The results easily beat most Wall Street expectations. The San Ramon, Calif., company is the latest oil major to report big gains in the second quarter as demand for oil and gasoline has pushed prices higher. Exxon Mobil Corp. posted income of $7.56 billion in the quarter, its best result since the last three months of 2008. Royal Dutch Shell Group boosted second-quarter earnings 15 percent, and ConocoP]]> Shares rose 19 cents to close Friday trading at $76.21.

The results easily beat most Wall Street expectations. The San Ramon, Calif., company is the latest oil major to report big gains in the second quarter as demand for oil and gasoline has pushed prices higher. Exxon Mobil Corp. posted income of $7.56 billion in the quarter, its best result since the last three months of 2008. Royal Dutch Shell Group boosted second-quarter earnings 15 percent, and ConocoPhillips said profits nearly tripled in the April-June period.

NEW YORK – Chevron’s second-quarter earnings tripled on better refining margins and higher prices for oil and natural gas, the company said Friday.

Chevron said it has halted two exploratory wells in the Gulf. Plans for two more deepwater exploration wells also have been delayed. The company loaned one of its rigs to BP to help with the spill response, and the other two have been sitting idle.

Chevron Corp. reported net income of $5.4 billion, or $2.70 per share, for the three months ended June 30. That compares with $1.7 billion, or 87 cents per share, in the same part of last year. Revenue jumped 32 percent to $53 billion.

Chevron shares also have taken a hit as investors worry about the company’s ability to increase production.

BP’s runaway well, which pumped as much as 184 million gallons of oil into the sea, has tainted the entire oil industry. Market values slumped for Big Oil as President Obama temporarily closed U.S. waters to deep-sea oil exploration.

Oil stocks declined this summer as the BP spill expanded in the Gulf. Chevron’s stock has been making a comeback in recent weeks, though it’s still about 7 percent lower since the April 20 rig explosion.

The moratorium, which could be lifted after Nov. 30, forced service companies and rig owners to move staff and equipment onshore and out of the Gulf.

Oil companies cranked up production to take advantage. Chevron increased oil and gas production 3 percent to 2.04 million barrels per day.

George Kirkland, Chevron’s vice president of global upstream and gas, said the company remains committed to exploring oil and gas in the Gulf. He told investors in a conference call that the company expects a variety of drilling projects to resume later this year “assuming the moratorium is lifted.”

The refining business also rebounded from a woeful 2009, when companies struggled to pass higher oil prices along at the pump. A rise in consumer demand pushed profit margins higher for refineries. During the quarter, Chevron’s downstream business, which includes refineries, reported earnings of $975 million, up from $131 million in the year-ago period.

Current oil and gas production wasn’t targeted by the ban, however, and in the second quarter oil majors reaped billions of dollars in profits from drilling operations around the world.

“Chevron has one of the largest holdings of oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico,” Gheit said. “So they could see a big future impact” if the U.S. extends its drilling ban. Chevron’s oil production should fall slightly this year because of the ban, slicing less than 10,000 barrels a day from the overall operation,Ed hardy silk scarves, Chevron’s Kirkland said.

As the U.S. and other countries pull themselves from recession, world demand for petroleum products has been on the rise. Oil prices jumped 31 percent and natural gas prices rose 14 percent in the quarter. Retail gasoline prices also increased 20 percent to an average of $2.86 per gallon in the second quarter, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.

Fadel Gheit,G-Star, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., said investors remain concerned that oil refineries will be able to maintain profits like they have this quarter. Gasoline prices tend to rise during the second quarter as an influx of summer tourists hit the roads. Afterward, refineries could continue to struggle, Gheit said.

Among oil giants, BP PLC has been the only one to disappoint as it continues to reel from the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The British company this week reported a record $17 billion quarterly loss as it set aside $32.2 billion to pay for the widening environmental calamity in the Gulf.

If the rules went into effect now, 55 percent of for-profit schools would be required to disclose unflattering loan data in their promotional materials, making for a strong consumer protection tool, the agency said.

For-profit colleges have faced increased scrutiny in recent months for some questionable recruiting tactics, high loan default rates, and low gr]]> Under the Obama administration proposal, vocational programs would fall into one of three categories:

If the rules went into effect now, 55 percent of for-profit schools would be required to disclose unflattering loan data in their promotional materials, making for a strong consumer protection tool, the agency said.

