The Zuckerberg manifesto: How he plans to debug the world

Mark Zuckerberg's long-term vision for Facebook, laid out in a sweeping manifesto , sometimes sounds more like a utopian social guide than a business plan. Are we, he asks, "building the world we all want?"

While most people now use Facebook to connect with friends and family, Zuckerberg thinks that the social network can also encourage more civic engagement, from the local to the global level. Facebook now has nearly 2 billion members, which makes it larger than any nation in the world.

Brightest moon in almost 69 years lights up sky around globe

The brightest moon in almost 69 years is lighting up the sky in a treat for star watchers around the globe.

The phenomenon known as the supermoon reached its peak luminescence in North America before dawn on Monday. Its zenith in Asia and the South Pacific was Monday night. Across the international dateline in New Zealand, it was to reach its brightest after midnight Tuesday local time.

Junko Tabei, 1st woman to climb Everest, dies at 77

The first woman to climb Mount Everest didn't stop there.

Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei, who died Thursday at 77, devoted her adult life to scaling peaks, climbing the tallest mountains in more than 70 countries.

Her philosophy was to live life to the fullest. "I want to climb even more mountains," she said in a 1991 interview with The Associated Press, 16 years after conquering Everest. "To think, 'It was great,' and then die."

Weird science: 3 win Nobel for unusual states of matter

How is a doughnut like a coffee cup? The answer helped three British-born scientists win the Nobel prize in physics Tuesday.

Their work could help lead to more powerful computers and improved materials for electronics.

David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, who are now affiliated with universities in the United States, were honored for work in the 1970s and '80s that shed light on strange states of matter.

Muslim pilgrims begin hajj, but this year without Iranians

Close to 2 million people from around the world began performing the first rites of the Islamic hajj pilgrimage on Saturday, which calls for entering into a state of physical and spiritual purity and circling the cube-shaped Kaaba with their palms facing upward in supplication and prayer.

Notably absent this year are Iranian pilgrims. Last year, some 64,000 Iranians took part in the hajj, but disputes with the Saudi government prompted Tehran to bar its citizens from taking part this year.

Frenchwoman who got world's 1st face transplant dies at 49

Isabelle Dinoire, a Frenchwoman who received the world's first partial face transplant, has died more than a decade after a complex and daring operation that set the stage for dozens of similar transplants worldwide. She was 49.

Her life with a new face was a miracle to many, but was also marred by infections, kidney trouble and hypertension linked to her treatment. In announcing her death Tuesday, the Amiens University Hospital in northern France said Dinoire's experience "illustrates perfectly the high stakes of face transplants."

Many Muslims to begin fasting for month of Ramadan on Monday

Millions of Muslims around the world will mark the start of the holy month of Ramadan on Monday, a time marked by intense prayer, dawn-to-dusk fasting and nightly feasts.

Saudi Arabia's state TV announced the new moon of Ramadan was spotted Sunday evening. Local media in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, also said Muslims there would begin fasting Monday, as will Muslims in Singapore, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, among others.

Swiss inaugurate $12 billion rail tunnel, world's longest

Just like Hannibal in ancient times, Swiss engineers have conquered the Alps.

More than 2,200 years after the commander from the ancient North African civilization of Carthage led his army of elephants and troops over Europe's highest mountain chain, the Swiss have completed another gargantuan task: Burrowing the world's longest railway tunnel under the Swiss Alps to improve European trade and travel.

Italian woman, 116, seen as last living person born in 1800s

Surrounded by relatives and friends, Italy's Emma Morano greeted with a smile the news that she, at 116, is now the oldest person in the world.

Not only that, but Morano is believed to be the last surviving person in the world born in the 1800s, with a birthdate of Nov. 29, 1899. That's just 4 ½ months after Susannah Mushatt Jones, who died Thursday in New York, also at 116.

Journalists on Friday descended upon Morano's home in Verbania, a northern Italian mountain town overlooking Lake Major, to document her achievement, but had to wait until she finished a nap to greet her.

Suu Kyi loyalist and friend elected Myanmar's president

Myanmar's parliament elected Htin Kyaw as the country's new president Tuesday in a watershed moment that ushers the longtime opposition party of Aung San Suu Kyi into government after 54 years of direct or indirect military rule.

The joint session of the two houses of parliament broke into thundering applause as the speaker Mann Win Khaing Than announced the result: "I hereby announce the president of Myanmar is Htin Kyaw, as he won the majority of votes." Immediately, the state-run Myanmar TV's camera zoomed in from above on a beaming Suu Kyi, sitting in the front row, clapping excitedly, for a live nationwide audience.

