Three days before Egypt’s presidential elections, a combination of high stakes, suspense and confusion has made for a heady atmosphere.

More:
Cairo Journal: In Streets and Online, Campaign Fever in Egypt

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy, running from behind for a second term, has veered sharply to the right in the final days before Sunday’s runoff in the French presidential election, increasingly appealing to nationalism and anti-immigrant fears to gain support from the far-right National Front. Read full article > >

Original post:
France’s Sarkozy veers rightward in struggle to win reelection

Ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Khan says opponents planned his downfall from a sex scandal to stop his French presidential bid, days before the run-off.

Read the original:
DSK claims political conspiracy

Just days before her death.

Go here to read the rest:
Whitney Houston Had Looked ‘Happy’

Gingrich and Romney plan a series of urgent rallies across the state two days before the primary.

The rest is here:
The Caucus: Gingrich Presses Attack as Polls Show Romney Ahead

MASON CITY, Iowa — For months, the fight for the Republican presidential nomination has been cast as a tough choice: a true conservative vs. someone who can beat President Obama in the fall. In the final days before the Iowa caucuses, many voters who once hoped for both were realizing that they may not be able to have it all. Read full article > >

Originally posted here:
Romney and Santorum surge as Iowa caucuses near

MOSCOW — A prominent Russian blogger and opposition leader was released from jail early Wednesday, stepping into a country far more politically unsettled than the one in which he was arrested just two weeks ago. Alexei Navalny, 35, has been a galvanizing force behind efforts to dislodge Prime Minister Vladimir Putin from power. His pre-dawn release , days before a rally that aims to be one of the largest since the breakup of the Soviet Union, further unsettles Russia’s volatile political situation . Read full article > >

Read the original here:
Russian blogger Alexei Navalny released from jail

Bernie Bickerstaff has tried to erase it from his memory. Tim Legler wishes he could stop thinking about the soreness he felt from those unconscionable three-a-day practices during training camp. Rod Strickland remembers not showing up until two days before the season opener because of a contract dispute. Juwan Howard can’t forget the empty feeling when he scanned the locker room or stepped on the court at MCI Center and his old college buddy was gone. Read full article > >

Read the original here:
NBA’s 50-game season: ‘Everything was just so discombobulated’

Human rights activists accuse the Russian authorities of trying to gag the country’s main non-government election watchdog days before polls.

See the rest here:
Kremlin ‘gagging’ poll monitors

Animals may sense earthquakes days before they occur by detecting “chemical changes” in groundwater, say scientists.

See the article here:
How animals predict earthquakes

Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) — U.S. regulators filed a lawsuit alleging insider trading in Global Industries Ltd. days before the U.S. company agreed to a $937 million takeover by Technip SA, Europe’s second-biggest oil services company. The complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that on Sept. 8 and 9 “unknown purchasers” bought 685,840 shares of Global Industries common stock through an account in the name of Raiffeisen Bank International AG Vienna, Austria, at $5.14 to $5.39 a share. Read full article > >

See more here:
SEC files lawsuit alleging insider trading in Global Industries, Technip deal

BERLIN — Berlin police detained two men on Thursday suspected of obtaining ingredients for a bomb after a tip from foreign intelligence agencies to a potential threat, officials said. The men were detained three days before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and followed a statement by the interior minister that threats to Germany remained “real and intensive.” Officers searched an Islamic center in Berlin where the pair had spent time and the apartments of the two suspects, a 24-year-old German of Lebanese descent and a 28-year-old from Gaza, police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf said. The men, who were not otherwise identified, are suspected of working together to plan “a violent criminal act,” and police had watched them for several months, he said. Read full article > >

See the rest here:
German police detain 2 men suspected of obtaining bomb-making materials

It was around this point in August 1963, in the sweltering days before the March on Washington, that Eleanor Holmes Norton was waiting for someone to say something really nasty about her boss. She was a march volunteer. The boss was Bayard Rustin, the march’s chief organizer and the man widely viewed as the only civil rights activist capable of pulling off a protest of such unprecedented scale. And he was gay. Openly gay. That year again? 1963. Read full article > >

Go here to read the rest:
Bayard Rustin, organizer of the March on Washington, was crucial to the movement

An arrest warrant was issued for a Bulgarian man three days before he allegedly stabbed and beheaded a UK woman in Tenerife, the BBC learns.

View post:
Police ‘wanted beheading suspect’

An unreleased audio message from Osama bin Laden, produced in late April, days before his death, in which he talks in support of the so-called “Arab Spring,” was seized at the compound during the U.S. raid, according to a U.S. official.

View original post here:
Bin Laden message called ‘puzzling’