Munich - Doctors who studied the Iceman, a mummified Stone Age hunter found in Italy in 1991, announced conclusive proof Wednesday that he was shot to death with a flint-tipped arrow rather than dying of exposure as once thought.

"He only lived for a short time after the arrow impact," said Andreas Nerlich, who headed a joint study by Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich and experts from Bolzano, Italy.

London  - Nearly 90 years after its triumphant premiere in German, Erich Korngold's opera Die tote Stadt has been received with acclaim at its first-ever staging in Britain at London's Covent Garden opera house.

German conductor Ingo Metzmacher, principal conductor and artistic director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in Berlin, Tuesday made his own debut at London's leading opera house conducting the opera that was premiered simultaneously in Hamburg and Cologne in December, 1920.

Berlin  - Annual German i

It might sound as an interesting story of fiction but all the readers who are reading it should know that it is true. Last year, a man named Chris Ogle from New Zealand was enjoying his time in Oklahoma when he bought a used MP3 player from a thrift store for $9.

Just a few weeks ago, this man plugged the MP3 player into his computer so that he can download a song. But to his surprise, Ogle found a confidential U. S. military files stored in the player.

Washington  - Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Updike has died of lung cancer, aged 76, his publicist said Tuesday.

Updike, creator of the memorable small-town character Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and novelist Henry Bech, drew much of his inspiration from personal experience growing up near Reading in south-western Pennsylvania.

Born March 18, 1932, Updike lived a solitary life as an only child, spending his teenage years on a secluded farm with his parents and grandparents before winning a scholarship to study English at Harvard University.

Ottawa - Two ships, one of them carrying hundreds of passengers were stuck in the ice in the Saint Lawrence Seaway off Matane in eastern Canada, news reports said.

Ice breakers had failed to clear a path for the two stricken ships, the CTMA Vacancier ferry with 300 people on board, and the Georges-Alexandre-Lebel, a cargo ship owned by Canada's COGEMA shipping company, Canadian television CTV reported Tuesday. A third ship was freed on Monday.

Passengers on the cruise ship were on their way to a one-week cross country ski tour on Monday when the ship became enmeshed in the ice, but the detour has dampened their holiday mood.