NPR National News

Tens of thousands of people gathered in the streets over the weekend to denounce alleged election fraud in parliamentary elections earlier this month. David Remnick, editor of "The New Yorker," has written an article about Russian's resistance to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and talks to Steve Inskeep about Russian politics.

A disputed election in the Democratic Republic of Congo has returned sitting President Joseph Kabila to power for the next five years. The opposition claims there was election fraud. Congo's influential Catholic church has voiced reservations about the conduct of the elections.

In recent years, China's real estate market has boomed. A three-bedroom apartment in Shanghai overlooking the river would cost more than $3 million. But that's beginning to change. The slide comes as the world's most dynamic economy grapples with other challenges, including massive local government debt and slowing growth.

Islamists in Egypt are once again expected to dominate at the ballot box in the second round of parliamentary elections that begin Wednesday. Their anticipated win has many Egyptians fearing the new parliament will turn their country into a theocracy.

Calls for a boycott against home improvement giant Lowes have been streaming in. The controversy involves Lowes advertising on the reality TV show All-American Muslim, which follows the daily lives of five Arab-American families in Dearborn, Mich. Lowes pulled its ads after a conservative group complained.

Steve Inskeep has the Last Word in business.

Hundreds of Occupy protesters marched to Seattle's Harbor Island Monday, and briefly blocked traffic coming into the city's busy port. The Seattle protest was the culmination of a day of coordinated protests at ports up and down the West Coast.

More than 20 years ago, Congress ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate toxic air pollution. It's done that for most industries, but not the biggest polluters — coal and oil-burning power plants.

The EPA now plans to change that later this week, by setting new rules to limit mercury and other harmful pollution from power plants.

When Congress first told the EPA to regulate toxic air pollution in 1990, pediatrician Lynn Goldman was investigating the impact of mercury from mining operations on Native American families living near a contaminated lake.