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King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden were greeted by hundreds of Delawareans as they celebrated the 375th anniversary of the New Sweden Colony, known today as the city of Wilmington. The Swedish royals, along with Finland's Speaker of the Parliament Eero Heinäluoma, began their day in Delaware with a luncheon at the Bunea Vista Mansion in New Castle with Governor Jack Markell.

(Reuters) - A gunman opened fire from a rooftop in a Finnish town centre in the early hours of Saturday, killing two people and wounding several others, police said. An 18-year-old man wearing camouflage clothing was arrested after the shooting in Hyvinkaa, a small town 56 km (34 miles) north of the capital Helsinki.

After a long series of patent infringement lawsuits that began in 2009 and continued with many twists and turns along the way, Nokia has emerged the victor by signing a patent licensing agreement with Apple. The agreement will result in settlement of all patent litigation between the companies, including the withdrawal by Nokia and Apple of their respective complaints to the US International Trade Commission. This will certainly be the tech story of the day. The financial structure of the agreement consists of a one-time payment payable by Apple and on-going royalties to be paid by Apple to Nokia for...

HELSINKI—The euro zone's attempts to reassure bond investors that it can fix its debt problems may be derailed Sunday when Finns go to the polls to elect a new government. According to recent opinion polls, voter support for the nationalist True Finns Party has soared in recent months, partly in response to dissatisfaction with the fact that taxpayers in this most northern of the euro zone's 17 members have been asked to bail out Greece, Ireland and Portugal at the same time as welfare benefits are being cut at home. The True Finns oppose any aid to fellow euro-zone members,...

Land purchases by Russian citizens in the immediate vicinity of Finnish military bases have raised suspicions. Purchases have been made of properties in poor condition or that are wasteland, but adjacent to military facilities. One such example is land close by the Karelian Air Command near Kuopio. The head of the Karelian Air Command, Ari Jussila, says that he is aware of the purchase, but is unwilling to take any position on the matter, since the Air Command's duties on the ground extend only as far as its perimeter fence. The Defence Forces has a unit charged with overseeing issues...

In 1940, the United States considered the possibility of settling Finnish refugees from the Winter War in Alaska, according to Lecturer Henry Oinas-Kukkonen of the University of Oulu. Finnish children being evacuated during the Winter War. Image: Museovirasto Speaking at a historical research conference in Jyväskylä on Friday, Oinas-Kukkonen said that the proposal was intended to be carried out if the Soviet Union had conquered Finland. In early 1940, he says, US officials were preparing to set up an "American Finland" in the northernmost state. The US Department of the Interior drew up several proposals to allow Finnish refugees to...

Protests in Athens have turned violent amid a general strike over planned austerity measures that has brought the country to a standstill. Petrol bombs have been thrown at police who responded with pepper spray, tear gas and stun grenades.

The Large Hadron Collider is about to start the work that could lead to the discovery of fundamental new physics. Scientists working on the European machine will later attempt to smash beams of proton particles together at unprecedented energies.

A Finnish justice ministry committee set up after a 2008 school shooting said in its report Wednesday that self-loading handguns should be banned and the age limit of other firearm licences raised to 20. The committee added that the interior ministry should seize semiautomatic handguns, with owners offered compensation.

28-year-old Christian man's funeral took a surprising twist at the Helsinki Malmi cemetery when the deceased's Muslim relatives arrived at the grave and took the lead in the funeral. - Upon reaching the gravesite all of a sudden Muslim men jumped out from the thicket and replaced the Finnish pallbearers and the Imam began to lead the service, "the pastor, Jukka Simoila said. The 28-year-old deceased became a Christian in December 2008 and got married last summer in a Christian ceremony. His father was a Muslim. The deceased died of serious illness in September and had hoped for a Christian...

Shots have been fired at a shopping centre in the town of Espoo, near the capital of Finland, Helsinki. An eyewitness said at least one person was left lying on the floor after shooting broke out, the national broadcaster YLE said on its website.

More and more Western Europeans, recognizing the threat to their safety and way of life, have turned their backs on the establishment, which has done little or nothing to address these problems, and begun voting for parties—some relatively new, and all considered right-wing—that have dared to speak up about them. One measure of the dimensions of this shift: Owing to the rise in gay-bashings by Muslim youths, Dutch gays—who 10 years ago constituted a reliable left-wing voting bloc—now support conservative parties by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. ... Who will win the war for the soul of Western Europe? The Islamofascists...

Two people have been killed in a shooting at a school in southwest Germany, local media reports say. A number of people are also thought to have been wounded in the incident in Winnenden, near Stuttgart. Reports say the gunman wore a black combat uniform and fled into the town. However, local police were not immediately available to comment.