Judging by the options on spectacular display at FashionRio, the Marvelous City’s five-day-long summer 2013 fashion extravaganza, the options are endless.

Fancy pairing your string bikini top with spandex pants hung with rows of seductively dangling fringe, which provide so much more coverage than the country’s traditional “fio dental” or “dental floss” bottoms? Rio’s got just the thing for you.

Toying with the idea of kitting out your two-piece with a chain mail sheath emblazoned with a palm tree? Look no further.

Bikinis are Brazilian designers’ bread and butter, so while their winter collections tend to fall flat, with half-hearted attempts at outerwear, summer reliably sizzles. And the southern hemisphere summer collections that will hit the beach this coming January were no exception.

Sao Paulo-based label Triya served up the season’s most eye-popping options, a psychedelic rainbow that broke the beachwear mould. Beyond the fringed pant bikini, the brand’s brainchild, were tiny bottoms paired with long sleeve spandex tops cropped short to show off the models’ abs and a zebra-printed bandeau top that sprouted an ankle length skirt in aubergine silk with a bold slit up one side.

Swimsuits more in name than in function, many of Triya’s offerings looked like what you might wear to an ultra-chic beachside rave thrown by a billionaire. Putting aside the inevitable inconveniences of wearing a flowing silk ball gown to the beach, the only drawback to the wildly creative offerings were the bizarre tan lines they’d be sure to leave.

Cia. Maritima brought out the big guns – Victoria’s Secret angel Izabel Goulart among other Brazilian-born supermodels – to show off its teeny-weeny bikinis. Goulart rocked the catwalk in a leopard print string bikini fitted with a sexy spider’s web of thin yellow straps. Aline Weber, a regular on top runways in New York and Paris, worked a one-piece with cute cap sleeves and bold cutouts at the midriff. The pineapple prints gave a mouthwateringly tropical touch to the toothsome collection.

Va-va-voom one-pieces emerged as major winners here, with just about everyone who is anyone in Brazilian swimwear sending out variations on the vampish maillot. Top high-street beachwear label Blue Man sent out white swimsuits decidedly not made for anyone’s grandma, with how-low-can-you-go V necks. And a strapless one-piece had hiplines that started at just under the bust, the whole seemingly precarious contraption held, one can only hope, in place by a low-slung belt.

Lenny, Brazil’s reigning queen of patrician swimwear, served up racerback tanks that looked like they’d been tagged by a Rio graffiti artist and bikinis whose fuller coverage was undermined by a cat claw of strategically placed slashes. Paired with the bikini tops, the short, flippy skirts would make for the perfect transition from the sands of Ipanema to cocktail hour at the beachfront Hotel Fasano, among Rio’s chicest and most expensive.

A raucous, theatrical show by streetwear label Reserva wrapped up FashionRio in style late Saturday.

Models of all ages, from toddlers to septuagenarians, and several ethnicities frolicked, skipped and breakdanced on a catwalk strewn, like a sprawling bourgeois home, with couches and armchairs and an oversized dining room table. The soundtrack pumped as the models sat down for a family lunch and then boogied over the photographers’ pit to pull off their best dance moves in front of the snapping flashbulbs.

With its preppy multi-ethnic family vibe, the show had a sort of Abercrombie & Fitch thing going, but at the same time felt more authentically Brazilian than many of the week’s other shows, most of which featured just a sprinkling of nonwhite models.

Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones’ sequel “Men in Black 3″ debuted as the No. 1 movie over Memorial Day weekend with $55 million domestically from Friday to Sunday.

That bumps Disney’s “The Avengers” into second-place after three blockbuster weekends on top for the superhero sensation. “The Avengers” took in $37 million over the three days to push its domestic total to $514 million and become only the fourth movie ever to top half a billion dollars.

Distributor Sony estimates that by the end of the four-day holiday weekend Monday, “Men in Black 3″ will have pulled in $70 million domestically and $202 million worldwide.

Universal’s “Battleship” was No. 3 in its second weekend with $10.8 million, raising its domestic earnings to $44.3 million. Paramount’s comedy “The Dictator” took in $9.6 million to finish fourth in its second weekend and lift its total to $41.5 million.

The Warner Bros. horror tale “Chornobyl Diaries” opened at No. 5 with $8 million.

“Men in Black 3″ launched with a bit more cash than its two predecessors, which both had opening weekends of just above $50 million.

