In PHOTOS: Around the world in the last 24 hours

Presenting some of the best PHOTOGRAPHS from around the globe in the last 24 hours.

A rebel waves as an Air Libya aircraft flies over Rhebat air strip after its opening.

Ali Tarhouni, oil and finance minister in the council opposing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, opened the airfield linking the rebel capital Benghazi with a remote Western Mountain stronghold south of Tripoli, and promised a military breakthrough within days. He said he was bringing aid to the mountains, a region where the rebels have made significant military gains in the last few weeks against Gaddafi's forces and are preparing for another major advance.

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France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and French Army Chief of Staff Admiral Edouard Guillaud fly aboard a helicopter from Kabul to Tora to visit French troops at the 152nd Infantry Regiment military base in the region of Surobi.

Sarkozy said during a visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday that France will pull out 1,000 troops from its mission there by the end of 2012, as it speeds up its withdrawal with the United States. "It's necessary to end the war," Sarkozy told journalists at the base. "There was never a question of keeping troops in Afghanistan indefinitely."

France has around 4,000 troops deployed in the country, mostly in Sarobi, Kabul, and in northeastern Kapisa province.

Runners make their way to the "Encierro" (Running Of The Bulls) at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona. Two people were gored in a run that lasted two minutes and 16 seconds, according to local news sources.

The festival of San Ferm n is a deeply rooted celebration held annually from July 6, when the opening of the fiesta is marked by setting off the pyrotechnic chupinazo, to midnight July 14, with the singing of the Pobre de M .

While its most famous event is the Encierro the week-long celebration involves many other traditional and folkloric events.

Nationalist youths and police in riot gear clash in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast. Petrol bombs and other missiles have been thrown at police during rioting in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast. The trouble broke out after police in riot gear took up position ahead of an Orange parade walking past the Ardoyne shops on Tuesday evening.

The Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective, which opposes the Orange parade passing through the nationalist Ardoyne, held a protest in response to the Parades Commission decision to allow the march to pass the shops.

Flames rise from an Egyptian pipeline distribution station after an attack in the Sinai peninsula. Saboteurs blew up the distribution station in northern Sinai on Tuesday that supplies natural gas to Israel, the official MENA news agency said. It was the fourth attack on facilities supplying Egyptian gas to Israel this year.

Paramilitary soldiers hold guns with water bottles hanging from their ends during aiming training in Zhengzhou, Henan province.

China said March 4 it plans to raise its defense budget by 12.7 per cent to 601 billion yuan in 2011, compared with an increase of 7.5 percent last year, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Workers separate metal sheets at an industrial area in Mumbai. India's industrial output rose at its weakest pace in nine months in May, the latest sign of slowdown for Asia's third-largest economy even as it girds for another interest rate increase this month as inflation persists.

Boys help rebel fighters clean weapons in Misrata, after the rebel fighters returned from the frontline on the outskirts of Zlitan.

Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi attacked Misrata on Sunday, breaching the opposition's front line to the west and killing 11 rebel fighters, military officials in the rebel-held enclave said.

The aim of the assault was to capture a strategic hill that gives views over the city, said Hassan Duew, a rebel commander. Gaddafi's soldiers were pushed back and the front line remains in place. There was no comment from the government on the fighting or whether its forces sustained casualties.

A boy, displaced by heavy floods for almost a year, is sprayed with water while taking a bath at a camp for flood victims in Sukkur, in Pakistan's Sindh province. Up to five million people in Pakistan are at risk from floods this year, partly due to poor reconstruction and the inadequate rehabilitation of survivors who are still reeling from last year's epic deluge, the United Nations said.

Monsoon rains that began in late July 2010 were the most severe in Pakistan's history. The flash flooding in the mountains of the northwest eventually spread to the south, through the Indus and other river systems, to engulf an area the size of the United Kingdom.

United States Air Force First Lieutenant Greg Sundbeck (L), and Dr Gregory Parker, micro air vehicle team leader, observe a test flight of a US Air Force drone in the microaviary lab at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

The micro air vehicles unit of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson AFB is developing small military drones, with the goal of making them so small that they resemble small birds and insects, including some that will have moving wings. The mission is to develop MAVs that can find, track and target adversaries while operating in complex urban environments.

The engineers are using a variety of small helicopters and drones in the lab to develop the programmes and software. Testing takes place in a controlled indoor lab where the team flies the MAVs and then gathers data to analyze for further development.

Thailand's outgoing Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is pictured speaking on a computer screen during his last meeting with his cabinet at the Government House in Bangkok.

Vejjajiva bade farewell to his cabinet in its last meeting on Monday by congratulating those of his former coalition partners who look likely to return to office as part of the new Pheu Thai-led government. he thanked his ministers for their support and congratulated those who would stay in the next government.

Girls light candles to commemorate the victims of Sunday's Volga boat disaster at the port of Kazan. Russian authorities faced growing anger on Tuesday over the sinking of an ageing, overcrowded tourist boat in the Volga River.

Eighty-eight people, including 16 children, were confirmed dead but the toll could reach 129 in a disaster that has underlined concerns about negligence and corruption in Russia and prompted suggestions it could have been avoided.

The programme for the funeral of Betty Ford, the wife of the late President Gerald Ford, is pictured in front of St. Margarets Episcopal Church in Palm Desert, California. Ford, who overcame alcohol and prescription drug addictions and helped found a rehabilitation clinic that bears her name, died on July 8, 2011 at the age of 93.

Former occupants of the White House and other US dignitaries have gathered at a California church to honour Ford on Monday. First Lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former US president George W Bush were among the attendees of the funeral.

A hospital morgue worker shows the body of Sardar Mohammad, a senior member of the Karzai family's security team who killed Ahmad Wali Karzai the younger half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in Kandahar.

The younger half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, one of the most powerful and controversial men in southern Afghanistan, was shot dead at his home on Tuesday by a senior and highly trusted bodyguard, officials said.