| | May 20, 2012 | | DIPLOMACY The president talked of shifting from Europe to Asia. But that idea has faded as the G8 and NATO meetings loom. Good riddance, writes The Daily Beast’s Leslie H. Gelb. TERRORIST Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, died in Libya on Sunday at age 59, according to his brother. Two hundred seventy people were killed in the attack, and in 2001 Megrahi was convicted by a court in the Netherlands. In 2009 he was released from Scottish prison after a cancer diagnosis gave the bomber months to live. Upon returning to his home country of Libya, Megrahi was welcomed by then-ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Despite calls for the bomber to be extradited to the United States or the United Kingdom, leaders refused after toppling the dictator. NEXT STOP, U.S.A. Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng arrived at New Jersey’s Newark Airport on Saturday night, capping a weeks-long diplomatic drama. The Daily Beast’s Melinda Liu reports from the plane on Chen’s hope for a new life in America—and concern for his aging mother back home. TREMOR Four people were killed by falling debris after an earthquake about 20 miles from Bologna, Italy, on Sunday. Two or more additional people may have been killed in the magnitude-6.0 quake in the historic northern Italian towns. The quake caused a ceramics factory to collapse in the town of Sant’Agostino and shook down the roof of a foundry in Tecopress di Dosso. Fifty or more people were injured in the disaster, reports said, as emergency officials rushed to the affected areas. It was the most serious quake to rattle the country since a 2009 tremor in L’Aquila that claimed almost 300 lives. SURPRISE It’s been quite the week for Mark Zuckerberg. On Monday the Facebook founder celebrated his 28th birthday, and on Friday he took his company public. One day later, the Facebook founder and Priscilla Chan wed in Palo Alto, Calif. The ceremony was held in Zuckerberg’s backyard with about 100 guests who all thought they were there to celebrate Chan’s recent graduation from medical school. Contrary to the lovelorn Zuckerberg portrayed in The Social Network, the two have been dating since they met at Harvard nine years ago. | |
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