TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the 1988 bombing of a PanAm flight over Lockerbie, died of cancer on Sunday aged 60, leaving many questions on the attack and its aftermath unanswered. Megrahi, who said he was not responsible for bringing the jumbo jet down on the Scottish town and killing 270 people, was found guilty in 2001 but was freed in 2009 and returned to Libya because he had terminal cancer and was not expected to live long. ...

SANT' AGOSTINO, Italy (Reuters) - A strong earthquake in northern Italy killed at least six people, injured dozens and damaged historic buildings including a famed mediaeval castle early on Sunday, waking terrified citizens and sending thousands running into the streets. The quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey recorded at magnitude 6.0, struck at 4:04 a.m. (0204 GMT) and was followed by a series of jolting aftershocks. At least two of them reached magnitude 5.1, sowing fresh panic, further damaging already weakened buildings and causing more structures to collapse. ...

Facebook begins selling stock to the public Friday in the most talked-about market debut in years. Two Associated Press business writers are debating whether the stock is a smart buy.

"The Avengers" continues to muscle out everything else Hollywood throws at it, easily sinking naval rival "Battleship" and other new releases.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday urged Israeli leaders to relinquish the idea of a unified Jerusalem if they truly want peace, contending in a pair of interviews that years of government neglect have kept the Jewish and Arab sectors irreparably divided.

When Dan Fitzsimmons looks across the Susquehanna River and sees the flares of Pennsylvania gas wells, he thinks bitterly of the riches beneath his own land locked up by the heated debate that has kept hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, out of New York.

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear supervisor flies to Tehran on Sunday looking for a deal to inspect suspected weapons sites - a potential breakthrough that Iran may hope could persuade the West to start lifting sanctions and deflect threats of war. But though IAEA chief Yukiya Amano scheduled Monday's talks with Iran at such short notice that diplomats said agreement on new inspections may be near, few see Tehran convincing Western governments to ease back swiftly on punitive measures when its negotiators meet big power officials in Baghdad on Wednesday. Amano, director general of the U.N. ...

A magnitude-6.0 earthquake shook several small towns in northeast Italy Sunday, killing four people, knocking down a clock tower and other centuries-old buildings and causing millions in losses to the region known for making Parmesan cheese.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - There are weeks in the political life of Angela Merkel that were surely more pleasant than the last one. Last Sunday, the German chancellor's party suffered a big loss in the regional election of North Rhine-Westphalia. On Wednesday, she sacked one of her cabinet ministers, a rare move for her, after he led the party to the election defeat. On Saturday, she looked isolated with her insistence on fiscal austerity - also known as "consolidation" -for the ailing euro zone at the G8 summit hosted by President Barack Obama at Camp David in Maryland. ...

Several hundred Egyptians including a presidential candidate began a 24-hour hunger strike on Sunday to protest the continued detention of around 300 people rounded up in a mass arrest who face possible military prosecution.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The chief executives of Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd are used to running the show at their global tech empires, but they will be in for a different experience when they arrive at a San Francisco federal courthouse on Monday. Apple's Tim Cook and Samsung's Choi Gee-sung, whose companies are embroiled in bitter patent litigation, have been instructed by a federal judge to appear for court-supervised mediation. A joint court filing in April said that "as directed by the Court, Apple and Samsung are both willing to participate" in the discussions. ...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - NATO's chief sought on Sunday to dispel fears of a "rush for the exits" in Afghanistan as Western allies gathered to chart a path out of an unpopular war that has dragged on for more than a decade. President Barack Obama hosts the summit in his home town, Chicago, a day after major industrialized nations tackled a European debt crisis that threatens the global economy. ...

(Reuters) - Shares in social media company Facebook Inc could fall below the initial public offering price of $38, Barron's wrote in its May 21 edition. Facebook saw its shares rise a scant 0.6 percent to $38.23 on Friday in the first day of trading. The stock stayed above the $38 IPO price, supported in the market by the deal's underwriters. But Barron's said the "big question" this week will be whether they continue to do so. ...

Lawyers for Iraq's fugitive Sunni vice president charged with running death squads quit the case on Sunday in protest after judges rejected their request for evidence for his defense.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Normally a big decline would set up Wall Street for a technical rebound. But that may not be the case this week, even after the market posted its worst weekly loss for the year and the S&P fell for six straight sessions. With the corporate earnings season drawing to an end and recent U.S. economic data raising doubts about the pace of growth, the S&P 500, which is down 7.3 percent so far in May, could decline further this week as concerns about the financial health of Europe persist. ...

A roadside bomb exploded in a restive suburb of the Syrian capital as senior U.N. officials toured the area on Sunday, blowing off the front of a parked vehicle but causing no casualties.

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia are backing Montana in its fight to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision from being used to strike down state laws restricting corporate campaign spending.

A bomb blast outside a high school in southern Italy that killed a 16-year-old student has revived dark memories of the 70s and 80s, when terrorists, anarchists and organized crime carried out dozens of bloody attacks across the country.

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics' mobile division chief JK Shin said on Sunday the South Korean technology giant was still seeking to resolve differences in its international patent war with Apple Inc.. "There is still a big gap in the patent war with Apple but we still have several negotiation options including cross-licensing," Shin told reporters at Seoul airport shortly before his departure for the United States. Asked about the prospects for Samsung's memory chip business, Shin said the 4G chip shortage was expected to continue until early in the fourth quarter of this year. ...

For Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it was quite a week — from birthday, to IPO, to I DO.

(Reuters) - Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wed longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan on Saturday, announcing the nuptials through a status update on the social networking site. The 28-year-old billionaire's wedding took place a day after Facebook's initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday. More than 280,000 people "liked" Zuckerberg's status change, which was accompanied by a photo of the smiling couple in wedding attire in a small, verdant outdoor setting with a string of lights behind them. ...

A day after the historic Facebook IPO, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg updated his status Saturday to "married."

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg updated his status to "married" on Saturday.

(Reuters) - Google said on Saturday that Chinese authorities have approved its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings, the last regulatory hurdle to a deal that would allow the world's No. 1 Internet search engine to develop its own line of smart phones. Google, which will be the newest entrant to the handset market, announced plans for the acquisition last year in a bid to secure Motorola's valuable patents and pave the way for a pairing of Google's Android mobile software and Motorola's handset business. U.S. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Europe's second largest lender Russia's Sberbank will see some certainty over the planned privatization sale after the new Russian government's lineup is announced on May 21, CEO German Gref said on Saturday. Sberbank initially planned the sale of the 7.6 percent stake, part of Russia's ambitious privatization program, last September but postponed the deal after global risk aversion wiped around $1.5 billion off the stake's value. "It seems to me that, yes, such certainty should emerge (after the cabinet announcement)," Gref said. ...

(Reuters) - Google said on Saturday that Chinese authorities have approved its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings, the last regulatory hurdle to a deal that would allow the world's No. 1 Internet search engine to develop its own line of smart phones. Google, which will be the newest entrant to the handset market, announced plans for the acquisition last year in a bid to secure Motorola's valuable patents and pave the way for a pairing of Google's Android mobile software and Motorola's handset business. U.S. ...

President Barack Obama on Saturday called on the U.S. Congress to back his efforts for tough new financial industry oversight, saying a $2 billion trading loss at JPMorgan underscored the need for such regulation. "We've got to finish the job of implementing this reform and putting these rules in place," Obama said in a weekly radio address that accused some on Wall Street of causing the 2007-2009 economic crisis because they "treated our financial system like a casino. ...