He’s not running against the former Massachusetts governor, but Rudy Giuliani still wants you to know his record can take Mitt Romney’s any day of the week. In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Giuliani, who is supporting Romney as the presumptive Republican nominee, compared the numbers, even if he did seem a bit unclear on what those numbers were. “Maybe it was circumstances or whatever, but I had massive reduction in unemployment,” Giuliani said. “They had a growth of jobs of about 40,000,” he continued. “We had a growth of jobs of 500,000.” When Giuliani touted these successes in his 2008 contest against Romney, he was comparing his “far-superior record” to Romney’s “otherwise-decent second.”

Tropical Storm Beryl is almost at hurricane level as it nears the southeastern coast. The storm is expected to touch down late Sunday night or early Monday, but forecasters say it shouldn't strengthen before and will weaken soon after. Storm warnings were issued for parts of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida—where winds are already at 50 miles per hour and heavy rains are expected. The storm had particularly bad timing for beaches on the southern Atlantic coast—disrupting holiday plans for thousands.

The U.N. Security Council has voted unanimously to condemn the Syrian government after a massacre in Houla left an estimated 108 dead, 32 of which were children. It's Russia's strongest stance on the violence that's rocked the nation for 15 months. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday  that “those who perpetrated this atrocity must be identified and held to account.” British Foreign Secretary William Hague also said he wanted to see a “strong response” to the brutal attack. As thousands marched in Syria on Sunday to protest the attacks, two more men were shot dead by Syrian security forces in Damascus neighborhoods. Also on Sunday, Syrian officials accused the rebels of carrying out the massacre themselves.

Maybe come back later. That’s what officials in the Islamic Republic told inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday after the United Nations group requested access to a suspected nuclear-weapons-development site near Tehran. “The reasons and documents have still not been presented by the agency to convince us to give permission for this visit,” Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told reporters. The complex at Parchin is the site of “extensive activities,” according a report by the IAEA. Iranian leaders have said that complex is a military facility. Western diplomats have suggested that Tehran is stalling to allow time for evidence of nuclear experiments to be removed.

Romance, the firing of a CEO, and a news site’s paywall. It sounds like the plot of a Bravo television show, but it’s really the story of the firing of former New York Times CEO Janet Robinson in December—with an exit package of $24 million, or half the company’s profits in 2011. New York Magazine investigates the classic “whodunit” by rounding up a few suspects: publisher Arthur Sulzberger’s new girlfriend, the  print journalism advertising market, a cousin, and an Internet expert. Meanwhile, the New York Times is looking for a new CEO—and battling with the question of how much power the new hire will wield while the Sulzberger family is at the head of the paper of record.

Dario Franchitti overtook Takuma Sato in the Indianapolis 500 for his third win in five years. The race had a record 35 lead changes and Franchitti drove an average of 167.734 miles per hour. In his victory interview he told reporters he paid homage to last year's winner, Dan Wheldon, who died in an accident in Las Vegas last October. “To be on this trophy on either side of Dan, that means more than anything,” Franchitti told reporters.

The World Health Organization estimates 10,000 illegal kidney transplants occur across the globe each year. The lucrative trade operates through gangs buying the in-demand organ for as little as $5,000 from impoverished individuals in developing countries and selling them to surgeons who charge patients hundreds of thousands of dollars for implants. Data from WHO shows 106,879 legal and illegal organ transplants in 95 member states in 2010, almost 70 percent of which were kidneys and represents only 10 percent of the global demand for the organ. A network of doctors has been working to track illegal organ trade and a 10-person trafficking ring was recently apprehended by Israeli police last week.

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, social media is watching you. The Facebook power couple was photographed by Twitter user Darek Rusajaczyk at the Sistine Chapel. Several Tweeters mentioned running into Zuck and his wife at the Colosseum and the restaurant Pierluigi. It’s unclear whether any Facebook users posted about running into the pair.

Sweden's Loreen beat out a group of elderly Russian women and a Serbian crooner to win the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday. Voters and judges from across Europe voted Loreen the winner in the host country of Azerbaijan. Russia's "babushki" may not have won, but Vladimir Putin was so taken by their performance that he promised to visit them in their village, according to a statement. "It's just a question of taste. This year it happened to me," said Loreen. Twenty thousand people saw the final performances live, while 100 million watched on TV. Next year the continent-wide competition will be held in Sweden.

Director Michael Haneke’s Amour took home the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival on Sunday. The Austrian director, whose film was a favorite to win the festival’s highest honor, won three years ago with his film White Ribbon, which chronicled the life of a German family in the years before World War I. The twin triumphs make Haneke the second of two directors to claim the prize more than once, the other being Danish director Bille August. Amour tells the story of an aged husband and wife, and follows their relationship after the wife suffers a stroke.

Tech royalty just does not inspire the same copycat behavior as the real thing. Priscilla Chan stepped out at her surprise wedding in a $4,700 Claire Pettibone dress, but TMZ reports that the white creation isn’t exactly flying off the rack at the Denver store where Chan bought it. Chan wed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in an unannounced ceremony shortly after the company went public. Cate Malone, the owner of the Little White Dress shop in Denver, told TMZ that many inquisitive brides-to-be have been trying on the gown, and that traffic on the shop’s site has been up 60 percent since the wedding—but in a twist Chan’s new husband can likely relate to, sales are not living up to the hype: no one has bought the dress.

