Yahoo Inc. has agreed to sell half of its 40 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce group Alibaba for about $7.1 billion, and the struggling U.S. Internet company said it would return most of the cash to shareholders.

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.

On paper at least, European leaders agree: They need stronger growth measures to help their economies expand out of their 2½-year-old government debt crisis. Figuring out exactly what those new steps might be will be the hard part.

A spectacular solar eclipse treated skywatchers around the world to dazzling celestial views Sunday (May 20), as the moon wandered between Earth and the sun, leaving a "ring of fire" in the sky.

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia's top airline Qantas Airways said on Monday it is eliminating 500 jobs by merging maintenance facilities to save up to A$100 million ($98.4 million) annually, as high fuel costs and weak demand take a toll on airline profits. Qantas, which is emerging from a costly industrial dispute, said in statement it will stop heavy maintenance in Tullamarine in Melbourne and concentrate on centers in Brisbane and Avalon, resulting in the job cuts. It had, in February, flagged another 500 job cuts for the group. ...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Markets recovered some ground on Monday after last week's heavy losses, but investors remained wary about the euro zone despite world leaders calling for Greece to stay in the monetary union and for Europe to balance austerity with growth. Leaders of G8 major industrialized nations meeting at the weekend vowed to take steps to combat financial turmoil and revitalize a global economy threatened by Europe's debt crisis, but they offered no specific prescription for debt-crippled Greece which holds fresh elections next month. ...

Millions in Asia and the western United States watched as a rare "ring of fire" eclipse crossed their skies.

(Reuters) - The Nasdaq is planning to revamp its systems for handling stock offerings after acknowledging that technology problems had affected trading in millions of newly issued Facebook shares on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Individual investors were left in the dark for hours on Friday about whether their buy and sell orders for Facebook shares had actually been executed, in the latest of a series high-profile exchange glitches. ...

(Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said it is to sell up to half of its stake in Internet entrepreneur Jack Ma's Alibaba Group back to the Chinese company for $7.1 billion, and hand most of the sale proceeds to its shareholders. The deal caps years of discussions between the two companies over Alibaba reclaiming some or all of the 40 percent stake in the Chinese e-commerce firm that Yahoo bought for about $1 billion in 2005. Under the agreement, Yahoo will sell half of that stake in Alibaba for at least $6.3 billion in cash and up to $800 million in new Alibaba preferred stock. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Newly issued shares in Facebook Inc may have a hard time in the coming week if lead underwriter Morgan Stanley stops supporting the stock and managers lower down in the IPO book who were hoping for an early surge decide to get out before going underwater. Facebook on Friday sold 421 million shares of stock in a deal that valued the company at more than $100 billion. But investors, expecting a first-day pop in price, instead saw it close just 0.6 percent above the IPO price at $38.23. ...

A rare solar eclipse is darkening skies from China to Texas today (May 20), and has crowds of eager skywatchers and photographers hoping to see the sun transform into a dazzling "ring of fire."

This month marks the 20th anniversary of a spectacular day for zoologists. Two decades ago, in May 1992, scientists announced the discovery of a new species — the saola — living in the lush mountain forests that straddle the Vietnam-Laos border.

NEW YORK — A nearly complete tyrannosaur skeleton has sold for just over $1 million, in spite of a call to halt its auction because the fossils may have been taken illegally from Mongolia.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Newly issued shares in Facebook Inc may have a hard time in the coming week if lead underwriter Morgan Stanley stops supporting the stock and managers lower down in the IPO book who were hoping for an early surge decide to get out before going underwater. Facebook on Friday sold 421 million shares of stock in a deal that valued the company at more than $100 billion. But investors, expecting a first-day pop in price, instead saw it close just 0.6 percent above the IPO price at $38.23. ...

(Reuters) - A pledge by leaders of industrialized nations to help the troubled world economy is unlikely to herald quick new action by Europe on its debt crisis, meaning more uncertainty for nervous financial markets. The Group of Eight economies stressed on Saturday that their "imperative is to promote growth and jobs", as they also recognized problems among European banks and gave verbal backing for Greece to stay in the euro. Still, despite U.S. calls for immediate moves to boost growth, no sign emerged that Germany would soften its stance on austerity as the cure for Europe's debt ...

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. ...

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

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.

Massive extraction of groundwater can resolve a puzzle over a rise in sea levels in past decades, scientists in Japan said on Sunday.

(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. ...

The 2012 Atlantic hurricane season got an early start with the formation of Tropical Storm Alberto off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday (May 19).

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. ...

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. ...

(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. ...

(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. ...

A new private supply ship for the International Space Station remained stuck on the ground Saturday after rocket engine trouble led to a last-second abort of the historic flight.

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. ...

A Malaysian researcher known for finding new amphibian species said Friday his team had discovered at least one new species of frog in studies he said highlight Borneo's rich biodiversity.

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. ...