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ATHENS (Reuters) - A prominent Greek businessman who was kidnapped for ransom earlier in June was released early on Monday, police said.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali gunmen shot dead a peace activist and kidnapped a senior United Nations official, while a roadside bomb killed three policemen in the anarchic Horn of Africa country, witnesses said on Sunday.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Up to 6,000 additional troops are urgently needed in Afghanistan and a failure to deploy them will only prolong the presence of Western forces in the country, a German NATO general said on Sunday.

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel began on Sunday to gradually ease its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip by allowing additional goods into the Hamas-ruled enclave but Palestinians said the increase in deliveries was meager.

ROME (Reuters) - Rome prosecutors have reopened a probe into a mysterious plane explosion off Sicily in 1980, after former Italian President Francesco Cossiga said the plane was hit by a French missile, Italian media reported on Sunday.

LHASA, China (Reuters) - Tibet's exiled Dalai Lama remains a spiritual leader but is politically anathema, a senior monk in Lhasa told foreign reporters on an official visit that underscored tensions in the mountain region.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will announce on Sunday that he is withdrawing from the June 27 presidential run-off election, a source within his Movement for Democratic Change told Reuters.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A U.S. leak of an Israeli air exercise reported to be practice for possible bombing of Iran's nuclear sites was seen in Israel on Sunday as a deliberate move to increase pressure on Tehran to halt sensitive atomic work.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A female suicide bomber blew herself up among policemen outside a restaurant north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing 15 people and wounding 35, Iraqi police said.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, making his third visit to the quake zone, spoke of a "calamity-ridden nation" on Sunday but said life in the provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu should be back to normal within two months.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali gunmen have kidnapped the local head of the U.N. refugee agency in Mogadishu in the latest abduction of aid workers in the lawless Horn of Africa nation, witnesses said on Sunday.

VIENNA (Reuters) - Senior U.N. inspectors arrived in Syria on Sunday to investigate U.S. allegations that Damascus was building a clandestine nuclear reactor for military purposes before an Israel air strike destroyed it in September.

KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Rockets fired from Pakistan hit a village in eastern Afghanistan killing a woman and three children, Afghan officials said on Sunday, one of three cross-border attacks around the same time overnight.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli anti-torture watchdog said in a report on Sunday Israeli soldiers routinely abuse bound Palestinian detainees and it accused the military of "absolute indifference" towards such mistreatment.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian newspaper has been banned after carrying articles critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's economic policies, the state Press TV satellite station said on its website.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - At least three people were killed and 30 wounded on Sunday in sectarian clashes in Lebanon's second largest city Tripoli, security sources said.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej defended himself and his administration on Sunday in the face of thousands of demonstrators camped outside Government House calling for his resignation.

Born in Belgrade in 1969, Goran Tomasevic started working for Reuters as a freelance photographer in 1996 during the anti-Milosevic demonstrations. He was based in Baghdad during the Iraq conflict, in Jerusalem during tense times between the Israelis and Palestinians, and is now senior photographer in Egypt. In the following story he recalls a rare sequence of split-second shots he took of a U.S. Marine in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of a run-off election against President Robert Mugabe on Sunday, saying a free and fair poll was impossible in the current climate of violence.

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy flies to Israel on Sunday for a three-day visit aimed at reinforcing his image as an ally of the Jewish state and reversing a trend of difficult trips there by French leaders.