WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate panel has endorsed President Barack Obama’s slate of five nominees to sit on the National Labor Relations Board. Two of them advanced despite strong GOP opposition.

Read more here: Labor board nominees advance

LONDON (AP) — The International Monetary Fund has called on Britain to do more to support the economic recovery, urging the government Wednesday to speed up investment in infrastructure and come up with a plan to privatize its bailed out banks.

Read more here: IMF calls on Britain to do more for growth

Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service official in charge of approving applications for tax-exempt status, denied wrongdoing in response to accusations that the IRS targeted conservative organizations seeking non-profit status for heavier scrutiny between 2010 and 2012. “'I have not done anything wrong,” Lerner told the House Oversight Committee during a hearing about the IRS' [...]

Read more here: IRS official Lois Lerner: ‘I have not done anything wrong’

LONDON (AP) — Britain and Denmark proposed Wednesday to give hundreds of Afghan interpreters who worked alongside their troops the right to settle in the U.K. and Denmark in recognition of the risks they face if they stay in their war-battered homeland.

Read more here: UK, Denmark eye visas for Afghan interpreters

AMMAN (Reuters) – Western governments are ready to increase support to opponents of President Bashar al-Assad if he rejects a political solution to Syria’s civil war, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday. Kerry said recent military gains by Assad’s forces were only temporary and that if he believed the counter-offensives against the rebels would be decisive, “then he is mis-calculating”. …

Read more here: Kerry warns Syria's Assad against rejecting political solution

MILAN (Reuters) – Italy-based truck and tractor maker Fiat Industrial said reports that Italy would lose more than 500 million euros in tax receipts as a result of its moving fiscal domicile to the UK after a merger with unit CNH were absolutely false. According to U.S. stock exchange regulatory filings dated May 14, Fiat Industrial aims to be treated as a UK resident company after the merger to lower its tax bill. …

Read more here: Fiat Industrial says 500 million euro tax loss reports false

The FBI shot and killed a man in Orlando, Fla., early Wednesday after an interview about his connections to Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev turned violent.

Read more here: FBI kills Chechen man during Boston bombing probe: What's known of him?

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Police say a suicide bomber on foot has killed an anti-Taliban village elder and at least three other people in a busy marketplace in central Afghanistan.

Read more here: Afghanistan: Suicide bomb kills anti-Taliban elder

By Johan Sennero and Johan Ahlander STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Hundreds of young people have torched cars and attacked police in three nights of riots in immigrant suburbs of Sweden's capital, shocking a country that has dodged the worst of the financial crisis but failed to defuse youth unemployment and resentment of asylum seekers. On Tuesday night, a police station in the Jakobsberg area in northwest Stockholm was attacked, two schools were damaged and an arts and crafts centre was set ablaze, despite a call for calm from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. …

Read more here: Stockholm riots challenge image of happy, generous state

By Kim Dixon and Patrick Temple-West WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Internal Revenue Service official at the center of a tax scandal about extra scrutiny of conservative groups told a congressional hearing on Wednesday she had done nothing wrong but asserted her constitutional right not to answer questions. “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws,” Lois Lerner, head of the IRS tax-exempt unit, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. …

Read more here: IRS official refuses to answer questions at scandal hearing