Zuckerberg to press on with Internet access despite setback

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed Monday to press on with his 3-year-old effort to bring the developing world online, even after Indian regulators banned one of the pillars of the campaign.

He said the banned service, Free Basics, was only one program in his Internet.org campaign, so he could proceed with other initiatives. Indian regulators banned Free Basics this month because it provided access only to certain pre-approved services — including Facebook — rather than the full Internet.

Taiwan rescuers find signs of life in quake rubble

Rescuers on Sunday found signs of life within the remains of a high-rise residential building that collapsed in a powerful, shallow earthquake in southern Taiwan that killed at least 19 people, as families anxiously waited on site.

The emergency center in Tainan, the worst-hit city, said Sunday that 171 people had been rescued from the building following the magnitude-6.4 quake that struck at dawn Saturday.

Assange to accept arrest if UN panel rules against him

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he will accept arrest by British police if a U.N. working group investigating his claims decides that the three years he has spent inside the Ecuadorean Embassy doesn't amount to illegal detention.

Writing on WikiLeaks' Twitter account, Assange said if the U.N. panel finds he has lost his case against the United Kingdom and Sweden then he will turn himself in to police at noon on Friday.

Attack on Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia kills 3

Two gunmen wearing suicide bomb belts attacked a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia during Friday prayers, an assault that killed at least three people and one bomber and wounded 18, authorities said.

The attack struck the Imam Reda Mosque in the neighborhood of Mahasen, an area popular with Shiite workers of the state-run Saudi Arabian Oil Co., the world's largest oil-producing firm.

Re-elected Vietnam communist boss defends one-party rule

Vietnam's re-elected leader, a 71-year-old Communist Party ideologue, made it clear Wednesday that one-party rule was here to stay, insisting that the collective leadership he heads is a far better alternative to what he called authoritarianism disguised as democracy.

General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (pronounced Noo-yen Foo Chong) was re-elected Wednesday as head of the party and the leader of a 19-member Politburo that will govern Vietnam for the next five years. The decisions were made at the end of a weeklong congress of the 4.5-million-member party, which rules the lives of 93 million Vietnamese.

China's anti-graft body investigates statistics bureau chief

The head of the bureau that gathers China's economic data is under investigation by the anti-graft agency in a possible expansion of an anticorruption campaign that has shaken state companies and securities firms.

Wang Bao'an, chairman of the National Bureau of Statistics and a former deputy finance minister, is suspected of "severe disciplinary violations," the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement Tuesday. It gave no details.

Clock ticks down on EU passport free travel dream

Passport-free travel and hassle-free business in Europe has never been in more danger.

With more than 1 million people streaming into the European Union hoping for sanctuary or jobs, nations have erected fences, deployed troops and tightened border controls.

"What we have worked for, for so many years, we are seeing it crumbling now in front of us," Roberta Metsola, a leading EU lawmaker on migration, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Twitter parts with 4 key execs in latest sign of turmoil

Four of Twitter's key executives are leaving the company in an exodus that has escalated the uncertainty facing the messaging service as it struggles to broaden its audience and lure back disillusioned investors.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the management shake-up late Sunday after technology news site Re/Code reported the changes earlier in the day.

Dorsey described the departures as voluntary, a characterization that three of the four exiting executives echoed in their own posts.

Al-Jazeera says 3 of its reporters in Yemen likely kidnapped

Three Al-Jazeera journalists working in war-ravaged Yemen who went missing this week likely have been kidnapped, the satellite news network says, the latest reporters targeted in the civil war gripping the Arab world's poorest country.

Reporter Hamdi al-Bokari and crew members Abdulaziz al-Sabri and Moneer al-Sabai were last seen Monday night in Taiz, a city in southern Yemen that's been the scene of heavy fighting for months now, the Qatari broadcaster said.

Only on AP: Islamic State razing of Iraq monastery condemned

The Obama Administration and the Vatican condemned the Islamic State group Wednesday for razing Iraq's oldest Christian monastery, a 1400-year-old structure that survived assaults by nature and man for centuries before it was deliberately destroyed by extremists.

At the United Nations, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said reducing St. Elijah's monastery in Mosul to a field of rubble was malicious and misguided. The Associated Press confirmed the news with exclusive satellite images published early Wednesday.