For-profit colleges have faced increased scrutiny in recent months for some questionable recruiting tactics, high loan default rates, and low graduation and job placement rates. The government is taking notice because for-profit colleges are bringing in record amounts of federal aid money — $26.5 billion last year, up from $4.6 billion in 2000.

To give schools time to improve and to target “the bottom of the barrel,” Duncan said the administration would cap the number of programs it would strip of aid eligibility at 5 percent in fall 2012, when that penalty would first be assessed.

The Obama administration, amid intense lobbying from both for-profit college officials and consumer and student advocates, is proposing a complicated formula that would weigh both the debt-to-income ratio of recent graduates and whether all enrolled students repay their loans on time, regardless of whether they finish their studies.

The Education Department proposed much-anticipated regulations Friday that would cut off federal aid to for-profit college programs if too many of their students default on loans or don’t earn enough after graduation to repay them.

_Those programs that don’t fit either definition would be restricted — meaning they would be subject to limits on enrollment growth and schools would be required, among other things, to warn of their high debt levels.

“Amounts borrowed today do not indicate what you will be able to repay in five years, ten years or over a working lifetime,” the association’s president, Harris Miller, said in a statement.

Others who were hoping for tougher rules were disappointed, as well.

Pauline Abernathy, vice president of the Institute for College Access & Success, said while the proposal is significant and has teeth, programs could continue to profit from federal aid when more than half their students can’t afford to pay down the principal on their loans.

“It is not as strong as it should be to protect students and taxpayers from getting ripped off by career education programs that over-promise and under-deliver,” she said.

Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee criticized the proposal, saying the government could in effect “institute price controls on certificate and degree programs at thousands of institutions of higher education.” Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, a Democrat who is holding oversight hearings on for-profit colleges, said at first glance, “the regulation appears to set a low bar.”

The proposed rules will be published Monday in the Federal Register and a 45-day public comment period will follow. The final rules are scheduled to be announced in November and would take effect next year, although enforcement action that would strip schools of aid eligibility would not begin until the 2012-2013 school year.

___

Associated Press Business Writer Tali Arbel contributed to this report.

“Some proprietary schools have profited and prospered but their students haven’t, and this is a disservice to students and to taxpayers,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a briefing with reporters. “And it undermines the valuable work, the extraordinarily important work, being done by the for-profit industry as a whole.”

On Wall Street, shares of several for-profit education companies jumped Friday at the news. DeVry Inc., which is among the companies analysts predicted would be least affected by the proposal, climbed 15 percent and was one of the biggest gainers in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

To qualify for federal student aid programs, career college programs must prepare students for “gainful employment.”

Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of the FinAid.org Web site, said the government’s proposal “appears to represent a reasonable compromise that separates the wheat from the chaff without discarding too much wheat.”

Duncan said the department estimates that if schools make no changes, 5 percent of for-profit college programs would be ineligible for aid in 2012 — affecting 8 percent of all students in the fast-growing sector.

But shares were mixed among companies such as ITT Educational Services Inc.,Christian Audigier, Corinthian Colleges Inc., Education Management Corp. and Career Education Corp. Those companies operate career colleges focusing more on two-year programs or lower-income students and may need to make big changes if the proposal is adopted, analysts said.

_Programs fully eligible for aid will either have at least 45 percent of their former students paying down the principal on their federal loans — or their graduates will have a debt-to-earnings ratio of less than 20 percent of discretionary income or 8 percent of total income.

_Ineligible programs will have less than 35 percent of their former students paying down the principal on their federal loans — and their graduates will have a debt-to-earnings ratio above 30 percent of discretionary income and 12 percent of total income.

Early reaction was mixed, with a Republican senator and a for-profit college lobbying group panning it and advocates for tougher regulation questioning whether it does enough to protect students and taxpayers.

The Career College Association, the for-profit college sector’s main lobbying group, said establishing a ratio between student debt and anticipated graduate earnings is unwise,Diesel, unnecessary and unproven.

Tuesday, in its first reaction to the leak, Afghanistan's National Security Council said the United States had failed to attack the patrons and supporters of the Taliban hiding in Pakistan throughout the nine-year-old conflict.

Holmes turned up fresh and perky for "The Extra Man" premiere, held at the Village East Cinema in downtown New York and greeted her costars with hugs. Paul Dano and Kevin Kline co-star with Holmes in the low-budget comedy created by the duo that brought the world "American Splendo]]> Ironically, despite the chummy greeting that the three leading actors shared on the red carpet, earlier in the afternoon Kline had joked to reporters that he barely knows Holmes.

