Evening Edition

The soldier’s mysterious death in Helmand province, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, overshadowed Cameron’s announcement that security had improved enough for Britain to soon withdraw a small number of troops.

Cameron arrived in Helmand on Monday morning on a surprise visit but quickly decided to abandon a planned trip to the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, one of a handful of towns earmarked for an early handover to Afghan forces.

Four months after firing Galliano over alleged racist slurs, Dior tasked his longtime right-hand man Bill Gaytten to oversee a show inspired by everything from early 1980s Paris nightlife to the architect Frank Gehry.

Not that Galliano — who is in rehab and awaiting a verdict on September 8 after standing trial last month — was far from the minds of guests in the marquee at the rear of the Musee Rodin on the Left Bank.

Both sides are already through to the quarter-finals with six points after two games so the clash between the European rivals will be one for Group A supremacy on front of a sell-out 50,000 crowd.

Despite being the reigning two-time champions and favourites, Germany have proved less impressive than the French so far, and were briefly whistled by the crowd as they struggled to subdue Nigeria 1-0 in Frankfurt.

His call came just days after Sri Lanka’s sports minister said he had forced the national cricket board committee to step down following allegations of financial mismanagement.

Sri Lanka co-hosted the 2011 World Cup and were left with a $69 million bill, with media reports suggesting that mismanagement by Sri Lanka Cricket had been responsible for cost over-runs.

In his second trial since fleeing to Saudi Arabia following a popular uprising in January, Ben Ali was also given a fine of 54,000 euros (78,500 dollars).

The former strongman and his wife Leila Trabelsi had already been sentenced in absentia to 35 years in prison last month for misappropriating public funds after large sums of cash and jewellery were discovered in a police search of their palace.

The trial, the second involving the ex-leader, had been scheduled to take place last week but was postponed due to a judges strike.

Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi have already been sentenced to 35 years in prison for misappropriating public funds after large sums of cash and jewellery were discovered in a police search of their palace.

World champion Thor Hushovd of Norway kept possession of the race leader’s yellow jersey as Garmin celebrated their second win on the trot, having won the 23km team time trial at Les Essarts on Sunday.

Cavendish, who has won a record 15 stages in the past three years, had a powerful lead-in to the finale by his dominant HTC-Highroad team.

The saddles of several teams taking part in the race’s team time trial on stage two Sunday were checked by experts from the International Cycling Union (UCI) technical committee.

It emerged that some were deemed not fully horizontal, and thus did not conform to the rules, and were altered by UCI experts minutes prior to the race.

But the former two-time runner-up boosted his hopes for the second consecutive day Sunday when his BMC team stormed to a second place finish in the team time trial, leaving the Australian 2sec short of pulling on the yellow jersey.

“We’ve been quietly working away, doing our homework and keeping at it,” said the former world road champion, who is now third overall at 1sec behind Thor Hushovd.

Authorities are hoping Mongolia’s nascent mining industry — and the deep-pocketed foreign firms interested in it — can help pull thousands of people out of poverty in the mineral-rich but still undeveloped Asian country.

The Tavan Tolgoi deposit, 270 kilometres (165 miles) from the border with China, contains 6.4 billion tonnes of coal, making it one of the largest coal fields in the world.

The demonstrators marched towards the residence of Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, chanting slogans accusing the authorities of “facilitating the takeover by Al-Qaeda elements” of Abyan.

A five-strong delegation representing the protesters was blocked by guards outside the residence from meeting the deputy of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Reconciliation Minister Amir al-Khuzai made the comments at a news conference after US forces, in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion, suffered their deadliest month in three years in June.

Fourteen soldiers were killed, most in rocket attacks, as the nearly 50,000 American troops remaining in Iraq prepare to pull out at the end of this year.

“We demand the prime minister announce openly and clearly his commitment (to the tribunal) before parliament on Tuesday and say that he will take all necessary steps to abide by its decisions, or get out, he and his government,” said a statement read by MP Fuad Siniora, himself a former premier and leading member of the pro-Western opposition.

Three days of parliamentary talks begin on Tuesday, ending with a vote of confidence on Mikati’s government in which Hezbollah and its allies control the majority of seats, including the key telecommunications and justice ministries.

Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra, a 44-year-old political novice now set to become the kingdom’s first female premier, announced a coalition deal with four smaller parties to bolster her hold on power.

The election and its aftermath is a major test of Thailand’s ability to emerge from a long political crisis triggered by Thaksin’s 2006 overthrow that last year saw the country’s worst civil violence in decades.

The result is a remarkable comeback for the ex-leader’s supporters after his ouster in a military coup sparked years of turmoil, and his youngest sister Yingluck Shinawatra is set to become Thailand’s first female premier.

With almost all the votes counted, her Puea Thai party had won a clear majority with 263 seats out of 500, well ahead of incumbent Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s Democrats on 161, according to the Election Commission.

