The world's largest social networking site, Facebook, confirms plans to issue shares raising $5bn (£3.16bn, 3.8bn euros).

Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, dies aged 88.

A powerful explosion at a police station in the Colombian port city of Tumaco kills at least seven people and injures scores.

The loss-making parent company of American Airlines says it will shed 13,000 jobs - around 15% of its workforce.

A Maine treasure hunter says he has discovered a WW2-era shipwreck filled with platinum, now worth $3bn (£1.9bn)

Italian investigators are refusing to release a report into a fatal accident in Egypt involving a sister ship of the Costa Concordia, the BBC has learned.

The US will wind seek to down combat operations in Afghanistan in 2013, the defence secretary says, more than a year before a deadline for withdrawal.

Diplomats say progress is being made at UN talks on Syria, where Western nations are pressing for endorsement of an Arab League peace plan.