Yitzhak Shamir, the former Israeli prime minister who led his nation through the 1991 Gulf War, died on Saturday. He was 96. In a statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Shamir, who dedicated his life to an independent Jewish homeland, “led Israel with a deep loyalty to the nation.” Shamir was born Yitzhak Jazernicki in Poland and moved to Palestine in 1935. Shamir, whose terms as prime minister made him the second-longest serving official to hold the post, suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for the last 10 years of his life.

Mohamed Morsi was sworn in Saturday as Egypt’s first freely elected president and the first to take power since ruler Hosni Mubarak was deposed last year. The Islamist president-elect held a rally in Tahrir Square on Friday ahead of his inauguration, saying that as president he would work to free Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “blind sheik” imprisoned in the United States. Morsi, a 60-year-old member of the Muslim Brotherhood, arrived at Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court for his official swearing-in ceremony at 11 a.m. local time Saturday. "We aspire to a better tomorrow, a new Egypt, and a second republic," Morsi said in his official speech.

Huge storms have cut off power to more than 2 million homes as record-breaking temperatures soar into the triple digits. In Washington, D.C., alone 1.5 million homes are without power, and across the country at least 13 people have died so far due to the heat wave and the powerful wind storm that has swept the mid-Atlantic and Midwest. The Weather Channel’s Julie Martin told the NBC’s Today that the 100-degree temperatures expected across 25 states is impacting 47 million people.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the United Nations Security Council on Saturday to authorize military action in Syria as world leaders met in Geneva to discuss a possible peace plan. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has been roundly condemned by most Western leaders, but continues to have backing from Russia. Nevertheless, leaders at the meeting seemed to think that it is unlikely that there will be much of a place for the iron-fisted Assad in a post-peace Syria. “No one should be in any doubt as to the extreme dangers posed by the conflict—to Syrians, to the region, and to the world,” Kofi Annan said in his capacity as mediator at the meeting Saturday.

“I’m kind of dreading returning,” one Colorado Springs resident said as firefighters continued to fight back a blaze outside the town Saturday. Two people have been confirmed dead, and 350 homes have been destroyed after a wildfire swept into the town’s outskirts. President Obama visited the area ravaged by the Waldo Canyon fire, which has caused more than 35,000 people to evacuate. The president promised federal aid to the stricken area, saying, “We have been putting everything we have into trying to deal with what are the worst fires we’ve seen here in Colorado.”

Emails that allegedly show that higher-ups at Penn State knew about convicted sex abuser Jerry Sandusky’s behavior years before his arrest were distributed to CNN on Friday. While the network says it has not obtained access to the emails themselves, it reports that they allegedly include communications from PSU's then-president Graham Spanier in which the man advocates a “humane” method of handling a 2001 abuse allegation against the famed Nittany Lions coach, now behind bars. According to CNN’s description of the contents of those emails, that approach seems not to have involved any effort to alert outside authorities.

A storm across the mid-Atlantic region that left more than a million people without electricity on Saturday also kept customers from documenting their powerless woes in sepia tones. According to Forbes, the severe thunderstorms that whipped around the nation’s capital tearing out power lines also took down a major Amazon cloud-computing location in north Virginia. The popular photo-sharing service Instagram temporarily went down, as did Pinterest and Netflix. The Daily Beast also experienced difficulties on Saturday morning due to damage caused by the storm, and was working to restore updates to its homepage as of 10 a.m.

Locals in the Malian city of Timbuktu have said that they will fight back “with sticks and stones” against al Qaeda–linked Islamists who destroyed ancient tombs on Saturday. The graves are classified as UNESCO World Heritage sites. “The youth of Timbuktu is preparing to retaliate against the desecration of the graves of our saint,” said city resident Ali Yattara. The militants are thought to have targeted the mausoleums of three Muslim saints because of local veneration for the sites. On Thursday, UNESCO placed the tombs on its “in danger” list at the request of officials in Mali, an action that may have caused the militants to attack.

Four middle-school students whose vicious verbal attacks went viral will spend a year thinking about their actions, said Greece, N.Y., school officials on Friday. The boys and their families will not be fighting the disciplinary measure. An online fundraising appeal for 68-year-old bus monitor Karen Klein topped $650,000, and Disney and Southwest Airlines have said they’d team up to treat Klein to a trip to Disney World. In a letter after the incident, one of the boys, a seventh-grade student identified only as Josh, wrote, “When I saw the video, I was disgusted and could not believe I did that.”

