A round-up of today's other stories in brief.
Writer Zadie Smith wins Orange prize
LONDON - Zadie Smith won the Orange Prize for Fiction last night for her novel, On Beauty. It was third time lucky for the 30-year-old writer.
Her previous novels, White Teeth and The Autograph Man, were shortlisted for the women-only award in 2001 and 2003 but failed to win.
On Beauty was passed over for the Man Booker Prize but the Orange judges hailed it as a "literary tour de force".
Smith received her £30,000 prize at a ceremony held in the Royal Courts of Justice in London. - (PA)
Some of prisoners freed may stay
LONDON - More than 200 of the 1,019 foreign prisoners released without being considered for deportation are to be allowed to stay in Britain after all, MPs were told yesterday.
The Home Office's most senior immigration official, Lin Homer, director general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, also said that eight of the most serious offenders who were released had still to be found and the police were about to launch a "case by case" publicity campaign to trace them. - (Guardian service)
Soldiers killed in Afghan bombings
KABUL - A roadside bomb killed two US-led coalition soldiers on patrol in Afghanistan, and a teenage Taliban suicide car bomber died ramming his taxi into a coalition convoy yesterday, wounding three coalition troops.
Another roadside bomb killed two Afghan soldiers and wounded four others in Kunar province, Gen Zahir Wardak, a commander in the region, said.
The attacks come during the bloodiest period in an insurgency that has raged since US-backed forces ousted a Taliban government in 2001. - (Reuters)
Corpse found in fake crime scene
MIAMI - A group of Florida criminology students working a fake crime scene stumbled across a real corpse on a field trip to study forensics.
The St Thomas Aquinas High School students were taken to a Fort Lauderdale park on Monday to look for clues at a mock crime scene where the instructor had planted phony "evidence". "The students went up to this one area . . . and found a man with his back against the wall and he looked dead. They thought it was part of the skit," Fort Lauderdale police detective Kathy Collins said. The 45-year-old homeless man appeared to have died of natural causes, she added. - (Reuters)
Nuclear power plant chief sacked
SOFIA - Bulgaria's government sacked the chief executive of its Soviet-era Kozloduy nuclear power plant, Ivan Ivanov, for foot dragging on commitments to shut down reactors ahead of EU entry, officials said yesterday.
In a May 16th report, the European Commission delayed a decision on whether Sofia should join the bloc in 2007 or in 2008, saying it needed to see more progress on various issues including Bulgaria's commitment to close two of Mr Kozloduy's six reactors by the end of the year.
"The dismissal of the chief executive was decided following criticism in the EU Commission's monitoring report," said energy ministry spokeswoman Elena Yotova. - (Reuters)
Iceland gets new prime minister
REYKJAVIK - Foreign minister Geir Haarde will be Iceland's new prime minister, a government official said yesterday, and analysts forecast few policy changes in spite of fears of an overheating economy.
Mr Haarde, head of senior coalition partner the Independence Party, will take over from Halldor Asgrimsson, who stepped down after a poor showing for his Progressive Party in local elections. -(Reuters)