New York  - A 50-square-kilometre chunk of the Canadian Arctic ice shelf has broken off and is floating freely in the Arctic Ocean, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported Wednesday.

The ice from the northern coast of Ellesmere Island about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole broke off in early August. It could be up to 4,500 years old and 40-metres thick, making its disappearance more worrisome than the sea ice that typically forms ice bergs, researchers said.

Washington  - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin lifted traffic blockades Wednesday for people returning from the hurricane evacuation, hours before the previously-set deadline of midnight.

City officials made the decision after traffic backed up on roads leading back to the city, a sort of reverse picture from Saturday and Sunday, when 1.9 million people fled the Gulf Coast, according to the Times Picayune newspaper online..

Berlin  - Germany's core industrial employers agreed Wednesday to a limited programme of labour buyouts for elderly workers, ending a point of friction before pay talks begin next month with the powerful IG Metall trade union.

The union had idled major car and electrical factories this year in pursuit of the "right" to early retirement, which runs counter to the German government policy of gradually raising the nation's retirement age from 65 to 67.

Islamabad  - Pakistan's army on Wednesday claimed it had killed some 30 militants in a security action in the restive Swat district of North-Western Frontier Province.

"Our ground troops which were backed by helicopter gunships started a search and cordon operation in the Koza Bandi area of the district that resulted into the killing of 30 miscreants," army spokesman Major Murad Khan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Around 35 militants were injured in the action and eight of them were arrested, he added.

Nairobi  - Pirates seized a French sailing boat off the Somali coast and are holding their occupants hostage, reports said Wednesday.

The French government set up a crisis team to deal with the incident and appealed to the abductors to free the hostages.

Piracy off Somalia's lawless coast has surged in the last three months.

Two Germans seized on a yacht were released recently apparently after a ransom was paid. In April, French commandoes stormed a luxury yacht and arrested six pirates after freeing their hostages.

Berlin