At least six cars were torched in Stockholm Thursday evening as police called in reinforcements bracing for a fifth night of riots in the Swedish capital's immigrant-dominated suburbs. The riots, which have shattered Sweden's image abroad as a peaceful and egalitarian nation, have sparked a debate in Sweden about the assimilation of immigrants, who make up about 15 percent of the population. Many of the ...

Relief workers and clean-up crews defied violent thunderstorms Thursday while families and friends gathered for the funeral of one of the Oklahoma tornado's youngest victims. Heavy rain and lightning at dawn threatened to upset Moore's long trail back to normality, with police at one point closing flash-flooded streets in the residential city of 56,000 struggling to get back on its feet. The tornado, one of ...

British police made two further arrests Thursday and raided houses across London following the brutal murder of a serving soldier who survived a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Prime Minister David Cameron appealed for calm after 25-year-old Lee Rigby was butchered outside a London army barracks on Wednesday, while an extra 1,200 officers were deployed on the capital's streets in a bid to reassure the public. ...

Thieves have made off with a diamond necklace worth 2 million euros ($2.6 million) made by Switzerland's De Grisogono in the second jewellery theft at this year's Cannes Film Festival, the company said on Thursday. The heist took place during a gala evening Tuesday organised by the jeweller and attended by, among others, Paris Hilton and Sharon Stone. "Unfortunately, after the end of the festivities, ...

President Barack Obama Thursday laid out new guidelines for drone strikes and launched a new bid to close Guantanamo Bay, warning that a "perpetual" US war on terror would be self defeating. Obama told Americans their country was at a crossroads, and must move on from the counter-terrorism policies deployed after the September 11 attacks to confront a new era of diverse global threats and homegrown radicals. ...

IMF chief Christine Lagarde faces another day of questioning after being grilled for hours Thursday by French prosecutors who are deciding if she should be charged over a state payout to a disgraced tycoon during her time as finance minister. Lagarde has downplayed the investigation, but the stakes are high for both her and the International Monetary Fund, which has expressed confidence in Lagarde. "The ...

Syria's main opposition group met for key talks in Istanbul on Thursday to debate whether to join a new US-Russian peace initiative to end the two-year civil war, while the regime vowed to crush the insurgency. Holding its seventh general assembly meeting since its creation last November, the National Coalition is expected to choose a new president, discuss incorporating new members and decide the fate of an ...

Rioting in Stockholm's suburbs has highlighted Sweden's failure to integrate swathes of its immigrant population, but in this small, consensus-driven country, there was little agreement on how to solve the problem. Four nights of unrest in Stockholm's low-income suburbs have trained the spotlight on the assimilation of immigrants, who make up about 15 percent of the population and who are much more likely to ...

Iceland's new Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson took office on Thursday, heading up a coalition government composed entirely of newcomers who have never served in a cabinet. Gunnlaugsson, of the centrist-agrarian Progressive Party, thereby became at age 38 one of the youngest serving heads of government in the world. He will also be the youngest member of Iceland's new government. An ...

Russia has ordered the urgent evacuation of the 16-strong crew of a drifting Arctic research station after the ice floe that hosts the floating laboratory began to disintegrate, officials said Thursday. Natural Resources and Ecology Minister Sergei Donskoi set a three-day deadline to draft a plan to evacuate the North Pole-40 floating research station. "The destruction of the ice has put at risk the ...