Holmes turned up fresh and perky for "The Extra Man" premiere, held at the Village East Cinema in downtown New York and greeted her costars with hugs. Paul Dano and Kevin Kline co-star with Holmes in the low-budget comedy created by the duo that brought the world "American Splendor" and "The Nanny Diaries": this time, co-writers/directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini focus on Kline's character, an aging gigolo who acts as an escort for wealthy widows.

New York – When you're a big movie star, it's easy to whisk away from your movie premiere: just ask Katie Holmes. The actress is currently working in Toronto on the History Channel miniseries "The Kennedys," in which she will bring Jacqueline Kennedy back to life, but her latest flick was premiering in New York City on Monday, July 19. So what's a girl whose husband Tom Cruise makes $25 million per movie to do? Just hire a helicopter, of course.

The actress that Kline has known forever is Phoebe Cates, his wife of more than 20 years; she and their daughter Greta Simone Kline joined him for the fun, both at the screening and the after party, along with friends Tracey Ullman and Rachel Dratch. Dano brought Zoe Kazan, his girlfriend of the moment, and a gaggle of supermodels, including Doutzen Kroes, Kim Stolz, Lena Gerke, Yaya DaCosta and Jessica White turned out, too. Even members of the fashion world wanted to see "The Extra Man," with designers Elie Tahari, Cynthia Rowley and Nanette Lepore on hand, along with musician Sean Lennon,Hollister, but Holmes left right away, off to her private helicopter and back to work in Toronto.

"I've made two films with Katie Holmes, and have yet to act with her," he chortled. "She was in 'The Ice Storm' and I waved to her,D&G, and now she's in 'The Extra Man' with Paul Dano!"

NEW YORK – The original "Law & Order" is off the air, but show creator Dick Wolf has more stories to tell: He plans to write novels.

Wolf is the creator and executive producer of "Law & Order: Los Angeles." It debuts this fall as the newest member of the NBC crime drama family.

"It's reality show politics," Gaddie said. "It's unsavory. It's undignified, and it's real."

"Unequivocally, absolutely not," he said. "I don't want to be affiliated with that website or that ad. I don't want to use it as a platform in my political campaign."

"A merchant ship,D&G, a jack of all trade — that's my first guess," he said. "It's the kind of ship that made New York, when you think about it."

Warren Riess, a historian at the University of Maine whose specialty is 18th-century ships, said the buri]]> Historians believe the ship had been junked by the time it was used around 1810 as landfill to extend the shores of lower Manhattan. The ship’s exact age will be determined by lab analysis.

“A merchant ship,D&G, a jack of all trade — that’s my first guess,” he said. “It’s the kind of ship that made New York, when you think about it.”

Warren Riess, a historian at the University of Maine whose specialty is 18th-century ships, said the buried fragment appeared to be the ship’s bow. “It’s probably something that was like a coastal schooner or brigantine or sloop,” he said.

Debris found under the timbers gets placed on a screen and hosed off. The water-screening process, which evokes images of prospectors panning for gold, is the best way to separate artifacts from the mud they were buried in, Dallal said. Items like coins and buttons could yield clues to the ship’s past, she said.

The section of the ship lay bathed in water and shielded from the sun by a tarp strung up on poles. Doub said the timber has to be kept wet or it will warp.

The archeologists who carefully began taking it apart said they were thrilled by the historic find.

Each plank will be freeze-dried so that the fragmentary hull can eventually be reassembled and put on display, said Nichole Doub, head conservator for the Maryland Archeological Conservation Laboratory.

The discovery of the ship’s rotting timbers 20 feet below street level in a spot surrounded by office towers suggests Manhattan’s long history as a hub of commerce.

“The Dutch set it up as a trading post and what is it today?” Riess said. “It’s the world’s biggest, greatest trading post, isn’t it?”

“This is my first ship. I’ve been doing archeology in New York City for almost 30 years,” said Diane Dallal, director of archeology for AKRF, an environmental, engineering and planning consulting firm that is working on the project.

The 32-foot section of the nameless vessel was found earlier this month as workers were excavating for the rebuilt World Trade Center’s parking garage.

Riess said the ship likely sailed from New York to Boston or to Virginia or Barbados carrying goods such as flour, bricks or hay.

