A roundup of today's other stories in brief.
33 years for botched bomb plot in London
LONDON -A man has been sentenced to 33 years in jail for helping to plot botched al-Qaeda-inspired suicide attacks in London in July 2005.
Ghanaian Manfo Kwaku Asiedu was sentenced by a court in London yesterday after earlier admitting a charge of conspiracy to cause explosions over the failed bombings.
The attacks were attempted two weeks after British Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 people on three underground trains and a bus in London in early July. - (Reuters)
Garden remains are Dinah McNicol
LONDON -Human remains found buried in the back garden of a house in Kent were those of missing teenager Dinah McNicol.
Confirmation that the 18- year-old's remains had been buried at the house in Margate for 16 years came a day after her father, Ian McNicol, visited the scene in a bid to assuage his grief.
A police spokeswoman said yesterday that DNA had helped the identification. - (Reuters)
Supreme Court to rule on guns in DC
WASHINGTON -The US Supreme Court says it will decide whether handguns can be banned in the nation's capital, a case that could produce its first ruling in nearly 70 years on the right of Americans to bear arms.
The court agreed to hear an appeal by officials from the District of Columbia government arguing that the city's 31-year-old law banning private possession of handguns should be upheld as constitutional . - (Reuters)
Britain's drug economy revealed
LONDON -The true scale of Britain's illicit drug economy has been revealed with the disclosure of an internal Home Office estimate that there are 300 major importers, 3,000 wholesalers and 70,000 street dealers involved in a trade with a turnover of between £7 billion (€9.8 billion) and £8 billion (€11 billion) a year.
The Home Office research says the average dealer has an annual turnover of £100,000 (€140,000), many drug operations employ salaried staff as "runners and storers" and raise their heroin prices by as much as £1,000 (€1,400) a kilo as demand peaks at Christmas.
The research was based on prison interviews with 222 convicted drug dealers . - (Guardian service)
Kosovo talks still deadlocked
BRUSSELS -Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders have failed in talks to break a deadlock over the breakaway Serb province, but they have agreed to hold three days of negotiations next week ahead of a December 10th deadline.
Both sides stuck to their existing positions, with Kosovo Albanian negotiators rejecting a Serb offer of broad autonomy and insisting on EU- supervised independence, a statement issued by a team of European, US and Russian mediators said. - (Reuters)
Costa book finalists named
LONDON -Novelists Rose Tremain and AL Kennedy joined biographers Julie Kavanagh and Simon Sebag Montefiore as four of 20 finalists in the Costa Book Awards, formerly known as the Whitbreads.
Sponsored by Whitbread Plc's Costa coffee-shop chain, the contest carries prizes of £5,000 (€7,000) for winning books in five genres. The five then compete for a main prize of £25,000. - (Bloomberg)
Springer private prosecution sought
LONDON -Christian evangelists have launched a High Court battle for the right to bring a private prosecution for blasphemy over Jerry Springer - The Opera.
Two judges were told the show was "an offensive, spiteful, systematic mockery and wilful denigration of Christian belief", a show no one would have dreamed of making about the prophet Mohammed and Islam. - (PA)