By Guy Faulconbridge and Michael Holden LONDON (Reuters) - British authorities have established that one and possibly both of the men who hacked a soldier to death on a London street was born in Britain of Nigerian descent, a source with knowledge of the investigation said on Thursday. Local media named the man who was definitely born in the country as 28-year-old Michael Adebolajo and said police raided the home of his Nigerian family in a village near the eastern English city of Lincoln. Both men appeared to have converted to Islam from Christian immigrant backgrounds, British media said. ...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility on Thursday for a bomb that killed 11 security personnel and two civilians in the southwestern city of Quetta. Sixteen people were wounded in the attack in the capital of Baluchistan province, and the death toll could rise, police said. The bomb was planted in a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw and blew up as a truck carrying the security men passed by. "We proudly claim responsibility for Thursday's blast in Quetta and the target was local police. ...

NIAMEY (Reuters) - At least 18 soldiers and four suspected Islamists were killed in a fierce gunbattle following a dawn car bomb attack at a barracks in the northern Niger town of Agadez, military sources and a local official said. "There are 18 soldiers and four attackers dead in Agadez," said one source. "One of the attackers has taken two or three soldiers hostage and is holed up in a house. We have him surrounded." (Reporting by Abdoulaye Massalatchi in Niamey and David Lewis in Bamako; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Andrew Roche)

By Andy Bruce LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese factory activity shrank in May for the first time in seven months, overshadowing signs that the euro zone's downturn tempered slightly in May, business surveys showed on Thursday. World stock markets tumbled after the Chinese data and also in response to U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who hinted on Wednesday the Fed could soon pare back its bond-buying with new money if the economy maintains momentum. China's flash HSBC Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) entrenched fears recovery in the world's No. ...

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures fell on Thursday, putting the S&P 500 on track for its first daily back-to-back declines in a month, amid investor concerns the U.S. Federal Reserve may begin to taper its stimulus measures and over weak data in China. The S&P 500 posted its biggest decline in three weeks on Wednesday, after minutes from the latest U.S. Federal Reserve meeting showed some officials were open to tapering large-scale asset purchases as early as at the June meeting. ...

By Aileen Wang and Koh Gui Qing BEIJING (Reuters) - China's factory activity shrank for the first time in seven months in May as new orders fell, a preliminary manufacturing survey showed, entrenching fears that its economic recovery has stalled and that a sharper cooldown may be imminent. The flash HSBC Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for May fell to 49.6, slipping under the 50-point level demarcating expansion from contraction for the first since October and sending Asian financial markets sharply lower. The final HSBC PMI stood at 50.4 in April. ...

CANNES, France (AP) — Associated Press journalists open their notebooks at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — In the new film "Behind the Candelabra," veteran entertainer Debbie Reynolds has just three major scenes to flesh out one of the most complicated figures in piano-playing showman Liberace's life: his loving but sometimes manipulative mother Frances.

MOSCOW (AP) — Beatles frontman Paul McCartney has asked a Russian judge to release members of the Pussy Riot punk group from prison.

MIAMI (AP) — It could have been the perfect matchup to cap an unforgettable game. LeBron James driving to the rim to face Roy Hibbert, one play to decide Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.

OTTAWA (AP) — Sidney Crosby was careful not to get too far ahead of himself after helping the Pittsburgh Penguins rout the Ottawa Senators for a 3-1 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinal series.

Sergio Garcia apologized to Tiger Woods for saying he would serve fried chicken if they were to have dinner at the U.S. Open, an ugly addition to nearly two weeks of verbal sparring.

Every school that participates in the federal loan program reports figures like these to the Department of Education. The following interactive plots every school with at least 1,000 undergraduates by two values: Net cost of attendance after grants and the percentage of students with loans.

It's been a good week for proponents of immigration reform. The sweeping bill that seeks to legalize most of the country's 11 million unauthorized immigrants was passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday night, after five full days of debate and amendments that did little to significantly change the original compromise. So, what's next [...]

Attorney General Eric Holder informed Congress on Wednesday that the U.S. has killed four Americans in drone strikes since 2009: radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and three others who were “not specifically targeted.” Holder’s disclosure, first reported by the New York Times, came a day before President Barack Obama was to defend his counterterrorism strategy in [...]