Each plank was labeled so conservators will know its precise location in the wreckage. The members of the conservation team then picked up each plank,Christian Dior, measured it and wrapped it in layers of moisture-preserving insulation. The process of dismantling the ship was expected to take two to four days.

NEW YORK – Plank by plank, archeologists on Monday began the delicate process of dismantling a section of an 18th century ship that was found buried across the street from the World Trade Center site.

The ship was found partially intact because the dirt it was buried in preserved it. Riess said the ship is an important find because no one would have bothered to save such a commonplace vessel 200 years ago. “Nobody wrote about it, nobody made drawings of it,” he said.

The documents also report potential Iranian support of an Afghan terrorist group.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs emphasized that the documents covered the period before Obama ordered a major increase in U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, and the administration den]]> “Someone inadvertently or on purpose gave the Taliban its new ‘enemies list,’” declared Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who said the White House indicated the disclosures compromised a number of Afghan sources.

The documents also report potential Iranian support of an Afghan terrorist group.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs emphasized that the documents covered the period before Obama ordered a major increase in U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, and the administration denied they would cause any policy shift in the fight against Taliban insurgents.

The documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by various military units that provide an unflinching view of combat operations between 2004 and 2009, including U.S. frustration over reports that Pakistan secretly aided insurgents fighting U.S. and Afghan forces.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the release of documents was just the beginning. He told reporters in London that some 15,000 more files on Afghanistan were still being vetted by his organization.

The leaks come at a time when President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan war strategy is under congressional scrutiny and with polls finding that a majority of Americans no longer think the war there is worth fighting. Still, the leaks are not expected to prevent passage of a $60 billion war funding bill. Despite strong opposition among liberals who see Afghanistan as an unwinnable quagmire, House Democrats must either approve the bill before leaving at the end of this week for a six-week vacation, or commit political suicide by leaving troops in the lurch in war zones overseas.

Indeed, despite the furor over the publication of the reports on the WikiLeaks whistleblower website, the information did not reveal any fundamentally new problems in the war effort. Military officers, current and former, described the documents as mostly tactical spot reports, including hunches about possible suspects and bomb plots that couldn’t be verified. Some of the reports contain errors; others appear to be based on flimsy evidence.

Still, much of the material is anything but encouraging.

Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military would probably need “days, if not weeks” to determine “the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners.”

In Islamabad, the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the leaked documents “misplaced, skewed and contrary to the factual position on the ground.” And it said that U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism cooperation against “our common enemies” will continue.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley argued that there is a “new dynamic” in the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan since the period covered by the leaked documents. He acknowledged, however, that the U.S. remains concerned about weaknesses in the relationship, including the problem of corruption in the Afghan government.

“These documents highlight issues we’ve long known about,” Crowley said.

WikiLeaks, a self-described whistleblower organization,Rock Republic, posted the reports to its website Sunday night. It did not say who provided the documents.

Crowley said it was unclear whether the leak was related to a U.S. military intelligence analyst who is being held in Kuwait, on charges of mishandling classified information on military computers in Baghdad.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said the documents released so far “reflect the reality, recognized by everyone, that the insurgency was gaining momentum during these years while our coalition was losing ground.”

The Taliban’s resurgence led Obama to announce in December 2009 a major increase of forces to Afghanistan as part of a new civil-military strategy, Lieberman pointed out.

Shortly after the documents were posted on the Internet, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said they raised questions about whether the U.S. was pursuing a realistic policy with Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said they showed the urgency of making the “calibrations” necessary “to get the policy right.”

Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the leak disturbing.

“The damage to our national security caused by leaks like this won’t stop until we see more perpetrators in orange jump suits,” Bond said.

The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, for allegedly transmitting classified information. But the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance, Lapan said.

___

Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier, Anne Flaherty and Andrew Taylor in Washington, Raphael Satter in London, and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.

The material portrays Pakistan as playing a double game when it came to the struggle against Afghan militants, with security officials secretly providing insurgents with aid. Both the U.S. and Pakistan say that view is outdated, but one American analyst said it probably is correct.

Underscoring the difficulties the U.S. faces, the documents include the first publicly released indication that the Taliban has used portable surface-to-air missiles against U.S. helicopters. One report on a June 2005 incident said a Black Hawk helicopter used evasive measures to avoid getting hit east of Kandahar by what its crew chief identified as a portable missile.

“The Pakistan government gave up claiming that it could control its intelligence agencies around the time they invented them. I don’t think they even try,” said Paula R. Newberg, director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.

