In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria set to air on Zakaria’s GPS this weekend, billionaire financier George Soros responds to recent comments made about him by Fox’s Glenn Beck, saying Beck’s comments about Soros would be funny if “people saw the joke in it.” Soros accuses Beck–and News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch–of “telling the people some falsehoods and…leading the government in the wrong direction.”

In an interview set to air this weekend, George Soros accuses President Obama of “losing control” and letting Republicans set the agenda on the economy. Talking to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, the billionaire investor says “President Obama has lost control of the agenda. The agenda is now in the hands of the Republican Party.”

This weekend, Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei spoke with Fareed Zakaria about a number of topics pertaining to the ongoing uprising in Egypt, including what the immediate future will hold for the Egyptian government and for the country’s current president, Hosni Mubarak.

And the world’s most exciting semantics and mathematic debate continues! The argument over Glenn Beck’s assertion that 10% of Muslims were terrorists had gotten a new participant this weekend when Fareed Zakaria pointed out that, by Beck’s own definition, he would be a terrorist himself. Today, Beck responded with his own extension of logic that by pointing out that, by Zakaria’s definition, were Beck to vocally advocate the CNN host’s violent death, he “wouldn’t be in trouble.” Whoa. This argument took a hard left turn at some point.

Fareed Zakaria, who occasionally throws fairly well-disguised bombs from his perches at CNN and Time in a manner so serene many fail to notice– is taking on his cable news stylistic opposite, Glenn Beck– or at the very least, his math skills. In his trademark soothing tones, Zakaria gave Beck a math lesson on those 10%, or 157 million, “Muslim terrorists” Beck claimed were plotting to attack America– namely, that that figure is “1000% wrong.”

Comedian Bill Maher appeared on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS yesterday, and was asked by the host to share his thoughts on the Tea Party movement and its relationship to religion. “When you watched Glenn Beck‘s rally,” Zakaria asked “what’s fascinating is that it was mostly about religion.” Maher did not demur in his response, saying
“I think he’s doing what some people before him have done like L. Ron Hubbard, who’s a novelist and decided, you know what, it’s a much easier gig to be a religious leader.” <

During his appearance on Fareed Zakaria GPS today, Bill Maher said that he felt President Obama was acting ‘wimpy’ and ‘wussy’ lately. “I’m just so disappointed that he seems to be another in a long line of Democrats that come across as wimpy, and wussy, and whatever word you want to ascribe to it, and not standing up for what they believe in enough,” Maher said.

This morning, Bill Maher spoke to Fareed Zakaria on his show, Fareed Zakaria GPS, about whether President Obama is making America look more like Europe — and Maher argued that being more like Europe would actually be a good thing for America.

This week on Real Time with Bill Maher, panelists Fareed Zakaria, Rep. Darrell Issa, Dana Gould, and Washington DC Mayor Adrian Fenty discussed the right wing “echo chamber” and the rapid spread of rumors about the cost of President Obama‘s trip to India. They also took aim at the blogosphere, criticizing blogs for spreading the rumors and criticizing politicians such as Rep. Michele Bachmann for believing things they read on the internet.

Fareed Zakaria warns in Newsweek that Al-Qaeda was significantly more incompetent that Americans believed in the aftermath of 9/11, and the result is a “national-security state” that threatens civil liberties. Any other time of year, comments like this would be controversial at best, especially from the mild-mannered Zakaria. So close to the anniversary of the most painful event in recent American history, it borders on the callous.

After ten years with the magazine, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria will be leaving at the end of September to join Time as Editor at Large. Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel announced today that he is “thrilled that Fareed is joining us; his singular voice in explaining the world to people is a natural fit with our editorial mission at a moment when Time is more relevant and wide-reaching than it’s ever been.”

The ongoing, understandably low-temperature feud between CNN and Newsweek‘s Fareed Zakaria and the Anti-Defamation League continued on Anderson Cooper 360º last night, where Anderson Cooper asked Zakaria to flesh out the beliefs that brought him to return a 2005 award to the ADL in defense of the proposed Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan. It comes down to First Amendment rights, he explained.

In light of Fareed Zakaria‘s decision to return the ADL Hubert Humphrey First Amendment Award in protest of their opposition to the Ground Zero mosque, CNN has posted his comments on the matter from tomorrow’s edition of Fareed Zakaria GPS online. In the segment, Zakaria praises the imam behind the mosque, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf for promoting a version of Islam he calls “Osama Bin Laden‘s nightmare.”

Newsweek International editor and CNN host Fareed Zakaria returned a 2005 award to the Anti-Defamation League yesterday over the organization’s opposition to the opening of a mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. In a letter to the organization, Zakaria writes, “I cannot in good conscience hold onto the award or the honorarium that came with it and am returning both.”

The upcoming Eliot Spitzer/Kathleen Parker 8pmET CNN show now has an executive producer – one of the original CNN employees and currently EP of Fareed Zakaria‘s weekend show.

Liza McGuirk takes over – and that may give an indication of just how un-Crossfire-like the show will end up.

In a response, of sorts, to James Carville wanting to hit him with a “football bat,” Fareed Zakaria, the CNN host doubled down on his initial comments criticizing Pres. Barack Obama‘s reaction (for being too strong) to the BP oil disaster.

The media, he thinks, has gone crazy.

CNN contributor and Democratic strategist James Carville has been an extremely outspoken critic of Pres. Barack Obama and the administration in the wake of the BP oil spill.

But now he’s bashing defenders of Pres. Obama too – even if its his CNN colleague, Fareed Zakaria.

A picture of two men in profile with insufficient depth can cost you jail time in Iran. Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari just received a 13.5-year, 74-lash sentence for his coverage of Iranian protesters being attacked by military officials, and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria was curious about unusual .5 addition to the sentence. He found that it had to do with a photo of Ahmadinejad that appeared on Facebook, in which the president vaguely appears to be kissing another man.

It’s very easy to dismiss today’s journalists as high maintenance and pampered celebrity pundits, unworthy descendants of their beloved and revered Walter Cronkite. And you’d be right in most enough cases. You can blame it on their network bosses and corporate owners, who have reduced much of the “news” to easily digestible distraction nuggets for [...]

Looks like the Taliban has gone 2.0. Over the weekend it was reported that the radical, religious, political group, has created its own YouTube channel. Apparently Sharia law, which among other things, allows for gruesome public executions and requires women to wear burqas and remain in the home, has nothing whatsoever against the Internet!

Mediaite’s Power Grid is a pretty good tracker of who’s making a splash in the week’s news cycle — and who’s sinking. This week, we tell you how Larry King, Fareed Zakaria, Ann Coulter, and seven other media personalities are doing, and why. Click through people’s names to see their stats for the week in more detail.

Kathleen Deveneny, the assistant managing editor of Newsweek, announced a new direction and re-design in a May 19th article: “One thing you’ll find less of: celebrity news.” Since then they’ve featured Oprah, Stephen Colbert, and of course Michael Jackson.