India's government faces a tight vote of confidence in parliament on Tuesday that will decide the fate of a civil nuclear cooperation deal with the United States and could trigger a snap election.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran on Monday of using stalling tactics and warned Tehran it faced more sanctions if it flouted a two-week deadline to curb its nuclear program.

In the first speech to the Israeli Knesset by a British prime minister, Gordon Brown on Monday will warn Iran it faces growing isolation if it rejects an offer from major powers on its disputed nuclear program.

For more than a decade, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing giants that make the American mortgage market run, have attracted overseas investors with a simple pitch: the securities they issue are just as good as the United States government’s, and they usually pay better.

Financial industry executives are mustering on Capitol Hill to head off a Congressional effort to rewrite the rules for the nation’s energy markets, saying it could unsettle already nervous markets and push more energy trading abroad, beyond the reach of domestic regulators.

Ireland is still a good place to invest and can compete globally despite the country's recent rejection of the Lisbon Treaty and stalling economic growth, Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen told CNBC.

Mortgage giant Freddie Mac is considering raising capital by selling as much as $10 billion in new shares to investors, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Jason Furman, Barack Obama's campaign director for economic policy, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, John McCain's senior economic policy advisor, met up on Squawk Box Thursday morning for a fiscal policy smack-down.

For years, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac tenaciously worked to nurture, and then protect, their financial empires by invoking the political sacred cow of homeownership and fielding an army of lobbyists, power brokers and political contributors.

Malaysian opposition figure Anwar Ibrahim has been freed on police bail, his lawyers said , but Anwar could still be charged for sodomy at a later date.  As a condition of the bail, Anwar has to report to police on Aug. 18 unless the authorities decide otherwise.

The SEC issued its emergency ruling against naked short-selling Tuesday to build investor confidence regarding market information, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox told CNBC.

U.S. Federal Reserve policy makers fretted at their most recent meeting that growing inflation risks may require an interest rate hike, but agreed that the outlook for both prices and growth was still too uncertain, minutes of the meeting showed.

Democrat Barack Obama said Tuesday that the New Yorker magazine's satirical cover depicting him and his wife as flag-burning, fist-bumping radicals doesn't bother him but that it was an insult to Muslim Americans.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a House panel Wednesday a top Fed priority is restoring financial calm even as "too high" inflation and weak growth threaten the economy.

Many economists have concluded that a second dose of government stimulus spending is required to prevent a broad economic unraveling and provide relief to millions of Americans grappling with joblessness, plunging home prices and tight credit.