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The poll findings, showing Ukip on a record high in an ICM poll of 18%

The poll shows that support for the three main parties has drained away to Ukip, with each of them down four points on last month – Labour dropping to 34%, the Tories 28%, and the Liberal Democrats 11% – as Nigel Farage's party gained nine points.

For all three established parties to be falling back in the polls at the same time is unprecedented in the 29-year history of the Guardian/ICM series. The Tories are plumbing depths they have not experienced in over a decade.

"These people, they should integrate in this society and just try a little bit more to be like Swedish citizens."Scratch beneath the surface and this is a sentiment shared by many in a country that arguably has the world's most generous asylum policies. Sweden has taken in more than 11,000 refugees from Syria since 2012, more per head than any other European country, and it has absorbed more than 100,000 Iraqis and 40,000 Somalis over the past two decades. About 1.8 million of its 9.5 million people are first- or second-generation immigrants.

So it has come as a shock for many Swedes to discover the scale of resentment. It's not hard to find it. Aleks, whose parents came from Kosovo, says: "I hate the police. I hate the cops. I think setting fire to cars in the neighbourhood should stop, but I don't think throwing rocks at the cops should stop."

The trigger for the riots – police shooting dead a 69-year-old Portuguese man called Lenine Relvas-Martins

Another unanswered question is Ivanishvili's policy towards Russia. The tycoon's international priorities are similar to Saakashvili's, and include European integration and Nato. But he has also pledged to improve relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia. Ivanishvili said he would try to convince Russia that Georgia's strategic aspirations were not a threat.

Russia welcomed the result, saying ties that had been frozen in the wake of the 2008 Russian-Georgia war could be renewed.

"We are definitely looking forward for a fresh, new non-hostile, sober leadership in Georgia," said Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman.

appointment of the kingdom's new interior minister, Mohammed Bin Nayef. The significance of the sudden move is that he is the first of the younger generation of the Al Saud to be given one of the top jobs in the kingdom — which is being taken as a good indicator of the likely future succession.

Bin Nayef is well known and respected in the west, especially by its security and intelligence agencies, from his years as deputy minister of the interior, coordinating counter-terrorist efforts and running a successful "de-radicalisation" programme for repentant jihadis. He had an extraordinarily lucky escape in August 2009 when an al-Qaida suicide bomber from Yemen blew himself up in the minister's palace but left his target only lightly injured.

MBN, as he is known in leaked US diplomatic cables, is just 53 and thus counts as a youngster in the Saudi system. He is the son of the late Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, who died last June after serving as interior minister for three decades.

In the chaos since Gaddafi's fall, the south has become a smuggling route for weapons which are reaching al Qaeda militants deeper in the Sahara and Tuaregs who are staging a separatist rebellion in northern Mali.

Gaddafi was always quick to end any ethnic clashes in the desert region and in 2009 he put down a tribal rebellion with helicopter gunships. But Libya's new rulers are weak and often out-gunned by the militias they are trying to control.

“A computer science degree from 1987 isn’t worth much if they haven’t stayed current. I’d rather present a self-taught developer if he has a couple of shipped products under his belt.” She does admit that a degree can be a good tie-breaker, and a paper from a top-tier school shows an applicant “was at least smart enough to get in.” In the end, though, “Clients are interested in ability. If you have the chops and the experience, you’re getting hired – unless [the client] is looking for a front-pager.”

Real power in North Korea now probably belongs to a coterie of advisers following the death of Kim Jong-il, not his youngest son, an untested man in his 20s who has been anointed the "Great Successor."

These advisers will decide whether North Korea launches military action against South Korea to strengthen the succession around Kim Jong-un -- or seeks a peaceful transition.

The most powerful adviser is Jang Song-thaek, 65, brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il.

Army chief Ataollah Salehi said the United States had moved an aircraft carrier out of the Gulf because of Iran's naval exercises, and Iran would take action if the ship returned."Iran will not repeat its warning ... the enemy's carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill. I recommend and emphasise to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf....we are not in the habit of warning more than once," he said.

After years of measures that had little impact, the new sanctions are the first that could have a serious effect on Iran's oil trade, which is 60 percent of its economy.Sanctions signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve would cut financial institutions that work with Iran's central bank off from the U.S. financial system, blocking the main path for Iran to receive payments for its crude.

The EU is expected to impose new sanctions by the end of this month, possibly including a ban on oil imports and a freeze of central bank assets.

"We'll be strengthening our presence in the Asia-Pacific, and budget reductions will not come at the expense of this critical region."

Xinhua said the US role could be good for China in helping to secure the "peaceful environment" it needed to continue its economic development.

But it added: "While boosting its military presence in the Asia-Pacific, the United States should abstain from flexing its muscles, as this won't help solve regional disputes. "If the United States indiscreetly applies militarism in the region, it will be like a bull in a china shop, and endanger peace instead of enhancing regional stability."

Israel and the secular government of Azerbaijan share the same goal: to check the spread of political Islam in general and Iran in particular.

Theirs is an alliance reinforced by hardware. In February 2012, Israel sold Azerbaijan $1.6bn (1.3bn euros) of sophisticated weapons systems.

Earlier this year, America's Foreign Policy magazine suggested the alliance between Israel and Azerbaijan went deeper than many had previously thought. The magazine reported that Israel had secured an agreement to use Azerbaijan's airfields in case it went ahead with a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies "pertaining to the protection of US persons", repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive "raw Sigint" – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: "Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content."According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. "NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection"

The real winner from new natural-resource wealth beyond the Khyber Pass will be China

Chinese foreign investment and aid has accelerated dramatically over the past decade, especially in Africa. In November 2009 alone, for example, China's largesse amounted to $10 billion in low-interest loans and $1 billion in commercial loans to the continent. With Beijing as cheerleader, trade has soared from $1 billion in 1992 to $106.8 billion in 2008.

The DRC provides the best cautionary parallel to Afghanistan: The discovery in the late 1990s of copper, coltan, and other minerals in eastern Congo gave new life to a civil war that has now claimed upwards of 4 million lives. Flagging combatants were funded by mineral extraction, and much of those resources eventually flowed to China.

"Victory is impossible in Afghanistan. Obama is right to pull the troops out. No matter how difficult it will be," Mr Gorbachev said

He said before the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, an agreement had been reached with Iran, India, Pakistan and the US. "We had hoped America would abide by the agreement that we reached that Afghanistan should be a neutral, democratic country, that would have good relations with its neighbours and with both the US and the USSR. "The Americans always said they supported this, but at the same time they were training militants - the same ones who today are terrorising Afghanistan and more and more of Pakistan," Mr Gorbachev said.

"I am very concerned, we're only half way down the road from a totalitarian regime to democracy and freedom. And the battle continues. There are still many people in our society who fear democracy and would prefer a totalitarian regime." He said the ruling party, led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, "has been doing everything it can to move away from democracy, to stay in power".