But the original “Men in Black” debuted in 1997 and “Men in Black II” premiered in 2002, when admission prices were much lower than today’s. That means “Men in Black 3″ sold fewer tickets than the previous installments.

“Men in Black 3″ reunites Smith’s Agent J and Jones’ Agent K as they battle a new alien menace that travels four decades back in time to do away with the younger Agent K (Josh Brolin).

Among the movie’s box-office highlights overseas were debuts of $19.5 million in China, $18.9 million in Russia, $8.5 million in South Korea and $8 million in Japan.

Distributor Disney estimates that “The Avengers” will take in $47.1 million for the four-day holiday weekend, lifting the film’s domestic total to $523.8 million. That will put “The Avengers” within $10 million of “The Dark Knight,” the No. 3 movie on the all-time revenue chart with $533.3 million domestically.

“The Avengers” will pass “The Dark Knight” in the coming week, leaving only two movies above it: “Avatar” at $760.5 million and “Titanic” at $658.5 million.

With $26.3 million overseas, “The Avengers” raised its international total to $781.6 million, and its worldwide revenues to just under $1.3 billion. “The Avengers” will soon overtake “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ at $1.33 billion to become the No. 3 film on the global revenue list, again behind “Avatar” at $2.8 billion and “Titanic” at $2.2 billion.

Overall domestic receipts for the four-day Memorial Day weekend will come in well behind last year’s record of $276 million. Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com, estimated that four-day revenues this time will total $195 million to $200 million, about 30 per cent below Memorial Day weekend a year ago, when “The Hangover Part II” delivered a $100 million-plus debut.

Hollywood remains on a record pace this year, with domestic revenue so far at $4.24 billion, up 12.5 per cent over 2011 receipts, according to Hollywood.com.

But “The Avengers” and now “Men in Black 3″ have been the only notable successes for the summer season so far, with big releases such as “Dark Shadows” and “Battleship” fizzling on the domestic front.

“We really need to get going if we don’t want to have play catch-up every weekend through the summer,” Dergarabedian said. “Some of these summer movies are just not doing the business people had hoped for in North America.”

The diplomats say Britain and France had proposed issuing a press statement condemning the Houla massacre, but Russia told council members it could not agree and wanted a briefing first by the general heading the U.N. observer mission in Syria.

The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the briefing by Maj. Gen. Robert Mood was being arranged. Russia called for a council meeting to begin at 2:30 p.m. (1830 GMT).

The U.N. and others have issued statements appearing to hold the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad responsible. The Syrian government has denied responsibility for the Houla killings.

The 33-year prison term imposed on Shakil Afridi following a treason conviction will do nothing to improve “one of the most complicated relationships that we’ve had,” Leon Panetta told ABC’s “This Week.”

“It is so difficult to understand and it’s so disturbing that they would sentence this doctor to 33 years for helping in the search for the most notorious terrorist in our times,” Panetta said.

“This doctor was not working against Pakistan. He was working against al-Qaida. And I hope that ultimately Pakistan understands that, because what they have done here … does not help in the effort to try to re-establish a relationship between the United States and Pakistan.”

Afridi ran a fake vaccination program aimed at collecting DNA from the bin Laden family in the town of Abbottabad, where the al-Qaida leader died in a U.S. Navy SEALs raid on his hideout a year ago.

Pakistani lawyers said Friday they would appeal the conviction handed down by a tribal court, a primitive system of justice that’s the law of the land in the country’s semi-autonomous tribal belt.

The doctor, meantime, is about to be transferred into a high-security prison outside of Peshawar due to fears he could be set free in some sort of clandestine operation, Pakistan’s The Nation reported on Sunday.

Prison officials are to meet with government authorities on Monday to discuss where Afridi could be safely held. The doctor also faces a threat within the Peshawar jail from Taliban also imprisoned there who have vowed to avenge the death of bin Laden.

Afridi’s sentence has so angered American lawmakers that a U.S. Senate panel voted last week to slash aid to Islamabad by $33 million — $1 million for every year of Afridi’s sentence.

Yet Pakistan remains an important nation in the region because it possesses nuclear weapons, Panetta said.

“Our responsibility here is to keep pushing them to understand how important it is for them to work with us to try to deal with the common threats we both face,” Panetta said.

“And what they did with this doctor doesn’t help in the effort to try to do that.”

