Europe, United Kingdom | featured news

Thousands of extra police officers were stationed on Britain's streets Friday, as the country faced its first weekend since riots raged through suburbs and town centers, leaving a scarred landscape of broken glass and torched buildings....

British Prime Minister David Cameron says rioters in England will be held accountable. "We will do whatever is necessary to restore law and order," he said.

Rioting and looting spread across London on Monday as hooded youths set buildings and cars ablaze, smashed shop windows and hurled bottles and stones at police in a third night of violence in Britain's worst unrest in decades.

British authorities urged for calm early Sunday, hours after demonstrators in north London burned police cars, and set a bus and buildings ablaze to protest the death of a local man.

The British judge leading the government-backed probe into illegal eavesdropping by journalists will start ordering people to testify and hand over documents "as soon as possible," he said Thursday, as the inquiry launched.

International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge puts London 2012's readiness for the Games on a par with Sydney 2000 and Beijing 2008.

One by one, the lulz are coming to an end. Scotland Yard announced Wednesday that it had arrested a 19-year-old it claims is a core member of the hacker group LulzSec who goes by the name “Topiary.” The young hacktivist was captured in a home in the Shetland Islands off the northeast coast of Great Britain, and taken to London for questioning.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown charged Tuesday that Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers hired “known criminals” to obtain information about him, and a senior police official said he was sure his own phone was hacked, as a mounting scandal threatened to further damage Murdoch’s media empire.

Proposed cuts in state-sponsored pension plans spur hundreds of thousands of teachers, police, immigration workers and others to picket for a day. The walkout could be a sign of further industrial action this summer over deep cuts in British public spending.

A North Somerset primary school teacher filmed himself sexually abusing young girls in his classroom, a court hears.