Diplomats said that momentum was with the prime minister, Herman Van Rompuy, and that David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, was well placed to become the E.U. foreign policy chief if his government pushed for him.

Although the Lisbon Treaty, which creates the two jobs, is now certain to come into force, fresh potential complications arose on Wednesday after criticism in a speech in London from the leader of the British Conservatives, whom many expect to win elections next year.

The planned deployment is a rare bit of good news for the White House, which has struggled to persuade European countries to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Britain has 9,150 troops in Afghanistan, the second-largest force after the U.S. Mr. Brown’s said the total would be raised to 9,500.

Earlier in the Commons, Mr. Brown read out the names of 37 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since Parliament recessed on July 21.

The principal of St John’s Girls National School in Carrigaline, County Cork, confirmed she had sent out a memo to parents last week requesting that their daughters occasionally bring a roll of toilet paper to give to the class teacher, who would dispense the rolls to students when needed.

The bizarre request is part of the school’s cost-containment programme so that dwindling state funding can be better spent on education, says principal Catherine O’Neill.

She refused to divulge the school’s annual budget but said that the Government’s abolition of various grants was behind the request.

Speaking in Delhi, he said the nuclear industry would have huge opportunities in India after the civilian nuclear deal signed last year with the US.

Mr Singh also regretted that the global non-proliferation regime had failed to prevent nuclear proliferation.

India has refused to sign the UN’s Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Peter McParlin of the Prison Officers Association says inmates were using it to make illicit alcohol.

Guinness World Records said that 8 foot 1 inch (2.47 meter) Sultan Kosen, from the town of Mardin in eastern Turkey, is now officially the tallest man walking the planet. Although the previous record holder, Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk, reportedly measured 8 feet 5.5 inches (2.57 meters), Guinness said he was stripped of his title when he declined to let anyone confirm his height.

Stadnyk, 39, told The Associated Press he refused to be independently measured because he was tired of being in the public eye.

“If this title had given me more health or a few extra years, I would have taken it, but the opposite happened, I only wasted my nerve cells,” he said.

Three British-born Islamic fanatics planned to use liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks to blow at least seven flights out of the sky and cause carnage to rival 9/11 in the U.S.

A second phase of the plan included attacks on Canary Wharf skyscrapers, the Greenwich foot tunnel underneath the Thames, nuclear power stations, oil refineries and gas terminals.

The discovery of the plot in 2006 brought chaos to international airports as sweeping restrictions were imposed overnight on how much liquid can be taken on to a plane.

The plot was directed from Pakistan by the Al Qaeda mastermind behind the July 7 suicide bombings in London.

A Kremlin source contacted by Reuters dismissed the statement, saying he would not comment on what he described as an “idiotic” claim. Russian markets also shrugged off the news.

The letter, signed by the “Battalion of Martyrs”, was posted on the www.kavkazcenter.com website, a site which claims to represent Chechen rebels.

The letter said the main Chechen rebel leader in hiding, Doku Umarov, who seeks an Islamic state in the north Caucasus, had decided to step up a campaign of economic war on Russia.

It said groups of fighters had been sent across Russia for attacks that would focus on gas and oil pipelines, power plants and electricity lines.

The spiritual leader of the four million Roman Catholics in England and Wales has damned social network sites, accusing them of undermining community life and leading teenagers to suicide.

Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols said MySpace and Facebook led young people to seek “transient” friendships, with quantity becoming more important than quality. MySpace is owned by News Corp, parent company of The Times.

He said a key factor in suicide among young people was the trauma caused when such loose relationships collapsed.

“Friendship is not a commodity,” he told said. “Friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it’s right”.

For some, the arrest of the highest-ranking officers in Turkey’s 63-year history of multi-party democracy is a critical blow against a once-untouchable military that has toppled four elected governments since 1960.

For others, the charges are an invention of the ruling AKP party to weaken the secular army and open the way for the country’s Islamisation.