The Pentagon also was looking at possible damage on the ground in Afghanistan.

They said that on Jan. 30, 2005, Iranian intelligence agencies brought the equivalent of $212,D&G,800 in Afghan currency across the Iranian border and transferred it to a 1990s-model white Toyota Corolla station wagon occupied by members of Hizb-i-Islami, a Taliban-allied insurgent group led by former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The money trail was lost.

The torrent of more than 91,000 secret documents, one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history, sent the Obama administration scrambling to assess and repair any damage to the war effort, either abroad or in the U.S. The material could reinforce the view put forth by the war’s opponents in Congress that one of the nation’s longest conflicts is hopelessly stalemated.

The White House called the disclosures “alarming.”

WASHINGTON – The monumental leak of classified Afghan war documents threatened Monday to create deeper doubts about the war at home, cause new friction with Pakistan over allegations about its spy agency and raise questions around the world about Washington’s own ability to protect military secrets.

FedEx, regarded as an economic bellwether, said more packages were flowing through b]]> Each of the three major U.S. stock indexes gained 1 percent for the day,Seven, with the Standard & Poor's 500 at 1,115.01 — just a fraction of a point shy of the break-even point for the year. The Dow Jones industrial average is back in the black for the year. The Nasdaq, which edged back into positive territory for the year on Friday, is now up 1.2 percent for 2010 so far.

FedEx, regarded as an economic bellwether, said more packages were flowing through both its air and ground networks.

Ford Motor Co Chief Executive Alan Mulally said he agreed, telling NBC's "Today" show: "I think that we're going to have good, steady growth here."

But downward revisions to sales estimates for April and May in Monday's report left in place a picture of a weak housing market and perceptions that economic growth moderated somewhat in the second quarter.

ACTIVITY SLOWING DOWN

New home sales account for only a fraction of the total U.S. housing market.

Separately, a gauge of factory activity in the Texas region extended its decline this month, suggesting a pullback in manufacturing continued in July.

Recent data have implied the U.S. economy's recovery from its longest and deepest recession since the 1930s slowed in recent months, but economists do not expect a renewed downturn.

Manufacturing has been the main engine of growth.

The percentage increase last month was the largest since May 1980, and it partially unwound May's historic 36.7 percent drop as the U.S. housing market was roiled by the expiry of a popular tax credit that boosted sales. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast new home sales rising to a 320,000-unit pace last month from May's previously reported 300,000 units.

Moderation in growth was signaled by a measure of national economic activity released on Monday. The Chicago Federal Reserve Bank said its national activity index fell in June for the first time since February, dropping to minus 0.63 from a positive 0.31 in May. A reading above zero indicates the economy is growing above trend.

The report,Ralph Lauren, together with package delivery and business services company FedEx Corp's upgrading of its quarterly and full-year earnings forecasts, prompted a rally on Wall Street.

Safe-haven U.S. government debt eked out slim gains, while the dollar fell broadly.

"We can't take too much joy in one month's figure. The roadblocks to a healthy housing market are high, the most important one being the still high jobless rate," said Jennifer Lee, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sales of new homes rebounded strongly in June from May's record low, pushing the number of houses on the market to the lowest level in nearly 42 years.

The government is expected to report on Friday that growth in gross domestic product slowed to a 2.5 percent annual rate in the April-June period from a 2.7 percent pace in the first three months of the year.

Sales of new single-family homes vaulted 23.6 percent to a 330,000 unit annual rate, the Commerce Department said. Still, the sales pace last month was the second lowest since records started in 1963.

While economists expect weak housing activity to act as a drag on growth for much of the year, they do not believe this would be enough on its own to trigger a double-dip recession.

"It's not going to affect the economy that much. It's more the economy affecting the housing market. What we need is for the economy to start creating jobs," said Patrick Newport, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Data last week showed home construction fell to an eight-month low in June, while sales of existing home were the lowest in three months.

Housing's share of the economy has shrunk in recent years and residential construction accounted for about 2.4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product in the first quarter.

The impact of a 10 percent drop in home construction has about one-third the impact now as it did in 2006, according to economists at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch.

The Commerce report suggested the housing market may be close to working through the distortions following the end of a popular home-buyer tax credit in April, an incentive that brought forward sales.

Last month's surge in sales saw the supply of new homes available for sale dropping to 7.6 months' worth from 9.6 months' worth in May. The number of new homes on the market dropped 1.4 percent to 210,000 units, the lowest level since September 1968.

