded in 1948 and will probably designate leader Kim Jong-Il's son as his political heir, analysts said.

TORONTO – Police raided a university building and rounded up hundreds of protesters Sunday in an effort to quell further violence near the G-20 global economic summit site a day after black-clad youths rampaged through the city, smashing windows and torching police cars.

NEW YORK – Behind the scenes, they were known as "illegals" — short for illegal Russian agents — and were believed to have fake back stories known as "legends."

U.S. authorities say they sometimes worked in pairs and pretended to be married so they could blend into American society as the couple next door. Aside from fake identities, authorities say, they used Cold War spycraft — invisible ink, coded radio transmissions, encrypted data — to avoid detection.

Can't take celebrity prankster Ashton Kutcher seriously? Think again. The actor has built something of a mini-media empire and is one of a handful of celebs who are making millions in their side jobs.

NEW YORK – A bomb scare that turned out to be a false alarm forced the evacuation of a terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport for two hours Sunday.

John Kelly, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the three main New York-area airports, said 250 to 300 passengers were evacuated from Terminal 1 at the airport around 6 p.m. and were allowed back in after 8 p.m.

WARSAW, Poland – Interim president Bronislaw Komorowski appeared to have held off a last-minute surge from the identical twin brother of the late president, who died in an April plane crash that shocked the country and forced Sunday's early election.

Exit polls showed Komorowski with a slight edge over Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who essentially conceded defeat in the presidential run-off by declaring before supporters, "I congratulate the winner."

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico – More than a dozen Mexican states held elections Sunday after campaigning besieged by assassinations and scandals that displayed the power of drug cartels and posed the biggest challenge yet to President Felipe Calderon.

With public discontent rising over the violence set off by Calderon's offensive against drug gangs, the opposition party that ruled Mexico for 71 years hoped to capitalize on the frustrations and gain momentum from the votes for governors, mayors and other posts in its bid to regain the presidency in two years.

NEW YORK – A Japanese eating champion who sat out this year's Coney Island Fourth of July hot dog contest apparently couldn't resist the temptation to hotdog afterward — and got arrested.

Six-time champion Takeru Kobayashi was sitting in a jail cell Sunday after the annual Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest.

NEW YORK – In the year of the pitcher, no-hit aces Ubaldo Jimenez and Roy Halladay lead a formidable National League All-Star staff. Rookie sensation Stephen Strasburg will have to wait at least another season before he gets the nod.

AL MVP catcher Joe Mauer was announced Sunday by Major League baseball as the fans' top choice for the July 13th All-Star game in Anaheim, Calif. Albert Pujols earned the most votes in the National League.

BELLEVUE, Iowa – The buggy driver whose horses trampled spectators at this town's Fourth of July parade had tried desperately to stop the rampage, clinging to the reins as the animals dragged him down the street, his family said Monday.

Mardell Steines was in the buggy with his wife, Janet, his daughter-in-law, his 7-year-old grandson and his 5-year-old granddaughter on Sunday when the horses bolted toward the end of the parade, injuring 24 people and killing Janet Steines.

TBILISI (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced concern over Russian plans to build up military bases in Georgian rebel regions and called on Moscow to end its "occupation" of Georgian territory two years after a war.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin shot back that some people believed Moscow's forces had liberated Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region in the August 2008 war, rather than occupying it.

Netherlands – A leading Dutch environmental agency, taking the blame for one of the glaring errors that undermined the credibility of a seminal U.N. report on climate change, said Monday it has discovered more small mistakes and urged the panel to be more careful.

But the review by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency claimed that none of the errors effected the fundamental conclusion by U.N. panel of scientists: that global warming caused by humans already is happening and is threatening the lives and well-being of millions of people.

An American geologist held by Chinese state security agents who stubbed lit cigarettes on his arms was sentenced to eight years in prison Monday for gathering data on China's oil industry — a case that highlights the government's use of vague secrets laws to restrict business information.

In pronouncing Xue Feng guilty of spying and collecting state secrets, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court said his actions "endangered our country's national security."

Turkey warned Israel Monday it will cut ties unless it gets an apology for a deadly raid on Gaza-bound aid ships, but the Jewish state said it will never say sorry for defending itself.

Ankara has already closed its airspace to all Israeli military aircraft in reaction to the May 31 bloodshed on a Turkish ship in which nine Turks were killed, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the daily Hurriyet.

DES MOINES, Iowa – Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday he's seriously considering seeking the Republican presidential nomination and will announce his decision early next year.

Gingrich, 67, told The Associated Press that he would focus on helping Republican candidates through the midterm elections in November, then decide in February or March whether to seek the GOP nomination.

One of the key Bush administration lawyers in the evolution of the CIA's interrogation program cast doubt on whether the Justice Department approved some of the harsh steps the agency took to get terrorist suspects to talk.

Former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee's remarks were contained in a transcript sent to the special prosecutor investigating CIA interrogations by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., who also made a copy public on Thursday.

Disgraced media mogul Conrad Black won a request for bail as a US federal appeals court considers whether to overturn his six-and-a-half-year jail sentence for defrauding shareholders.

The Seventh Circuit US Court of Appeals said the terms of Black's release would be set by the district court in Chicago that has been hearing his case, and it was not immediately clear when Black would be freed after spending the past two years behind bars.

Customers will not be able to get their hands on Apple Inc's white iPhone 4 until later this year, the company said on Friday, conceding that making the model has proven surprisingly difficult.

Apple, in a brief statement, said that its black iPhone 4 had not been affected. As for the white iPhone, the company said it has "continued to be more challenging to manufacture that we originally expected."