Evening Edition

The two thieves snuck into the rhino gallery and ripped a stuffed head off the wall. They carried it to a restroom, opened a window, and dropped the 30-kilo (66-pound) trophy two stories down to an accomplice waiting in a van.

“For 80 years we took care of it and from one day to the next it’s no longer there,” said Georges Lenglet, vertebrate exhibit curator at the Brussels museum, who has little hope of seeing the head again.

National Transitional Council Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Saturday that Yunis had been summoned from the front by a committee of four judges with the knowledge of the NTC’s executive committee, the rebels’ de facto government.

“The recall of General Fatah Yunis from Ajdabiya was based on a warrant that was issued with the knowledge of the executive committee” of the NTC, he told reporters.

The unrest occurred in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar in two separate attacks, and local residents said Sunday the city centre was under lockdown, with security forces patrolling the streets.

Xinjiang has seen several outbreaks of ethnic violence in recent years as the mainly Muslim Uighur minority bridles under what it regards as oppression by the government and the unwanted immigration of ethnic Han Chinese.

Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the suffering of millions in the region hit by its worst drought in decades in an address to hundreds of pilgrims at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, just outside Rome.

“We must not be indifferent to the tragedy of the hungry and the thirsty,” the pontiff said following the weekly Angelus prayer.

Trichet is sure to face questions on the landmark second bailout of Greece in the press conference that will follow the ECB policy-setting meeting that should see interest rates stay on hold.

With eurozone inflation falling, business confidence down and markets uncertain over how effective the Greek bail-out plan will ultimately be, the ECB is tipped to keep its main rate at 1.50 percent following a hike earlier in July.

Gold prices hit a record $1,632.8 an ounce Friday, reflecting a nervous rush by private and national investors from stocks, dollars and euros to the safe-haven commodity.

And the biggest single pile of the stuff on the planet lies deep beneath the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve Bank, a stone’s throw from the Stock Exchange.

Researchers tested prototypes of the creditcard-sized lab-on-a-chip with hundreds of patients in Rwanda, reporting nearly 100 percent accuracy.

The so-called “mChip”, they said, could help knock down three barriers to effective delivery of health care into the world’s poorest regions: difficult access, high costs and long delays for results.

England, in their second innings, were 441 for six at the close of the third day at Trent Bridge on Sunday, giving them a lead of 374 runs.

Bell made a superb 159, but only after being run out when on 137 off the last ball before tea.

The 31-year-old Briton, who started third on the grid, made the most of some wretched ill-fortune for his team-mate and compatriot Lewis Hamilton in changing wet-dry-wet-dry conditions to record his second win of the year and the 11th of his career.

“It’s a great moment, all round a major weekend. For some reason I like these conditions,” said Button of the slippery track.

The assault on Hama, scene of a 1982 massacre when Assad’s father crushed an Islamist uprising, began at dawn on the eve of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan after security forces laid siege to the city for almost a month.

Hama residents told Reuters by telephone that tanks and snipers fired into unarmed residential areas where people had set up makeshift roadblocks to try and stop their advance.

Officially, the 10,000 or so peshmerga fighters were there to protect Kirkukis from any violence associated with nationwide protests. But their presence sparked a furious diplomatic offensive by the United States to calm tensions between the central government in Baghdad and Arbil, the Kurdish capital.

The deployment may have been a trial balloon, analysts said, to test Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and to warn Baghdad and Washington that U.S. troops are needed as a buffer in the disputed northern territories claimed by both capitals.

The long-running strains between the secularist military and Islamist-rooted government boiled over Friday when Chief of General Staff Isik Kosaner stepped down, along with the army, navy and air force commanders, leaving the armed forces in disarray.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who will chair the four-day Supreme Military Council (YAS), has moved quickly to designate a successor to Kosaner and will be keen to smooth over a row which financial markets will be monitoring closely Monday.

The clashes renewed opposition fears that Gaddafi’s agents had infiltrated the area, days after the mysterious killing of the rebel military commander.

The assassination of General Abdel Fattah Younes, apparently by gunmen on his own side, has hurt the opposition just as it was winning broader international recognition and making gains against Gaddafi’s forces in the Western Mountains and elsewhere.

Four suspects were caught and four others were being sought in the latest violence in Kashgar, in a region long beset by anti-Chinese sentiment from the native Uighur population.

Local sources had earlier said three people were killed on Sunday in an explosion, but witnesses reported that the three were hacked to death by the attackers, Xinhua said. Ten people including pedestrians and police were injured, it said.

Separately, five international service members were killed Sunday.

The suicide bombing in Lashkar Gah was the latest in a string of attacks in the south in recent weeks that have included assassinations of high-level government officials in neighboring Kandahar and a coordinated attack against government buildings in Uruzgan province that killed 19 people last week.

The decision on Anders Behring Breivik’s mental state will determine whether he can be held criminally liable and punished with a prison sentence or sent to a psychiatric ward for treatment.

The July 22 attacks were so carefully planned and executed that it would be difficult to argue they were the work of a delusional madman, said Dr. Tarjei Rygnestad, who heads the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine.

Food prices – part of the economic hardships that catalyzed the ouster of the Egyptian and Tunisian leaders – are still climbing. And protesters have shown little patience for conciliatory gestures by governments after decades of empty promises.

With momentum strong to drive out authoritarian regimes, there is no sign that opposition forces will ease up on protests – even with the difficulties of the month of dawn-to-dusk fasting that begins Monday.

Estimates of the death toll, which were impossible to verify, ranged from around 75 people to nearly 140 on a day when the attacks began before dawn and witnesses said they were too frightened to collect corpses from the streets.

The worst carnage was in Hama, the scene of a 1982 massacre by President Bashar Assad’s late father and predecessor and a city with a history of defiance against 40 years of Assad family rule. Hospitals there were overwhelmed with bloodied casualties, suggesting the death toll could rise sharply, witnesses said.