Syria’s political opposition met Thursday in Istanbul to elect new leadership, choose a government-in-exile and deliberate on a negotiating stance for peace talks, but it hit a controversy when the immediate past president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, a Muslim cleric who no longer holds any post in the group, presided over the opening session and released a surprise peace initiative without consulting the group.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said it was "imperative" that Europe's leaders create a new agency with powers to restructure busted banks in order to help the region leave its economic and financial crisis behind it once and for all.

Brazil's Federal Police say nine people have been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing Indians girls in the northern state of Amazonas.

Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, will certainly lose his job in September – and like his predecessor, retired Gen. Pervez Musharraf, he’s likely to face criminal charges under the government of newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Lebanese supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad fired heavy machine guns and lobbed mortar shells at each other Thursday in some of the worst fighting in the port city of Tripoli in years.

Sweden has long been a bastion of generous social welfare and an egalitarian political culture. So many people were shocked when scores of youths hurled rocks at police and set cars ablaze during rioting in several largely immigrant areas near Stockholm this week.

The soldier brutally murdered in a suspected terrorist attack in London was a popular 25-year-old ceremonial military drummer and machine gunner, a father and a passionate fan of the Manchester United soccer team, the British military said Thursday.

Officials in the Turks and Caicos Islands have recovered $19.5 million and more than 2,500 acres (1,000 hectares) of real estate as they continue to seize assets improperly obtained by corrupt politicians.

An official Israeli committee on Thursday handed the government its proposal for ending a contentious system that grants Jewish ultra-Orthodox seminary students automatic exemptions from military service, setting the stage for what could become the first major conflict in the new Israeli coalition government.

The flow of refugees crossing from Syria into Jordan has all but stopped in the last six days amid heavy fighting in the area and claims by Syrians that Jordanian border guards are preventing them from entering.

A man accused of plotting to derail a train in Canada with support from al-Qaida asked Thursday to be represented by a defense attorney willing to use the "holy book" as a reference in his case.

Israel's prime minister says a new report by the U.N. atomic agency shows that international pressure is having no effect on halting Iran's suspect nuclear program.

Cairo, the Arab world's most populated city, is often referred to as an open-air museum of Islamic antiquities and the city of 1,000 minarets.

A government spokesman says at least 15 people were injured, four of them by bullet wounds, during a protest in Guinea's capital between opposition parties and security forces. The clashes are the latest iteration in the ongoing fight between the country's opposition and the ruling party over the details of a much-delayed parliamentary election.

South Sudan's president is criticizing the International Criminal Court, saying the court is designed to humiliate African leaders.

A man seen with bloody hands wielding a butcher knife after the killing of a British soldier on the streets of London was described as a convert to Islam who took part in demonstrations with a banned radical group, two Muslim hard-liners said Thursday.

Election officials in the Cayman Islands say the opposition party has won nine of 18 seats, one short of a majority needed to control the British territory's legislature.

A criminal court in Macedonia's capital has sentenced 86 employees of a road management company to prison terms ranging from eight months to more than six years for involvement in a massive highway toll scam.

Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday called "surreal" the judicial reasoning behind an appellate court's decision to uphold his guilty verdict and four-year jail term in a tax fraud case.

Gunmen killed at least seven soldiers in central Iraq on Thursday, officials said, in the latest episode of violence to hit the country in a particularly bloody month.

A spate of attacks by Islamic insurgents in Somalia's capital is forcing investors, businessmen and aid workers to have second thoughts about expanding operations in Mogadishu.

Police fired tear gas to disperse protesters in the latest confrontation between the ruling party and Togo's increasingly active opposition. Demonstrators were gathering to protest the death of an opposition member, who died in jail.

A massive fire broke out Thursday at a fuel depot on the northern outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, sending bright orange flames leaping high into the air and thick black smoking rolling upward and enveloping the area.

Ladies? Don't make him laugh.