Today's other stories in brief
Nine killed in Yemen bomb blast
SANAA - Yemen said that seven Spanish tourists and two Yemenis were killed in a suspected al-Qaeda suicide car-bomb attack on their convoy in the province of Marib yesterday.
Six Spanish tourists were wounded in the attack and were taken to hospitals in Sanaa and Marib, about 150km (95 miles) east of the capital, the official Saba news agency quoted an interior ministry source as saying. "Preliminary information indicates that al-Qaeda is behind this cowardly terrorist attack," the source said.
The bomber targeted the tourists after their vehicles left a temple in Marib at about 5.30pm, the source said. Two of their Yemeni drivers and tourist guides were killed and two were wounded. - (Reuters)
Author Rushdie to divorce
NEW YORK - British author Salman Rushdie and his wife, Padma Lakshmi, host of the TV show Top Chef, are getting divorced, his spokeswoman said yesterday, just two weeks after he was awarded a controversial knighthood.
Rushdie (60) is best known for his novel The Satanic Verses, which outraged many Muslims and sparked death threats which forced him to live in hiding for nine years.
He married Lakshmi, a former model born in 1970 in India, in 2004. She was his fourth wife. The couple had no children. - (Reuters)
Cameron in top team reshuffle
LONDON - Tory leader David Cameron last night shunted his party chairman sideways and appointed ex-Whitehall security chief Dame Pauline Neville-Jones as his national security adviser in a reshuffle to match Gordon Brown's reorganisation of government.
Francis Maude shifts from his chairman's role to stay within the top team shadowing the cabinet office. He is replaced by Caroline Spelman, ex-shadow communities secretary.
Education spokesman David Willetts loses responsibility for schools but takes up the post of spokesman for innovation, universities and skills. - (PA)