News Briefs

Swedes protest as anti-immigrants enter Parliament

Thousands of Swedes demonstrated against the Swedish Democrats as Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt struggles to form a government that doesn't have to rely on the anti-immigrant party after Sunday's election.

About 10,000 people protested in central Stockholm late Monday while in Gothenburg, Sweden's second-biggest city, 5,000 took part in a sorrow march against racism after the Swedish Democrats got 5.7 percent of votes and their first seats in parliament. About 2,000 protesters gathered in the southern city of Malmoe.

Reinfeldt, whose four-party coalition won 49.3 percent, has reached out to the Green Party, part of the three-party opposition bloc, to stop the Swedish Democrats from holding the balance of power. They have so far rejected his overtures. All groups in parliament have said they won't work with the Swedish Democrats, who want to reduce immigration by 90 percent.

While Reinfeldt's government will probably have to rule as a minority, it is only three seats short of a majority in the 349-member parliament.

The final count will be completed Wednesday, according to the Swedish Election Authority.

Juarez paper vows to keep reporting

Besieged journalists in Ciudad Juarez are vowing to continue covering the drug violence along the border, even after gunmen executed a second reporter from the city's newspaper last week.

The murder of the young photojournalist from El Diario de Juarez, shot in the parking lot of a busy mall on Thursday, was front-page news across Mexico. President Felipe Calderon's national security adviser denounced this week the continued killings, kidnappings and threats suffered by journalists, but offered no new information about the latest case.

The slaying of Luis Carlos Santiago Orozco, 21, comes two years after the lead crime reporter at El Diario was shot in his driveway as he was getting ready to drive his daughter to school. That crime has not been solved, and little work on the case has been done. A prosecutor assigned to the case was also fatally shot.

On Sunday, El Diario published a remarkable and bold front-page editorial addressed directly to the warring drug lords who are fighting for control of the city and its lucrative smuggling routes to the United States.

The editorial led some news organizations to report incorrectly that El Diario was cutting back on its coverage of the drug war. The reporters and editors at the newspaper said this week that it was just the opposite.

Many news organizations in drug hot spots in Mexico have all but stopped reporting about the cartel violence.

Record heat spawning stronger hurricanes

The four major Atlantic hurricanes that spun toward the Caribbean in the past month were fueled by record warm seas and formed in an unprecedented 20 days. With 10 weeks left in the hurricane season, more may be coming.

The storms that were born off West Africa gathered strength by absorbing the ocean's heat and swelled into Category 4-level hurricanes on the 5-step Saffir-Simpson scale. While none hit land at full speed, each packed winds of at least 131 miles an hour, stronger than Katrina's Category 3 winds when it devastated New Orleans at the end of August in 2005.

After Igor churned past Bermuda Monday and cut power to two-thirds of the colony's residents, Tropical Storm Lisa formed Tuesday in the east Atlantic. While the six-month season is past its statistical peak, forecasters and insurers said warmer seas can lengthen the danger period to property, from beach homes in Florida and the Hamptons to rigs and refineries owned by Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips in the oil-rich Gulf.

The National Hurricane Center predicts 2010 will have as many as 20 storms of at least 39 mile-an-hour winds, meaning they'll be named, compared with 11 in a typical year. Lisa's formation Tuesday brought this year's tally to 12. The Miami-based center has identified five major hurricanes in 2010 compared with two in an average season when waters are cooler.

The Atlantic has had record temperatures since March and by the end of August a swath of the ocean was 3 degrees Fahrenheit above average. The records date to 1854.