A roundup of today's other stories in brief.
Sri Lanka agrees talks with Tamils
COLOMBO - Sri Lanka has agreed to hold unconditional peace talks with the Tamil Tigers in Geneva at the end of this month, amid fears the worst violence since a 2002 truce could spiral into full-blown civil war.
The Tigers committed to talks on Tuesday, but sporadic fighting continued yesterday as the airforce pounded rebel positions in the island's far north and a powerful roadside bomb was defused in the capital Colombo.
Each side accuses the other of trying to rekindle a two-decade war that has killed more than 65,000 people since 1983. - (Reuters)
Two arrested over Brixton shootings
LONDON - Police say they have arrested two male youths over the shooting six days ago of two teenage boys in a busy McDonald's restaurant in Brixton, south London.
The arrests yesterday were carried out by officers of Operation Trident, a police investigation into black-on-black crime in the city.
One of the two 17-year-old victims is still in hospital after being shot in the chest. The other, who was shot in the arm, was released after treatment on the day of the incident. - (Reuters)
'NY Times' writer RW Apple dies
NEW YORK - New York Times journalist R.W. Apple, a leading writer on war and politics for decades before he returned to the noodle shops of Saigon and restaurants of Paris to write about the food and wine he loved, has died aged 71.
He died in Washington yesterday of complications from thoracic cancer, a Times spokeswoman said.
Raymond Walter Apple jnr, nicknamed "Johnny" for Johnny Appleseed, made his name covering foreign wars and American politics and his front-page news analyses were must reading for the Washington elite. - (Reuters)
US scientist wins chemistry prize
STOCKHOLM - American Roger Kornberg, the son of a Nobel laureate, has won the 2006 Nobel chemistry prize for showing how genes are copied, a process essential to how cells develop and to life itself.
Mr Kornberg's prize came 47 years after his father, Arthur, accepted the medicine Nobel award in Stockholm for gene work. It also crowned a week of success for US scientists, who have swept all the 2006 Nobel science awards so far. The Swedish Academy of Sciences, which makes the 10 million crowns (€1.073m) award, said Mr Kornberg's research into how ribonucleic acid, RNA, moves genetic information around the body was of "fundamental medical importance". - (Reuters)
Aztec altar found in Mexico City
MEXICO CITY - Mexican archaeologists have found what may be the most significant Aztec ruin in decades, with the unearthing of an altar and a monolith in the busy heart of Mexico City.
The 15th-century altar, part of the Aztec empire's main temple, was uncovered last weekend near the city's main Zocalo square along with the 3.5-metre stone slab, most of which is still buried under earth. - (Reuters)