NEW YORK (Reuters) - Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng soaked up the sun in New York City on Sunday as his children played in a garden, a break in a day of meetings to arrange his studies at New York University. "(Chen) said he hadn't sat in the sun for many, many years," said Jerome Cohen, a China law expert and professor at New York University's law school, where Chen will study. "He wanted to go out in the garden ... his kids went out first and then he went out," Cohen, who has become a confidante of Chen's, told Reuters. ...

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. ...

SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - One of China's most conspicuously reform-minded leaders has stepped back into the spotlight after the nation's biggest political convulsion in a generation, positioning himself to gain from the fall of populist politician Bo Xilai. Wang Yang, leader of Guangdong province and well known for his deft handling of recent civil unrest there, is the first of three provincial-level party bosses who stand to benefit after a murder scandal snuffed out Bo's career last month. ...

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Opposition leader Tomislav Nikolic, last in power when Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia was bombed by NATO in 1999, was elected president on Sunday and pledged to keep the former Yugoslav republic moving towards the European Union. In a major upset, rightist Nikolic narrowly defeated liberal leader Boris Tadic, ending his eight years as head of state in a tense run-off election in which fewer than half of Serbia's eligible voters turned out. "There is divine justice," Nikolic told jubilant supporters in the capital, Belgrade. ...

Santo Domingo (Reuters) - Early results in presidential elections in the Dominican Republic show ruling party candidate Danilo Medina headed for revenge 12 years after he lost in a landslide to opposition candidate Hipolito Mejia. With 30 percent of votes counted Medina, the candidate for the ruling Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), held nearly a 5 percentage point lead (51.4 percent-46.7 percent) over Mejia and the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), according to official election results. That would be enough for Medina, 60, to secure an outright first-round victory. ...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - New French president Francois Hollande likes to style himself as "Mr. Normal," but his sudden debut on the global stage this week has been anything but. From the Oval Office to a meeting of G8 leaders at the Camp David presidential retreat to the NATO summit in Chicago, Hollande, a life-long party official who has never held a ministerial post, sometimes looked as though he were trying the role of international summiteer on for size. Despite some awkwardness, Hollande appeared to pass his initial diplomatic tests. ...

DOUMA, Syria (Reuters) - A roadside bomb exploded on Sunday about 150 meters (yards) from a United Nations convoy carrying the head of a Syria ceasefire monitoring mission and a senior U.N. official in the town of Douma, a Reuters witness said. Major General Robert Mood's car was stopped at an army checkpoint when the bomb detonated in an nearby alleyway and the convoy left, the Reuters journalist said, adding that there were no reports of casualties. United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Hervé Ladsous, who is visiting Syria, was also part of the convoy. ...

TANGERANG, Indonesia (Reuters) - There are many ways to describe Indonesia's Aburizal Bakrie: multi-millionaire businessman, global mining tycoon, heavyweight contender for the presidency in 2014. One description that does not spring to mind is man of the common people. So when Bakrie strode into a railway station in south Jakarta last week and slapped the equivalent of one U.S. dollar down on the counter for a ticket, it was a moment of political theatre. It also signaled an early step in the march to presidential elections in mid-2014 in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation. ...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's deputy foreign minister said on Sunday that military action against Iran over its nuclear program was being considered in some Western countries. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was speaking to reporters on a plane on his way back from the G8 summit in Camp David, where the G8 leaders signaled their readiness to tap into emergency oil stockpiles quickly this summer if tougher new sanctions on Iran threatened to strain supplies. ...

Millions of Asians watched as a rare "ring of fire" eclipse crossed their skies early Monday.

Millions of early risers in Asia turned their attention skyward to view a rare "ring of fire" eclipse as it crossed their skies Monday morning.

Profiles of Egypt's main presidential candidates:

Gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns early Monday in intense street battles in the Lebanese capital, wounding six people as fears mounted that the conflict in neighboring Syria was bleeding across the border.

A magnitude-6.0 earthquake shook several small towns in northeast Italy, 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.

Nationalist candidate Tomislav Nikolic won the Serbian presidency on Sunday, a result that adds to the political turmoil in the Balkan country and could slow down its attempts to join the European Union.

More than 100 Egyptians held since a mass arrest over two weeks ago began an open-ended hunger strike Sunday to protest their continued detention and the possibility they will face military prosecution, activists said.