A White House attempt to reach out to Pakistan by issuing a last-minute invitation to the NATO conference in Chicago last week didn’t have the intended outcome.

The Obama administration had hoped that if Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari shared the spotlight with other global leaders, it might help convince him to reopen the country’s supply routes so that vital supplies can reach NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan.

He refused, reportedly irritating President Barack Obama to such an extent that he pointedly failed to mention Pakistan while publicly thanking Russia and central Asian nations “that continue to provide critical transit” of war supplies into Afghanistan.

Zardari sat just a few feet away during Obama’s remarks.

Retired Pakistani military officials said Saturday that Pakistan was treated as an “accused” at the summit.

The executive council of the Pakistan Ex-servicemen Association said government officials should have counselled Zardari to skip the conference since neither Obama nor other NATO leaders would commit to formal meetings with him.

The Pakistani leader and Obama spoke briefly on the sidelines of the conference.

The association said that Pakistan has served U.S. interests for over six decades, but “our sacrifices and contributions” have been totally forgotten.

In talks on reopening the supply routes with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Zardari has made several demands, including a review of the U.S. policy of drone attacks against targets inside Pakistan and a public apology for the killing of its troops.

He also wants higher charges for each vehicle using Pakistan’s supply routes, from US$250 per vehicle to as much as $5,000.

“NATO containers have been taking free rides for the past 11 years causing damage worth billions to infrastructure,” said the Pakistan Ex-servicemen Association’s communique.

“Now our demand to charge them is termed as extortion, which proves that bilateral relations have reached their lowest ebb.”

A staggering 45 per cent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21 per cent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told The Associated Press.

What’s more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.

It’s unclear how much worse off these new veterans are than their predecessors. Many factors are driving the dramatic increase in claims — the weak economy, more troops surviving wounds, and more awareness of problems such as concussions and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Almost one-third have been granted disability so far.

Government officials and some veterans’ advocates say that veterans who might have been able to work with certain disabilities may be more inclined to seek benefits now because they lost jobs or can’t find any. Aggressive outreach and advocacy efforts also have brought more veterans into the system, which must evaluate each claim to see if it is war-related. Payments range from $127 a month for a 10 per cent disability to $2,769 for a full one.

As the U.S. commemorates the more than 6,400 troops who died in post-Sept. 11, 2001 wars, the problems of those who survived also draw attention. These new veterans are seeking a level of help the government did not anticipate, and for which there is no special fund set aside to pay.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is mired in backlogged claims, but “our mission is to take care of whatever the population is,” said Allison Hickey, the VA’s undersecretary for benefits. “We want them to have what their entitlement is.”

The 21 per cent who filed claims in previous wars is Hickey’s estimate of an average for the 1990-91 Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait. The VA has details only on the current disability claims being paid to veterans of each war.

The AP spent three months reviewing records and talking with doctors, government officials and former troops to take stock of the new veterans. They are different in many ways from those who fought before them.

More are from the Reserves and National Guard — 28 per cent of those filing disability claims — rather than career military. Reserves and National Guard made up a greater percentage of troops in these wars than they did in previous ones. About 31 per cent of Guard/Reserve new veterans have filed claims compared to 56 per cent of career military ones.

More of the new veterans are women, accounting for 12 per cent of those who have sought care through the VA. Women also served in greater numbers in these wars than in the past. Some female veterans are claiming PTSD due to military sexual trauma — a new challenge from a disability rating standpoint, Hickey said.

The new veterans have different types of injuries than previous veterans did. That’s partly because improvised bombs have been the main weapon and because body armour and improved battlefield care allowed many of them to survive wounds that in past wars proved fatal.

“They’re being kept alive at unprecedented rates,” said Dr. David Cifu, the VA’s medical rehabilitation chief. More than 95 per cent of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived.

Larry Bailey II is an example. After tripping a rooftop bomb in Afghanistan last June, the 26-year-old Marine remembers flying into the air, then fellow troops attending to him.

“I pretty much knew that my legs were gone. My left hand, from what I remember I still had three fingers on it,” although they didn’t seem right, Bailey said. “I looked a few times but then they told me to stop looking.” Bailey, who is from Zion, Illinois, north of Chicago, ended up a triple amputee and expects to get a hand transplant this summer.

He is still transitioning from active duty and is not yet a veteran. Just over half of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans eligible for VA care have used it so far.

Of those who have sought VA care:

—More than 1,600 of them lost a limb; many others lost fingers or toes.

