JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli Cabinet minister is accusing Russia of destabilizing the Middle East by selling weapons to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The scandal shaking up South Korea's main spy agency is not cloak-and-dagger stuff, but the kind of low-grade trickery anyone with an Internet connection could pull off. And the target was not Seoul's opaque rival to the north, but the country's own people.

MADRID (AP) — Spain and Portugal's premiers are meeting to discuss the economic turmoil plaguing their countries and the measures the European Union should take to ease the crisis.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's oil minister says the country supports prices of $100 for a barrel of crude.

SINGAPORE (AP) — The girlfriend of a U.S. software engineer whose parents insist he was murdered in Singapore said at a coroner's inquest Monday that he had been unhappy at work and feared "heavy hands coming after him."

PARIS (AP) — Carlos the Jackal, the flamboyant terrorist and self-proclaimed revolutionary who was once one of the Cold War's most wanted men, is appealing his life sentence for orchestrating bombings in France two decades ago.

NEW YORK (AP) — Upcoming novels by Sue Grafton, Elizabeth Gilbert and Wally Lamb are among 40 fall and winter releases excerpted in a free e-book.

BANGKOK (AP) — Oil prices fell Monday as the dollar strengthened against the yen and other major currencies.

BANGKOK (AP) — Japan's stock market jumped Monday to its highest close in more than five years after global finance leaders gave a seal of approval to the country's stimulus program and refrained from criticizing its weakening effect on the yen.

By Koh Gui Qing and Kevin Yao BEIJING (Reuters) - China's factory output growth was surprisingly feeble in April and fixed-asset investment slowed, rekindling concerns that a nascent recovery is stalling and adding to pressure on policymakers to take action to stimulate the economy. However, China's already-easy monetary policy and rising home prices complicate the options available to Beijing's new leadership, leading some analysts to say that any response could be limited to fiscal measures. Annual industrial output grew 9. ...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea has replaced its hard-line defense minister with a little-known army general, according to a state media report Monday, in what outside analysts call an attempt to install a younger figure meant to solidify leader Kim Jong Un's grip on the powerful military.

MOSCOW (AP) — Investigators say a 23-year-old Russian man was brutally beaten and left to die by his companions after drunkenly telling them he was gay.

By Marcus George DUBAI (Reuters) - After the huge protests that followed the 2009 election, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may have hoped June polls would quietly install a loyal conservative president, but the surprise candidacies of two major independents may scupper that. Both Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, the nationalist protégé of outspoken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and Iran's best known political grandee, are seen as a threat to the leader's authority. ...

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — A Yemeni official says a military plane on a training exercise has crashed into a neighborhood in the country's capital.

MILAN (AP) — Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi's sex-for-hire trial entered the final stretch Monday with a Milan prosecutor making long-delayed closing arguments.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — From Imelda Marcos to Manny Pacquiao, familiar names of Philippine political clans and celebrities dominated the ballots for Monday's congressional and local elections, which will gauge popular support for the president's anti-corruption drive and other reforms.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is welcoming British Prime Minister David Cameron to the White House for talks on subjects ranging from Syria's civil war to preparations for a coming summit of the world's leading industrial nations in Northern Ireland.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Every time Los Angeles exhales, odd-looking gadgets anchored in the mountains above the city trace the invisible puffs of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases that waft skyward.

By Tim Cocks BAGA, Nigeria (Reuters) - After a crackdown pushed them out of Nigeria's northern cities, Islamist militant group Boko Haram have regrouped, rearmed and are staging a bold comeback that has already allowed them to seize control over parts of the northeast. Using porous borders with Chad, Niger and Cameroon in the desolate scrubland around Lake Chad, they are smuggling bigger weapons, staging cross-border raids, killing and kidnapping in an escalation of violence that could further draw Nigeria's neighbors into its counter-insurgency fight, security officials say. ...

DENVER (AP) — The long journey toward a verdict in the deadly Colorado theater shootings enters a new and critical phase Monday when suspect James Holmes asks a judge to change his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity.