Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier who was a prisoner of war in Afghanistan for five years, has been allowed to venture off the Texas military base where he is receiving care as part of his “reintegration process” into society, the US army said.

CATCH THE EYE, who won her maiden at the Galway festival, made the step up in class with the minimum of fuss in the Seamus Weldon www.mowers.ie Race at the concluding stage of Killarney last night.

The US Defence Department has banned Google map-making teams from making detailed street-level video maps of American military bases after images of one ended up on the popular internet site.

Former Iraq commander Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez said today he had been forced to retire from the US Army over the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.