"Progress is being made in reducing the excess inventory, which is crucial for the outlook for prices," said Paul Dales, a U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

"However, new home sales make up just 5 percent of all sales. And the post-tax credit fall-off in activity has yet to fully show up in existing sales. Total home sales have, therefore, yet to hit rock bottom."

The median sale price for a new home fell 1.4 percent last month to $213,400. In the 12 months to June, prices dipped 0.6 percent, the smallest drop since November 1987.

House price have stabilized on a year-ago basis.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index likely increased 4.0 percent year-over-year in May following a 3.8 percent rise in April, according to a Reuters survey. The report is due on Tuesday.

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For a graphic on June sales of new U.S. homes see:

http://link.reuters.com/fyt59m

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(Editing by Jan Paschal)

"Every individual detained within S-21 was destined for execution in accordance with the Communist Party of Kampuchea policy to smash all enemies," he added.

"The role of the accused as the undisputed]]> PHNOM PENH (AFP) – In a historic first, a UN-backed court Monday sentenced a Khmer Rouge prison chief to 30 years in jail for crimes against humanity over mass executions during Cambodia's "Killing Fields" era.

"Every individual detained within S-21 was destined for execution in accordance with the Communist Party of Kampuchea policy to smash all enemies," he added.

"The role of the accused as the undisputed head of S-21 is confirmed by the accused's own admission, the testimony of witnesses and civil parties," head judge Nil Nonn said.

The court also convicted Duch of war crimes although it found there was insufficient evidence to prove he personally committed torture or other inhumane acts, the judge said.

Human rights campaigners urged the tribunal to prosecute more former Khmer Rouge cadres, with Amnesty International saying Duch's sentence was "only the first step towards justice".

The US State Department and Senator John Kerry hailed the ruling.

"We applaud the commitment of the national and international judges for their comprehensive and independent work to uphold international standards of justice and due process in this case," said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley.

Kerry, a close ally of President Barack Obama,Juicy Couture jackets, said it was a "historic, if delayed, step forward for Cambodia".

Led by "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge was responsible for one of the worst horrors of the 20th century, wiping out nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population through starvation, overwork and execution.

The Khmer Rouge was ousted by Vietnamese-backed forces in 1979, but continued to fight a civil war until 1998. Pol Pot died that same year.

Duch has been detained since 1999, when he was found working as a Christian aid worker in the jungle, and was formally arrested by the tribunal in July 2007.

Duch apologised during his trial in Phnom Penh for overseeing the mass murder of 15,000 men, women and children at Tuol Sleng prison — also known as S-21 — but shocked the court in November by finally asking to be acquitted.

But to the dismay of survivors and relatives of victims, the court took into account the years he had already served since his arrest in 1999, meaning that the 67-year-old could walk free in about 19 years.

"Millions of people were killed, millions of dollars have been spent (on the trial), but the killer could be released," said a tearful Chum Mey, 79, one of only a handful who survived imprisonment and torture at the jail.

The court is also investigating whether to open more cases against five other former Khmer Rouge cadres after a dispute between the international and Cambodian co-prosecutors over whether to pursue more suspects.

Duch was initially given 35 years but the court reduced the jail sentence after ruling that he had been detained illegally for years by a Cambodian military court before the UN-backed tribunal was established.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, is the first Khmer Rouge cadre to face justice in an international tribunal over the deaths of up to two million people through starvation, overwork and execution under the 1975-1979 regime.

The joint trial of four more senior Khmer Rouge leaders charged with genocide is expected to start in 2011.

Prosecutors, who had asked for a 40-year prison term, hailed the judgment as a historic day for Cambodia, although they said they would consider appealing for a stiffer sentence.

Crowds of Cambodians, including regime survivors and Buddhist monks, turned up at the specially built court on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, hoping finally to see justice for the Khmer Rouge's crimes. Many left disappointed.

"This is a court case, not a football match, so there are no winners or losers. It's really a question of whether justice has been applied," deputy prosecutor Bill Smith told reporters.

"We can't accept a sentence where it is conceivable that he could walk even for one minute in society,G-sta," said Theary Seng, founder of the Cambodian Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, whose parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Tuol Sleng was the centre of the Khmer Rouge security apparatus and thousands of inmates were taken from there for execution in a nearby orchard that served as a "Killing Field".