NATO's secretary-general says he's optimistic that the international community will continue to finance the Afghan security forces.

The United States and NATO leaders are insisting the Afghanistan fighting coalition will remain whole despite France's plans to yank combat troops out early, but leaders weary of plummeting public support for the war are using an alliance summit Sunday to show they want to move quickly away from the front lines.

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

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, the only person convicted over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people, died on Sunday, almost three years after being freed from jail on compassionate grounds.

Tropical Storm Alberto weakened slightly off the South Carolina coast on Sunday, a day after becoming an early first storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season.

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.

A powerful earthquake shook Italy's industrial and densely populated northeast early Sunday, killing at least six people, felling homes and factories and reducing historic buildings to rubble.