Turning the screw on Iran and its nuclear program, the Obama administration imposed new sanctions Monday on Iran's currency and auto industry, seeking to render Iranian money useless outside the country and to cut off the regime from critical revenue sources.
The executive order from President Barack Obama broadens what is already a concerted and multifaceted sanctions campaign aimed at crippling Iran's economy, forcing it to comply with international demands that it prove its nuclear program is peaceful. The U.S. believes Iran is working to develop nuclear weapons, a charge that Iran denies.

Kanye West can pass down that leather skirt to his future child: He and Kim Kardashian are expecting a daughter.
The big reveal of the baby's sex came Sunday night on Kardashian's E! reality show, "Keeping Up With the Kardashians."

At least one Hizbullah member was killed overnight in clashes with Syrian rebels on the Syrian side of the border with Lebanon, a security source told Agence France Presse on Sunday.
"Clashes took place between a group of FSA (Free Syrian Army) and a group of Hizbullah members coming from Baalbek in a border area between the outskirts of Baalbek and Damascus province in Syria," the source said.

A strong earthquake jolted Taiwan on Sunday, killing two people and injuring at least 21 others and causing panicked shoppers to rush out of a shaking multi-story department store, officials said.
Another earthquake jolted the southern Philippines late Saturday, injuring at least 33 people and damaging more than 140 houses.

Have no fear: The White House says an asteroid more than 1 1/2 miles (2.7 kilometers) long poses no threat to planet Earth.
The big rock called Asteroid 1998 QE2 was making its closest approach to Earth on Friday, keeping a safe distance of 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

The Soviet Union disappeared from the map more than two decades ago. But online an 'e-vil empire' is thriving.
Security experts say the .su Internet suffix assigned to the USSR in 1990 has turned into a haven for hackers who've flocked to the defunct superpower's domain space to send spam and steal money.

LinkedIn is joining the crowd of Internet services tying account security to mobile phones.
In a change announced Friday, the roughly 225 million users of LinkedIn Corp.'s online professional networking service can now choose to require a code to be sent to their phones whenever an attempt is made to log in to an account from a device for the first time.

Sony Corp. is taking a deeper dive into ultrahigh-definition video as it comes out Friday with "After Earth," the first of Sony's three movies this year both shot and presented in the emerging 4K digital format. At a screening for journalists, I got a close-up look at even the pores on Will Smith's face as details were rendered with greater clarity on the big screen.
Sony and other consumer electronics makers are betting that 4K images will become the new standard, prompting consumers to buy fancier TVs just as they did when high definition, or HD, rolled out over the past decade. It could also entice more people to buy movie tickets to see for themselves what the super-clear format is like.

A California man is facing vandalism charges after authorities say he painted a crosswalk on a street, allegedly telling officials it was needed.
Fifty-two-year-old Anthony Cardenas was arrested Thursday morning in the Northern California city of Vallejo and booked into jail on suspicion of felony vandalism.

China is looking forward to "even-tempered talks" on cybersecurity when a Chinese military delegation meets with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel over the weekend, the Foreign Ministry said Friday, as Washington continues to press Beijing over the issue ahead of a summit next week.
Ministry spokesman Hong Lei repeated Beijing's hopes for longer-term cooperation over hacking threats that have increasingly dominated discussions over what many see as a bilateral relationship adrift. Cyberspying is expected to feature high on the agenda at the June 7-8 meeting at a California retreat between President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
