Prosecutors in Turkey have opened a preliminary investigation into the country's interior minister, accused of negligence after the Ankara bombing that killed 102 people this month, the Hurriyet newspaper said Friday.

The probe is unlikely to get off the ground, however, because prosecutors would need a green light from the government to strip minister Selami Altinok of his political immunity and launch a full investigation.

A sword-wielding man who killed two people at a Swedish school with many immigrant pupils was motivated by racism, police said Friday, as hostility towards refugees mounts across Europe.

Investigators in the southwestern Swedish town of Trollhattan confirmed that Thursday's school attack was a "racially motivated" hate crime, based on the 21-year-old assailant's "attire, his behavior at the scene of the crimes".

At least 42 people, most of them elderly, were killed when a coach collided with a lorry and caught fire in southwest France on Friday, in the country's worst road accident for three decades.

The coach was carrying a club of elderly people on an excursion when it collided with the lorry near the village of Puisseguin among the vineyards of the St Emilion region, east of Bordeaux.

Indonesian meatball seller Ahmad Junaedi was drawn to the Islamic State group in Syria by the promise of a high salary to pay off his debts and a desire to help children living in the jihadists' "caliphate".

But the 32-year-old villager from Java island quickly became disillusioned -- bored with his job making kebabs for Arab fighters, disappointed at the low pay and upset at tales of the group's brutal violence.

Monster Hurricane Patricia roared toward Mexico's Pacific coast on Friday, prompting authorities to evacuate villagers, close ports and urge tourists to cancel trips over fears of a catastrophe.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center called Patricia the strongest eastern north Pacific hurricane on record.

Two months before general elections, Spain's new anti-austerity party Podemos appears to be running out of steam, hit by political setbacks and a slump in opinion polls.

Pablo Iglesias, the pony-tailed academic who leads the party, appeared tired and hesitant on Sunday during a televised debate with Albert Rivera who heads the new center-right Ciudadanos, adding to the sense that Podemos has lost momentum.

U.S. congressman Paul Ryan told Republican colleagues Thursday he is "all in" to be the next speaker of the House, after securing the unified backing of feuding conservative and more establishment lawmakers.

Ryan's commitment, several days after announcing he was reluctantly considering taking the post, all but guarantees he will win the most powerful job in Congress when the House votes next week.

Six guerrillas and three drug gang members were killed in separate Colombian army operations, the defense ministry said Thursday.

The guerrillas were from the National Liberation Army (ELN), killed in an operation in the northeastern area of Bolivar.

At least 13 people were killed in a week of violence in Guinea before and after its contested presidential election, with the security forces responsible for the deaths of unarmed civilians, Amnesty International said in a report published Thursday.

The toll covers the period October 8-13, the days surrounding the October 11 vote which, according to the country's Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), handed victory and another five-year term to incumbent Alpha Conde.

British police said they arrested 20 protesters outside the Indian High Commission in London on Thursday after a Sikh demonstration turned violent.

Hundreds of protesters blocked the road outside the embassy, London police said. One officer was hurt in the scuffles.