Barack Obama 'nears Afghanistan troop decision'

US President Barack Obama is close to a decision on the size of his planned withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and is expected to speak on the issue on Wednesday.

"He's finalising his decision. He's reviewing his options," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
The US has about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and Mr Obama has said troop withdrawals will start in July.
But there are deep divisions in the US over the size and speed of the pullout.
News of Mr Obama's deliberations comes a day after departing US Defence Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that the US was holding "outreach" talks with members of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It was the first time the US had acknowledged such contact.

'Gains could be threatened'
 
Mr Obama is expected to make a public speech on Afghanistan on Wednesday, unnamed senior White House officials told US media.
US military leaders are thought to favour a very gradual reduction in troops but other advisers advocate a more significant decrease in the coming months.
Attention is expected to focus on how many troops will leave Afghanistan in July, but analysts say Mr Obama's plans for the future of the 30,000 surge forces he sent in 2009 in the country will also be closely scrutinised.
Earlier this month, Mr Gates said at Nato headquarters that "substantial progress" was being made on the ground in Afghanistan.
But he argued that "these gains could be threatened if we do not proceed with the transition to Afghan security lead in a deliberate, organised and co-ordinated manner".
"Even as the United States begins to draw down in the next month, I assured my fellow ministers there will be no rush to the exits on our part."
But some believe security gains mean a more rapid withdrawal of US forces is practical.
'Costs outweigh benefits' There is also growing political pressure for a significant withdrawal.
A bipartisan group of 27 US senators sent Mr Obama a letter last week pressing for a shift in strategy.
"Given our successes, it is the right moment to initiate a sizable and sustained reduction in forces, with the goal of steadily redeploying all regular combat troops," the senators wrote. "The costs of prolonging the war far outweigh the benefits."

While many Afghans accept that American troops are needed to defeat the Taliban, correspondents say that they resent their presence in the country.
The war is in its 10th year, civilian casualties are at an all-time high, and correspondents say the population has grown weary of the fighting. Insurgents are to blame for most of the deaths, but killings by foreign troops generate widespread outrage.
The US is due to start withdrawing its 97,000 troops from Afghanistan in July.
It aims to gradually hand over all security operations to Afghan security forces by 2014

Drink driving GP Donald Clegg 'was sleep walking

A doctor from Greater Manchester has been banned from driving after he failed to convince magistrates he had been drink driving in his sleep.


GP Donald Clegg, 59, was involved in a crash in Bury New Road in Prestwich in December. He was found behind the wheel in his dressing gown and slippers.
He claimed the sleepwalking meant he was not conscious of his actions, Bury Magistrates' Court heard.
But the bench banned Clegg, of Prestwich, from driving for 12 months.
He had admitted driving with excess alcohol and without due care and attention but only because of his state of "parasomnia".
 
'Special reasons'
 
Clegg was almost four times over the limit when he got out of bed and into his car on 8 December.

Jean Hinkley Chair of the bench

He drove for a mile while still "asleep" before crashing into parked cars. He was talking incoherently about driving to his mother's house when bystanders snapped the car key in the ignition to stop him driving away again, the court heard.

The GP claimed the first he knew of the incident was when he woke up in a police cell.
The prosecution did not dispute Clegg was sleepwalking.
Clegg's lawyer asked the court to use "special reasons" to suspend any driving ban - normally automatic for drink-driving.
A breath test showed he had 127 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes.

London 2012: More Olympics tickets to go on sale

Some 2.3 million tickets for London 2012 are set to go on sale next week, organisers have announced.

The tickets, for people who were unsuccessful in the initial ballot, will go on sale at 0600 BST on 24 June on a first come, first served basis.
Of these, 1.7 million are for football matches and 600,000 for other sports, including archery and hockey.
Nearly two-thirds of applicants - some 1.2 million out of 1.9 million - missed out on tickets first time around.
London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe said: "It has been a massive demand which has created huge disappointment.
"I would be hard pushed to see such a demand for any sports event in my lifetime."
Organisers were "absolutely determined" to get tickets to those who had missed out, he added.
"Our commitment is to get two-thirds of those 1.9 million people to buy a ticket for the 2012 Games if they want to - and we know... they were involved in the application process, are mad sports fans and they want to be there."
Tickets are still available for 310 sessions, 44 of which are medal events including archery, basketball, fencing, judo, synchronised swimming and table tennis.

Available sessions

Some half a million tickets will be priced at £20 or less, with a further one million priced between £20 and £50.
which they have sent to applicants who did not receive tickets in the ballot.
Applicants will find out whether they have been successful within 24 to 48 hours of applying. Payment will be taken once the sale closes at 1800 BST on 3 July.

Sports fans will be able to apply for up to three sessions and six tickets per session for most sports, although football, volleyball and race walk will have larger limits.
BBC sports news correspondent James Pearce said the ticketing system was not designed for a first come, first serve basis, so the system will not automatically know when all tickets for a session have gone.
He said staff would have to monitor sales in order to remove a session when sold out.
In the first round of sales:

FA Cup to be sponsored by Budweiser beer

US beer company Budweiser has been named as the first US sponsor of English football's FA Cup, in a three-year deal.

The amount of money paid by the firm, owned by St Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, has not been disclosed.
Budweiser has been a sponsor of the football World Cup for 25 years and also backs US motorsport.
The FA Cup had been sponsored by energy giant E.On for five years, from 2006 to 2011.
The competition will now be known as the FA Cup with Budweiser.
"We are extremely pleased to have secured an iconic brand such as Budweiser to be the lead partner of the FA Cup," said FA General Secretary Alex Horne.
The cup, currently held by Manchester City after they beat Stoke City in May's final, is the world's oldest domestic competition.
It mean's England's two domestic cups are now sponsored by beer brands, with Carling the title sponsor of the League Cup.

Air France Rio crash: Remains returned after two years

 Remains of 104 of the 228 people killed when an Air France jet crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, leaving no survivors, have arrived in France.

A ship carrying three containers of wreckage and a fourth bearing human remains from the ocean bed docked in the south-western port of Bayonne.
The harbour was closed off by the authorities out of respect for bereaved families and friends.
Fifty bodies were found just after the crash but others remain missing.
Flight AF 447 went down on 1 June 2009 after running into an intense high-altitude thunderstorm, four hours into a flight from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to the French capital Paris.
The Airbus 330 plane stalled and fell out of the sky in three-and-a-half minutes, French investigators said.
While the causes of the crash are still being investigated, one theory being pursued is that the jet's speed probes failed.
Flight recorder data have raised questions over the way the crew handled the plane when the "stall alarm" was sounded. Air France, however, insists its pilots "demonstrated a totally professional attitude".
Long wait The main wreckage of the plane was only discovered in April after a search of 10,000 sq km (3,860 sq miles) of sea floor.
A brief ceremony was expected to be held in the port before the bodies were removed to Paris for DNA identification, while the containers containing wreckage were to be sent to the city of Toulouse for analysis.
An AFP reporter in Bayonne reports that the salvage ship, the Ile-de-Sein, pulled into harbour at dawn in rain and fog.
Those on board the jet came from more than 30 countries, though most were French, Brazilian or German.
The identification process is likely to be lengthy as investigators will have to collect "ante mortem" information on each victim - from when they were alive - to compare it to evidence retrieved from their dead bodies, Reuters news agency reports.
It took around two months to identify the victims retrieved from the surface of the ocean just after the crash.