A room of her own? Katie Holmes had already made new housing arrangements before filing for divorce from Tom Cruise yesterday, according to Us Weekly. Holmes reportedly rented an apartment in New York City prior to submitting papers that requested legal custody of their daughter, Suri. TMZ speculates that Holmes filed in New York because the courts are known to avoid giving feuding parents joint custody, and are more likely to grant her sole rights.

Lauryn Hill pleaded guilty Friday to income-tax evasion on $1.8 million in earnings. The 37-year-old hip-hop star and founding member of the Fugees could face up to $75,000 in fines and as much as three years in prison. She will be sentenced in November. Hill’s lawyer said that the performer was targeted because of her public profile. “There are many people in society who fail to file their taxes on time who only face civil liability,” said Nathan Hochman. “They chose Ms. Hill in particular because of who she was.”

In a surprising reversal of fortunes, Mexican candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and the Institutional Revolutionary Party look primed to return to power in Sunday’s elections. The party was swept from power when the unpopular Vicente Fox was removed in elections more than a decade ago. Now Mexicans say that while the PRI wasn’t always popular, it has proven to be better than the alternative. “The PRI always looked after the people even if their ways were not always right,” 36-year-old factory worker Eduardo Martinez told reporters. “You have to understand this is Mexico,” Martinez said. “They all rob; they all steal. But if Peña can bring more jobs and more security, he will win.”

Police in Arizona are investigating whether self-poisoning may have caused the death of former Wall Street trader Michael Marin in a Phoenix courtroom on Thursday. “They are leaning towards that,” said Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jeff Sprong. “We cannot verify that at this point, and we’re not going to be able to until the toxicology report comes back in two weeks.” The 53-year-old former Wall Streeter was found guilty of arson Thursday. Marin was heavily in debt, and he quickly came under suspicion when his $3.5 million Phoenix-area mansion went up in flames in July 2009. In video of Marin taken minutes after the verdict, Marin claps his hands to his face and appears to “put something in his mouth,” Sprong said.

Better battlefield care could have saved 1,000 lives in the past 10 years, according to a new Army report released Friday. “It’s a tremendous amount of people we’re losing before they even reach medical care,” said Army Col. Brian Eastridge. Those deaths, many of which involve soldiers bleeding to death before they can be transported, are what the armed services hope to prevent with new treatments. Soldiers today have better chances than ever of surviving wounds sustained on the battlefield, but Eastridge said the advancements aren’t enough. Of more than 4,500 American combat deaths since 9/11, 2,700 survived for a time after sustaining fatal injuries, the Army report said.

Usually it’s childen who are this petulant about taking their medicine. Republican governors like New Jersey’s Chris Christie and South Carolina’s Nikki Haley say they have no intention of moving forward with the changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act. After the Supreme Court ruled that the law is constitutional, the governors say they’re waiting for Mitt Romney, who has promised to repeal the act, to win in November. “Here in Louisiana, look, we refused to set up the exchange,” said Gov. Bobby Jindal. “We’re not going to start implementing Obamacare.”

The German parliament passed the euro zone's bailout and new budget rules with a two-thirds majority that included opposition partnerships. "Today Germany, with the approval of the fiscal pact and the ESM by all parties in both houses of parliament, will send an important signal ... that we are overcoming the European debt crisis in a sustainable way," said Chancellor Angela Merkel. The legislation won't be signed into law by President Joachim Guack until the country's Constitutional Court approves them. The bailout plan could come into effect July 9, but needs approval from countries composing of 90 percent of its capital base and can't pass without German backing.

Katie Holmes’s decision to file for divorce from Tom Cruise on Friday may be her big chance to step out of the actor’s shadow. Brand consultant Dorie Clark said that while Cruise likely stands to lose from the couple’s split, 33-year-old Holmes may use it to step out from the closely guarded personal life Cruise had constructed for them in recent years. “This is generating a lot of sympathy and interest from people,” Clark said. Cruise and Holmes married after a weird whirlwind romance six years ago that famously included Cruise leaping atop Oprah Winfrey’s sofa.

Raging storms swept the Washington, D.C., area Friday night, claiming at least two lives and knocking out electricity for more than 3.6 million residents. Five people in Tennessee and Missouri are thought to have died earlier on Friday from the stifling heat. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin of West Virginia declared a state of emergency, saying, “The damage from today’s storms is widespread and in many places severe.” A state of emergency was also declared in Virginia. Officials were investigating the deaths in Tennessee and Missouri, including that of a baby and two young boys, to determine if they were related to the heat. The storm was followed by further sizzling temperatures in many states on Saturday.