—At least 156 are blind, and thousands of others have impaired vision.

—More than 177,000 have hearing loss, and more than 350,000 report tinnitus — noise or ringing in the ears.

—Thousands are disfigured, as many as 200 of them so badly that they may need face transplants. One-quarter of battlefield injuries requiring evacuation included wounds to the face or jaw, one study found.

“The numbers are pretty staggering,” said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who has done four face transplants on non-military patients and expects to start doing them soon on veterans.

Others have invisible wounds. More than 400,000 of these new veterans have been treated by the VA for a mental health problem, most commonly, PTSD.

Tens of thousands of veterans suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI — mostly mild concussions from bomb blasts — and doctors don’t know what’s in store for them long-term. Cifu, of the VA, said that roughly 20 per cent of active duty troops suffered concussions, but only one-third of them have symptoms lasting beyond a few months.

That’s still a big number, and “it’s very rare that someone has just a single concussion,” said David Hovda, director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center. Suffering multiple concussions, or one soon after another, raises the risk of long-term problems. A brain injury also makes the brain more susceptible to PTSD, he said.

On a more mundane level, many new veterans have back, shoulder and knee problems, aggravated by carrying heavy packs and wearing the body armour that helped keep them alive. One recent study found that 19 per cent required orthopedic surgery consultations and 4 per cent needed surgery after returning from combat.

All of this adds up to more disability claims, which for years have been coming in faster than the government can handle them. The average wait to get a new one processed grows longer each month and is now about eight months — time that a frustrated, injured veteran might spend with no income.

More than 560,000 veterans from all wars currently have claims that are backlogged — older than 125 days.

The VA’s benefits chief, Hickey, gave these reasons:

—Sheer volume. Disability claims from all veterans soared from 888,000 in 2008 to 1.3 million in 2011. Last year’s included more than 230,000 new claims from Vietnam veterans and their survivors because of a change in what conditions can be considered related to Agent Orange exposure. Those complex, 50-year-old cases took more than a third of available staff, she said.

—High number of ailments per claim. When a veteran claims 11 to 14 problems, each one requires “due diligence” — a medical evaluation and proof that it is service-related, Hickey said.

—A new mandate to handle the oldest cases first. Because these tend to be the most complex, they have monopolized staff and pushed up average processing time on new claims, she said.

—Outmoded systems. The VA is streamlining and going to electronic records, but for now, “We have 4.4 million case files sitting around 56 regional offices that we have to work with; that slows us down significantly,” Hickey said.

Barry Jesinoski, executive director of Disabled American Veterans, called Hickey’s efforts “commendable,” but said: “The VA has a long way to go” to meet veterans’ needs. Even before the surge in Agent Orange cases, VA officials “were already at a place that was unacceptable” on backlogged claims, he said.

He and VA officials agree that the economy is motivating some claims. His group helps veterans file them, and he said that sometimes when veterans come in, “We’ll say, ‘Is your back worse?’ and they’ll say, ‘No, I just lost my job.’”

Jesinoski does believe these veterans have more mental problems, especially from multiple deployments.

“You just can’t keep sending people into war five, six or seven times and expect that they’re going to come home just fine,” he said.

For taxpayers, the ordeal is just beginning. With any war, the cost of caring for veterans rises for several decades and peaks 30 to 40 years later, when diseases of aging are more common, said Harvard economist Linda Bilmes. She estimates the health care and disability costs of the recent wars at $600 billion to $900 billion.

“This is a huge number and there’s no money set aside,” she said. “Unless we take steps now into some kind of fund that will grow over time, it’s very plausible many people will feel we can’t afford these benefits we overpromised.”

How would that play to these veterans, who all volunteered and now expect the government to keep its end of the bargain?

“The deal was, if you get wounded, we’re going to supply this level of support,” Bilmes said. Right now, “there’s a lot of sympathy and a lot of people want to help. But memories are short and times change.”

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Follow Marilynn Marchione’s coverage on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

The controversy was a blow to the predominantly Muslim country’s reputation for combining free speech and democracy with a mostly moderate brand of the faith.

Fans were devastated, despite the promoter’s offer of full refunds. Some accused police — who refused to issue a permit over concerns about security — of buckling to the will of a small group of thugs.

The planned “Born This Way Ball” concert has been on-again-off-again from the start.

But on Sunday, it was final, said Minola Sebayang, a lawyer for Big Daddy, the promoter of the June 3 show.

