French President Francois Hollande's popularity rating inched up in May from a record low the previous month, a poll showed on Sunday, a rare positive sign after a first year in office marked by rising unemployment.

Italians voted in local elections on Sunday that will test political parties three months from a general election that left no clear winner and a month after the start of a fragile coalition cabinet.

Swiss police said Sunday they had arrested 61 people in clashes at a politically charged techno parade in Berne, which the authorities said left 21 members of the security forces injured.

Cars were torched and police faced stone-throwing youths in Stockholm's immigrant-dominated suburbs early Sunday, but the nightly riots that have raged for a week appeared to be easing, police said.

China's Premier Li Keqiang has slammed the European Union for plans to probe the country's telecom products and impose taxes on its solar panels, Chinese state media reported on Saturday.

Sicilian priest gunned down by the Mafia 20 years ago outside his home in Palermo was beatified in a seafront ceremony on Saturday attended by an estimated 100,000 people from all over Italy.

Both of the suspects accused of butchering a British soldier during broad daylight on a London street had long been on the radar of Britain's domestic spy agency, though investigators say it would have been nearly impossible to predict that the men were on the verge of a brutal killing.

British police arrested a man under anti-terrorism laws at BBC headquarters after an interviewee said security services tried to recruit one of the two men arrested after a soldier was hacked to death in a London street.

Britain's security services faced questions on Friday over whether they could have done more to prevent the murder of a soldier hacked to death in a busy London street after it emerged that his suspected killers were known to intelligence officers.

British police arrested two men on a Pakistan International Airlines plane after British fighter jets were scrambled to escort it to a London airport on Friday, officials said.