Architect Cristiano Gasparetto said a 1988 study indicated that while the acceptable maximum number of tourists for Venice is 33,000 daily, today the average figure is 59,000.

Alessandra Mottola Molfino, head of the Italia Nostra non-governmental organisation, said the figure “is too high for such a fragile city”.

With many disgruntled vacationers each summer returning home to shock bills after calls or phone downloads during holidays in another European Union nation, the European Commission on Wednesday releases a plan for a single phone market.

The aim is to narrow or eliminate altogether the difference between the cost of a domestic call and one made from another country in the 27-nation bloc.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner, whose previously announced plan for a political tour prompted stern warnings from the regime, was greeted at Bagan airport by crowds of journalists and what appeared to be plain-clothes police.

It is the first time Suu Kyi has ventured outside the main city of Yangon where she lives since being freed from seven years of house arrest last November, but politics are not officially on the agenda.

The veiled threat came in a television interview broadcast Sunday, in which Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao was asked about new Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) guidelines on sensitive uranium enrichment and reprocessing technology.

The guidelines restrict the sale of such technology to countries which, like nuclear-armed India, have not signed up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In J.K Rowling’s hugely successful Harry Potter books and films, Quidditch is a semi-contact sport played by wizards and witches — as popular in their world as football or cricket is in real life.

The final instalment of the series hits movie screens in July, but the crowd-pulling sport of Quidditch has only just arrived in Australia.

The chief minister of southern Kerala state, Oommen Chandy, said local authorities needed to take precautions and had set up a three-tier security ring involving 100 armed police.

Surveillance will be in place around the clock, and security forces are setting up a special control centre and looking at bringing in cameras.

The idea is “false and stupid… a scientific aberration”, the International Society of Camelid Research and Development (ISOCARD) charged, saying camels were being made culprits for a man-made problem.

“We believe that the good-hearted people and innovating nation of Australia can come up with better and smarter solutions than eradicating camels in inhumane ways,” it said.

“I am under big pressure here,” Yue, 24, told AFP at a duck restaurant in central Beijing where he earns about $400 a month as the head waiter.

“I don’t have much savings after buying clothes, gifts for my family and going out with friends.”

“Fortunately we do not see many cancellations, but we must be very careful to safeguard tourism and promote Greece’s strong points,” Yiorgos Telonis, chairman of the Hellenic association of travel and tourist agencies (Hatta), told AFP on Sunday.

But Telonis warned of the longterm effects the riots may have and would not rule out more cancellations, especially for hotels located around Syntagma, the capital’s main square where most of the clashes took place last week.

Kimberley approval was meant to guarantee that stones often given as a symbol of love are not “blood diamonds” used to fund some of Africa’s most brutal civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Since 2003, Kimberley has gathered governments, industry and activists into a global regulator that makes decisions by consensus.

Three decades of human spaceflight driven by the iconic shuttle program have fueled growth in this Atlantic coast beach community, but the end of those glory days are hurtling closer with the final flight of Atlantis on Friday.

The last shuttle mission will trigger the disappearance of some 27,000 jobs either directly or indirectly tied to NASA’s shuttle efforts, according to local officials.

The Russian space agency plays down any triumphalism, but US astronauts will remain dependent on Russia for access to the ISS at least until 2015 and will have to pay for seats in its Soyuz space capsules.

“We cannot say that we have won the space race, but simply that we have reached the end of a certain stage,” the deputy head of the Russian space agency, Vitaly Davydov, said in an interview.

“I’m confident that the Democrats and Republicans in Congress can find a way to give some ground, make some hard choices and put their shoulders to wheel to get this done for the sake of our country,” the president said Saturday.

Under pressure from Obama and his Republican foes, the Democratic-led Senate scrapped its cherished week-long break for the July 4 Independence Day holiday in a bid to make progress in the seemingly stalled negotiations.

“There are some voices in Khartoum that are against this framework agreement (signed on Tuesday). Those voices are playing with fire,” the SPLM north’s secretary general Yasser Arman told AFP.

“The only alternative to this agreement is a war, from Blue Nile to Darfur. We don’t want that,” he added.

Ortego, who battles insurgents in the violent eastern province of Khost with Bravo Company, 1-26 Infantry, recently attended a naturalisation ceremony at a US base near Kabul ahead of this year’s Independence Day celebrations.

Like thousands of fellow Filipinos, he sees the US military as a fast-track to American citizenship, securing his own future and also helping his family back home.

Diesel auto sales in the United States revved higher this year thanks to some temporary factors, including a shortage of hybrid cars because of disruptions from the Japanese earthquake disaster.

US consumers bought an estimated 9,000 diesel cars in May, up 34 percent from a year earlier, according to the research firm Baum & Associates.

The move came as some 100 independent figures met in the capital to discuss a “third way” for Syria, which has been rocked by deadly anti-regime protests for three months.

Troops backed by 97 tanks and personnel carriers advanced late Saturday on Kfar Rumma village and made arrests in the district of Jabal al-Zawiyah, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.