While America eats the cost of a multibillion-dollar anti-poppy campaign, opium producers in Afghanistan don’t see any way out of the business. The problem is only likely to get worse this year as blight cuts the size of the crop, leading to higher prices and more widespread cultivation in years to come. “Now I am desperate, what can I do?” poppy farmer Mohammed Amin told The New York Times. “I don’t have any cash now to start another business, and if I grow any other crops, I cannot make a profit.” Breaking the back of the poppy trade in Afghanistan has long been a key strategic American interest, a concern unabated as thousands of American troops prepare to leave the country.

Firefighters reported that a wildfire in Gila National Forest spread uncontained Saturday as cities in the state remain under health alert due to the spread of smoke. Officials said that the flames crept over thousands of acres Saturday and now encompass more than 150 square miles of park territory. Strong winds are reportedly fanning the blaze in a remote part of the park, and a privately owned ghost town in the area was evacuated Saturday due to the gusts.

The man who recently confessed to killing 6-year-old Etan Patz more than 30 years ago shared “intimate details” of the killing with detectives, sources told the New York Post. According to the Post, the suspect’s inside knowledge of the case has convinced at least some New York City Police Department detectives that Pedro Hernandez, a bodega stockboy at the time of the killing, was involved. But the FBI reportedly remains skeptical about the credibility of Hernandez’s confession. “The bosses are very skeptical,” a source told reporters. “They don’t believe him. He’s got mental problems, and there’s no other evidence. They think we moved too fast.”

There’s no such thing as papal unflappability. Church officials at the Vatican struggled this week as the pope’s personal butler was detained in an ongoing investigation into the leak of church documents. Efforts to show that the Holy See is serious about financial transparency suffered further when the head of the Vatican bank was ousted Thursday, with the bank’s board issuing a letter citing Gotti Tedeschi’s poor management and “progressively erratic personal behavior” as the reasons for his dismissal. The butler, 46-year-old Paolo Gabriele, remains in Vatican custody Sunday. The father of three was detained Wednesday when investigators discovered sensitive documents in his apartment.

Thirty North Korean officials were killed in purges last year, according to a report released by Amnesty International. Another 200 were rounded up by the state and sent to gulags—some of that number may have been executed as well, according to the report. The 30 men were reportedly executed after they failed to improve relations between North Korea and democratic South Korea. In the last year, North Korea has continued to move ahead with plans to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, drawing international condemnation. It is estimated that 200,000 people are held in North Korea’s gulags in “horrific conditions,” according to Amnesty International.

The Taliban on Sunday denied involvement in the poison attacks on the Bibi Haji School in Afghanistan, which sickened 125 people, including female teachers and young girls. Police said poisonous chemicals may have been sprayed in the classrooms. In the east of the country, two schools have been burned in the last month. Militants who are against education for women are believed to be behind the attacks; the Taliban outlawed education for women from 1996 to 2001. But a spokesman said that the Taliban “strongly condemn” the attacks “and promise that if we arrest the perpetrators of such actions and cases, we will give them punishments in line with Sharia.”

A NATO bombing strike in Afghanistan killed a family of eight, including six children, officials said Sunday. “It’s true. A house was bombed by NATO,” a senior security official in Kabul told the Agence France-Presse. “A man named Mohammad Sahfee, his wife, and six of their innocent children were brutally killed.” NATO officials said they were investigating the case. The civilian casualties in the eastern part of the country are likely to anger many Afghans and could hurt the relationship between President Hamid Karzai and the West. “It was an airstrike conducted by NATO,” a government official in the region told AFP. “This man had no connection to the Taliban or any other terrorist group.”

From Mitt Romney’s “prairie fire of debt” to Obama’s “cowpie of distortion,” the pastoral imagery has flown thick as flies on, well, a cowpie as the two campaigns fight over who is best equipped to manage America’s checkbook. Recent polls show Americans are concerned about the amount the government is laying out, and Republicans want to capitalize on that—leading Obama to say on recent campaign stops that Romney’s plan would lead to $5 trillion in tax cuts, crippling the debt.

Lobstermen and -women in Maine report that they are hauling in “shedders”—the soft-shell lobsters that have abandoned their hard outer covering—much earlier than usual this year. The process of shedding occurs naturally, biologists say, but not usually in the spring, and above-average water temperatures may have something to do with behavior this year. The soft-shell lobsters drew in lower prices—about $2 less per pound—for the lobstermen, but some in Maine say they plan to capitalize on tourists’ love of lobster rolls over Memorial Day weekend. The sweeter meat is well suited for the Pine Tree State delicacy.

Two American men have been detained, but not charged, in the ongoing investigation of the death of an Irish student, officials said Sunday. Nicola Furlong, 21, an exchange student in Tokyo, was found dead in her hotel room along with one of the men who was detained, Tokyo police said. The men, ages 19 and 23, were arrested on suspicion of making inappropriate physical contact with one of Furlong’s friends during a taxi ride Thursday. Furlong and her friend are thought to have met the two American men during a concert in the Japanese city. Tokyo police said the cause of death is thought to be suffocation as the result of cervical compression.

Do they know she’s not an actual monster? Lady Gaga’s management decided to pull the plug on a show in Jakarta after hardline Muslim religious groups said they’d prevent her from even getting off her plane in Indonesia. The show had sold more than 50,000 tickets in the country, which has the largest number of Muslims in the world. The Islamic Defenders Front, which called Gaga the “devil’s messenger” in its protests of her planned show, said it is “grateful that she has decided not to come. Indonesians will be protected from sin brought by this Mother Monster, the destroyer of morals.” A spokesman for the group encouraged Gaga’s fans to “repent and stop worshiping the devil.”