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. ...

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.

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. ...

HONG KONG (Reuters) - The former police chief at the heart of China's biggest political scandal in two decades will be tried for treason as early as next month, the South China Morning Post reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources briefed on the case. Wang Lijun, former Chongqing police chief and a key ally of the city's former ambitious leader Bo Xilai, fled to a U.S. consulate in February, triggering a political storm that led to the ousting of Bo from the Communist Party's top ranks and sparking uncertainty ahead of a critical change of leadership. ...

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. ...

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

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.

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. ...

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.