A round-up of other stories in brief
Shootings leave five dead in Denver
DENVER -Police in Colorado are trying to determine whether shootings that left five people dead at a church and a missionary centre were connected. In the first attack at about 12.30am local time yesterday, a gunman shot four staff members at a missionary training centre in Arvada, outside Denver, killing two. The gunman opened fire after being told he couldn't spend the night there, the Associated Press said. He fled the scene.
In the second shooting more than 12 hours later at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, about 113km (70 miles) from the centre, a gunman killed one person.
A second died later in Penrose Community Hospital. - (Bloomberg)
Libby drops perjury appeal
WASHINGTON -A former top aide to US vice-president Dick Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has dropped his appeal in a perjury case that fuelled debate over the Iraq war, his attorney said yesterday.
Libby was found guilty in March of lying and obstructing an investigation into who blew the cover of a CIA officer, Valerie Plame, whose husband had criticised the Iraq war.
US president George W Bush commuted his 2-year prison sentence in July, but the former chief of staff to Mr Cheney still had to pay a $250,000 fine. - (Reuters)
US-Iranian envoys to meet next week
BAGHDAD -A US-Iranian committee set up to find ways to quell violence in Iraq will meet next week, Iraq's foreign minister said yesterday.
The two countries' ambassadors have met in Baghdad three times since May after a diplomatic freeze that lasted almost 30 years, but have agreed on little except the creation of the committee after their second meeting. - (Reuters)
Couple held over pensioners' deaths
LONDON -Registered nurse Rachel Baker (45) and her husband Leigh (48), a chef, were questioned today over the "suspicious" deaths of four women and a man at Parkfields Residential Home in Butleigh, Somerset. - (Reuters)
Civilians at risk in Congo offensive
GOMA -Thousands of Congolese civilians are caught in the middle of an army offensive against a rebel stronghold in North Kivu province because they refuse to abandon their livestock, UN officials said yesterday.
The civilians were warned last week by UN peacekeepers to flee the town of Kirolirwe, which serves as a military base for renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda. - (Reuters)