NEW YORK: The Pulitzer Prize Board bestowed its prestigious journalism awards on Monday, with the award for public service going to the Washington Post for its series on reckless gunplay by city police officers. The New York Times won two of the prizes -- one for national reporting and one for commentary -- that are awarded annually on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University in New York. The national reporting prize went to the Times staff, in particular reporter Jeff Gerth, for a series of articles that disclosed the corporate sales of US technology to China. Times columnist Maureen Dowd won the commentary prize for her ``fresh and insightful'' columns on the impact of President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Israel remembers Holocaust victims

JERUSALEM: Sirens sounded at 10 am local time (12.30 pm IST) and Israel came to a two-minute standstill on Tuesday as the country honouredthe memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II. Israelis stood in silence on the sidewalks while the sirens sounded, and drivers stood next to their cars, many at attention and with heads bowed. The sirens were immediately followed by a wreath-laying ceremony at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

Army ruler in Niger reappoints civilian PM

NIAMY: Niger's new military ruler, Major Daouda Mallam Wanke, has reappointed Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki, the national radio announced on Tuesday. Wanke, 49, who took over after President Ibrahim Bare Mainassara was assassinated last Friday, ``reappointed, for the transitional period, Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki,'' it said, quoting from a communique issued by the ruling National Reconciliation Council. Wanke, head of the presidential guard which gunned down Mainassara, was named head of state on Sunday, for a declared transition period of nine months.