“It’s unfortunate,” he said. “But with threats if the concert goes ahead, Lady Gaga’s side is calling it off. This is not only about Lady Gaga’s security, but extends to those who will be watching her.”

Indonesia, a secular nation of 240 million, is often held up by the U.S. and others an example of how democracy and Islam and can coexist. In many ways they are right. Since emerging from dictatorship just over a decade ago, sweeping reforms have resulted in direct elections, while vastly improving human rights and freeing up the media.

But a small extremist fringe has become more vocal — and violent — in recent years, attacking Christians and members of other religious minorities, transvestites, atheists and anyone else deemed immoral.

The most notorious group, Islamic Defenders Front, called Lady Gaga a “messenger of the devil” and vowed to turn out at the airport by the thousands if she tried to step off the plane. Others said they bought tickets so they could wreak havoc from inside the 52,000-seat stadium in the capital, Jakarta.

Police responded by denying the necessary permits. Then, after public outcry, they said they’d reconsider — but only if Lady Gaga agreed to tone down her act.

Instead, she pulled the plug on what was supposed to be the biggest stop on her Asian tour.

Michael Rusli, head of Big Daddy, promised “Little Monster” fans full refunds.

But that provided little consolation to people like 25-year-old Johnny Purba.

“This only shows to the world how weak security forces are in this country, how police are afraid of a bunch of hard-liners,” he said.

“Gaga’s two-hour show will not hurt Indonesian Muslims. For God’s sake, she is not a terrorist!”

Around 50 others, dressed up like the pop diva, performed a mob flash dance at a shopping mall in Jakarta to some of her biggest hits.

Hard-liners, however, were ecstatic.

“This is a victory for Indonesian Muslims,” said Salim Alatas, one of the leaders of the Islamic Defenders Front. “Thanks to God for protecting us from a kind of devil.”

Earlier, Murhali Barda, a spokesman for the group, said supporters had purchased more than 150 tickets to the concert.

He posted a picture on his Facebook page of a man hiding his identity with a turban and sunglasses and holding a $50 ticket to the “Ball.”

“We have gotten Lady Gaga tickets,” the caption said. “Not to watch but for us to enter.”

“Our target is to stop the concert,” he wrote, providing little more detail. “We would force them off the stage but not harm the audience.”

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and The Nature Conservancy say the road signs aim to warn motorists of endangered turtle road crossing locations in Wells, South Berwick and York with the hope of reducing road deaths of two of the state’s rarest species.

Spotted and Blanding’s turtles are both protected under Maine’s Endangered Species Act, and late May to early July is the time when females undertake risky overland forays to reach nesting areas.

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife asks motorists encountering roadside turtle signs reduce their speed and increase their vigilance for potential road-crossing turtles.

The Austrian director’s powerful and understated film stars two French acting icons — 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva and 81-year-old Jean-Louis Trintignant — as an elderly couple coping with the wife’s worsening health.

Haneke previously won the Palme in 2009 for “The White Ribbon,” and is the seventh director to take the top prize twice.

The festival jury awarded the second-place Grand Prize to Matteo Garrone’s Italian satire “Reality,” while Ken Loach’s whiskey-tasting comedy “The Angels’ Share” won the third-place Jury Prize.

Carlos Reygadas was named best director for his surrealism-tinged story of a Mexican family, “Post Tenebras Lux.”

The best actor prize went to Mads Mikkelsen as a man ostracized by his small-town community when he is accused of child abuse in “The Hunt.”

Jury member Ewan McGregor said Mikkelsen had given a beautiful performance whose “wonder is in the subtlety … but with complete conviction with his character.”

Best actress was won jointly by Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan for Romanian movie “Beyond the Hills.” Cristian Mungiu’s drama of love and faith in a remote Romanian monastery also won the award for best screenplay.

The festival is wrapping up Sunday in the French Riviera resort.

The prize winners were chosen by a jury, led by Italian director Nanni Moretti, that included actors Ewan McGregor and Diane Kruger, director Alexander Payne and fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Moretti revealed that none of the winners had been a unanimous choice.

The 12-day festival has seen plenty of glamour, with the likes of Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart appearing both on-screen and on the red carpet.

But in the movies, weighty themes dominated at an event whose French Riviera froth was subdued by several days of unseasonable rain and cold.

