Michelle Obama urged Cambodian students to finish their education and speak up to demand greater freedoms and more equality on a landmark visit to a Southeast Asian country that has been ruled by an authoritarian strongman for decades.

Radical reforms on reducing pay and pensions for politicians, term limits for ministers, and limiting Government powers have been proposed by a group of Independent TDs and senators.

Derry City 0 Trabzonspor 3

Derry City 0 Trabzonspor 3

Trabzonspor (Turkey) 4 Derry City 2

Derry City 4 Trabzonspor 2

Fine Gael lost two more Oireachtas members from its parliamentary party yesterday as two senators voted against the abortion legislation as it passed through the Upper House.

Fine Gael Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames has confirmed she will vote against her party on the abortion legislation later today.

Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague said the “right decision” had been reached after European Union foreign ministers agreed to end the embargo on supplying arms to opposition forces in Syria.

Anxious relatives were searching for missing family members today in a northern India city that is home to one of the world’s largest religious gatherings after a stampede killed 36 people.

A woman accused of pushing an immigrant from India to his death in front of a New York subway train has been charged with murder as a hate crime.

Syria’s president defied international pressure to end the year-old crackdown on an uprising against him and said yesterday he was determined to go on fighting what he called “foreign-backed terrorism”.

Congress and the White House are very close to a deal on raising the limit on US borrowing that would avert an unprecedented default on America’s debt, the top Republican in the Senate said today.

THE High Court has overturned a Seanad committee finding that Senator Ivor Callely misrepresented his normal place of residence to claim expenses.

AN Oireachtas committee is to investigate why the Irish sugar beet industry was shut down and, furthermore, explore ways of negotiating a new sugar quota with the EU to restart the industry.

MANCHESTER United shrugged off the loss of star man Nani to claim a very impressive Champions League win over Bursaspor.

Bursaspor 0 Manchester United 3

Bursaspor v Manchester United

Italy’s Giuliano Razzoli took the lead in the men’s slalom following the first run at Whistler Creekside on Saturday.

THE US military’s top uniformed officer yesterday made an impassioned plea for allowing gays to serve openly in uniform, telling a Senate panel it was a matter of integrity and that it is wrong to force people to “lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens”.

TED Kennedy wasn’t Jack and he wasn’t Bobby but, despite growing tarnished and growing old, he achieved more than both of them put together, particularly when it came to Ireland.

India is to amend its wildlife crime laws to protect the country’s tigers, a government minister said today.

BARACK OBAMA’S running mate says a campaign advert that mocked Republican presidential candidate John McCain as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate was “terrible” and would not have been done had he known about it.

REPUBLICAN John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton yesterday looked ahead to the next battles in a chaotic White House race after scoring tough wins in the first presidential voting in the south and west of the US.

SENATOR George S McGovern is probably best remembered as the Democrat Party’s nominee defeated by Richard Nixon in the US presidential election of 1972, but the tactics used, especially in the Watergate building, led to Nixon’s resignation less than two years later.

A second President Clinton might occupy a little less space than the first.

Controversial US attorney general Alberto Gonzales has announced he will resign his position as the United States’ top law enforcement official.

As pressure builds for a change in Iraq policy, a top US commander there warned today that withdrawing troops too soon would leave the country “a mess”.

Hundreds of US troops marked the Fourth of July by re-enlisting in the military today, while others took their oaths of American citizenship in ceremonies at the main US headquarters in Iraq.

THE Progressive Democrats are facing a three-way contest for the party leadership, with frontrunner Tom Parlon facing challenges from both Fiona O’Malley and Senator Tom Morrissey.

THE Progressive Democrats are facing a three-way contest for the party leadership, with frontrunner Tom Parlon facing challenges from both Fiona O’Malley and Senator Tom Morrissey.

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he favours immediately closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison and moving its detainees to US facilities.

THE US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, yesterday announced he will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks after he failed to win confirmation for his role from the Senate.

THE illness of the Russian former security agent Alexander Litvinenko is unlikely to have been caused by thallium sulphate poisoning, the hospital doctors treating him said last night.

An Italian security expert today confirmed he met with a former Russian spy in London before the outspoken critic of the Kremlin was taken seriously ill with what British police and doctors suspect is poisoning by a toxic metal.

John Bolton today said he still hopes the US Senate will vote this year to confirm him as US ambassador to the United Nations and he predicted he would win despite unwavering opposition from Democrats.

In a rout once considered almost inconceivable, Democrats seemingly won a 51st seat in the Senate and regained total control of Congress after 12 years of near-domination by the Republican Party.

ROLL up, roll up for your seats on the mystery train ride that takes you through the long and dramatic journey of Michael McDowell’s political career. Yes folks, we can guarantee a spectacular rollercoaster ride.

The United States today dismissed a European Union report on alleged CIA secret prisons in Europe as “a rehash".

Hospital and nursing home patients were evacuated and as many as one million others were ordered to clear out along the Gulf Coast today as Hurricane Rita intensified into a Category 4 storm with 140mph winds that could batter Texas and bring more misery to New Orleans by the weekend.

AS Congress hurried toward approval of a $51.8 billion (€41.77bn) emergency hurricane aid package, US President George Bush yesterday mapped a plan to get a wide range of government benefits - from medical care to job training - to storm victims who have been scattered around the US.

Officials watched helplessly as looters around the city ransacked stores for food, clothing, appliances and guns.

Thousands of children have been killed, raped, tortured or recruited to fight in areas of insurgency-wracked Nepal where fighting has recently escalated, Amnesty International said today.

In defiance of a presidential veto threat, US senators who support embryonic stem cell research are pushing for a quick vote on a bill passed by the House that would lift restrictions on such studies.