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By Khaled Yacoub Oweis ISTANBUL - Syrian opposition talks aimed at presenting a coherent front at an international peace conference to end the civil war faced the prospect of collapse after President Bashar al-Assad's foes failed to cut an internal deal, opposition sources said on Friday. ...

By Peter Griffiths LONDON (Reuters) - 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. Suspects Michael Adebolajo, 28 and Michael Adebowale, 22, are under guard in hospital after being shot and arrested by police after the murder of 25-year-old Afghan war veteran Lee Rigby on Wednesday. They have not yet been charged. ...

By Noémie Olive PARIS (Reuters) - French magistrates decided on Friday not to place IMF chief Christine Lagarde under formal investigation over her role in a 285-million-euro ($368.5 million) arbitration payment made to a supporter of former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Lagarde instead was given the status of a "supervised witness" after two full days of questioning on her 2008 decision as Sarkozy's finance minister to use arbitration to settle a legal battle between the state and businessman Bernard Tapie. ...

By Warren Strobel WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saddled with Middle East problems ranging from Iran to Syria and beyond, President Barack Obama now faces one that is both old and new: Iraq. Unresolved sectarian tensions, inflamed by the raging civil war in neighboring Syria, have combined to send violence in Iraq to its highest level since Obama withdrew the last U.S. troops in December 2011, U.S. officials and Middle East analysts say. A Sunni Muslim insurgency against the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government has also been reawakened. ...

By Mike McDonald GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo was extradited on Friday to the United States to face money-laundering charges, just days after former dictator Efrain Rios Montt's genocide conviction was overturned. A U.S. grand jury decided in 2009 that Portillo, who was in office from 2000 to 2004, should face charges that he laundered $70 million through U.S. banks. ...

By Ilze Filks and Mia Shanley STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A nearly week-long spate of rioting spread outside Stockholm on Friday but authorities said police reinforcements sent to the Swedish capital had reduced the violence there, even though dozens of youths set cars and a recycling station ablaze. The rioting - set off earlier this month by the police shooting of a 69-year-old man - continued for a sixth night in mainly poor immigrant areas in Stockholm. ...