Despite a strong American flavour to the festival, U.S. films were shut out apart from Benh Zeitli’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which won the Camera d’Or for best first film.

The jury overlooked Pitt, who plays a cynical mob enforcer in Andrew Dominik’s “Killing Them Softly,” and Kidman as a Southern femme fatale in Lee Daniels’ “The Paperboy.”

Payne said it would be wrong to draw any conclusions about the state of a nation’s cinema “based on one tiny snapshot.”

Other much-praised performances at the festival included Marion Cotillard’s tragedy-struck killer-whale trainer in “Rust and Bone,” newcomer Paul Brannigan’s scrappy Glasgow lad in “The Angels’ Share,” and Denis Lavant, as a performer who takes on a host of bizarre personas in “Holy Motors.”

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Online: http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en.html

Thomas Adamson can be reached at http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamsonAP.

Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

Afghan officials said an airstrike Saturday night killed eight members of a family, but a senior NATO official said that so far, there is no evidence of any civilian casualties. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information.

Separately, NATO reported that three coalition service members were killed Sunday in eastern Afghanistan — two during an insurgent attack and one from a roadside bombing.

Four others, including a British soldier, were killed in the south on Saturday, bringing to 169 the number of NATO deaths in Afghanistan so far this year. The British Ministry of Defence said the soldier was killed in an explosion in the Nahr-e Saraj region of southern Helmand province. The nationalities of the other three have not been disclosed.

The coalition said it was working to find out more about allegations that civilians were killed in the NATO operation that foreign forces were conducting Saturday night in Paktia province.

The killing of civilians by foreign forces has been a major irritant in Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s relationship with his international partners. He warned earlier this month that civilian casualties could undermine a strategic partnership with the U.S. that is to govern long-term relations after most international troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

Karzai appointed a delegation to travel to Paktia province and determine what happened.

Frequently, Afghan and coalition officials offer differing accounts of military operations.

In those cases, local residents claim civilians were killed, while the coalition says the victims had been identified as insurgents. Later, if investigations prove that civilians were inadvertently killed, the coalition acknowledges its mistake.

Rohullah Samon, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said Mohammad Shafi, his wife and their six children were killed in the airstrike around 8 p.m. in Suri Khail village of Gurda Saria district.

“Shafi was not a Taliban. He was not in any opposition group against the government. He was a villager,” Samon said. “Right now, we are working on this case to find out the ages of their children.”

Such attacks damage the civilian population’s trust in international troops who have been fighting in the country for more than a decade.

Taliban attacks have killed more civilians than foreign forces, but public anger over the issue is usually directed at the international forces.

Tensions spiked after Afghan officials reported that 18 civilians were killed in four recent airstrikes in Logar, Kapisa, Badghis and Helmand provinces. That led Karzai to issue his warning earlier this month.

“If the lives of Afghan people are not safe, the signing of the strategic partnership has no meaning,” Karzai’s office said.

Last year was the deadliest on record for civilians in the Afghan war, with 3,021 killed as insurgents ratcheted up violence with suicide attacks and roadside bombs, the United Nations said in its latest report on civilian deaths.

The U.N. attributed 77 per cent of the deaths to insurgent attacks and 14 per cent to actions by international and Afghan troops. Nine per cent of cases were classified as having an unknown cause. The U.N. attributed 187 civilian deaths last year to aerial attacks, an increase of 9 per cent over 2010.

Elsewhere Sunday, two civilians were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Marjah district of Helmand province in the south, provincial spokesman Daud Ahmadi said.

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Associated Press writer Mirwais Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

The China Daily reports that Zhang Heng, 22, took up a grueling, mountainous bike race as a graduation trip to see if he could make it alone.

On a stop in Sichuan province, he encountered a ratty white dog that looked hungry.

“She was lying, tired, on the street,” Heng told reporters. “So we fed her, and then she followed our team.”

The dog stayed by his team’s side night and day, travelling 2,000 kilometres to the race’s finish Saturday at the Tibetan capital Lhasa.

She was affectionately named Xiao Sa, a combination of “little” and the second syllable of Lhasa.

Heng said Xiao Sa ran the whole course, except when he’d carry her downhill to avoid high-speed danger.

Xiao Sa also became a star among Chinese bloggers. Heng created a Weibo blog, similar to Twitter, tracking their progress.

The account netted 40,000 followers. Many of them reposted a photo Heng posted when they reached their final destination, announcing he’d be adopting the dog.