About 50 people were killed in Kabul and another four in Mazar-i-Sharif. The attacks were apparently aimed at minority Shiites who were gathered for a religious festival.

Top delegates at the U.N. climate conference in Durban, South Africa, decide this week whether the Kyoto Protocol lives or dies. Tuesday morning, U.S. delegates have a one-on-one with China. The U.S. says it's open to discussing a future treaty but won't talk about anything legally binding until it knows what exactly would be in that agreement. China says it's open for talks but is vague beyond that.

Official results are scheduled to be released Tuesday, after last week's disputed presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Partial results released so far show the incumbent in the lead. But opposition candidates are crying fraud and threatening to reject the outcome of the vote, raising fears that any protests could turn violent.

Three separate explosions Tuesday in Afghanistan have killed dozens of people. The bomb blasts took place in Kabul, the southern city of Kandahar and the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Standard and Poor's on Monday warned eurozone countries that it may downgrade their credit ratings if they don't get their fiscal houses in order. Debt-ridden Italy is too big to fail, and too big to be bailed out by its EU partners. Its technocrat-in-chief Mario Monti hopes a new package of austerity measures will rein in debt and reassure the bond markets.