LOS ANGELES: The Brentwood townhouse where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered has a buyer. The infamous property where the victims' butchered bodies were found outside went for its $595,000 asking price (#396,000) to a buyer who plans to make it difficult to recognise, the Los Angeles Times reported.

O J Simpson, Ms Simpson's ex-husband, was acquitted of the murders in criminal court and is currently on trial in a wrongful death lawsuit.

Letter-bomb alert

VIENNA: Austrians were warned to look out for letter-bombs in the Christmas mail, as the Interior Ministry fears a resurgence of a suspected neo-Nazi campaign. Neo-Nazis are suspected to have been behind more than 20 letter-bombs directed against foreigners and people linked to immigrant or refugee issues since 1993.

Smoking case

BOSTON: Four leading US tobacco companies will tomorrow challenge a law scheduled to take effect next summer which would make Massachusetts the first US state to require tobacco firms to disclose their ingredients.

Kidnap protest

BOGOTA: Up to 20,000 demonstrators marched through Bogota yesterday, calling for an end to the crime wave that has turned Colombia into the kidnap capital of the world. At least 1100 people have been abducted this year - at least three a day - mostly by rebels seeking ransoms.

Husband owns up

ROME: A 28-year-old Italian confessed to police that he poured petrol over a priest and set him ablaze because he blamed him for his failed marriage. Pierfrancesco Caratelli was charged with attempted murder for last Sunday's attack in church on Father Mario Torregrossa. The priest is in serious condition with 40% burns, but has forgiven his attacker from his hospital bed.

Play panned

BERLIN: Critics have panned as banal and tasteless a play dramatising the intimate life of Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler's lover of 16 years. Eva, Hitlers Geliebte (Eva, Hitler's Mistress), which opened to loud boos, presents a controversially sympathetic portrait of Germany's ``first lady'' during the Nazi Third Reich.

Mafioso dies

MILAN: The jailed right-hand man of Mafia godfather Salvatore ``Toto'' Riina has hanged himself in a Milan prison. Giacomo Gambino, 55, known as ``the bald one'', was still alive when found hanging by a sheet in his cell at San Vittore jail but died shortly afterwards. Gambino, jailed in 1994 for murder, drug dealing, and possession of explosives, had spent time in the hospital wing, fearing he had a tumour.

Carey visits

VATICAN CITY: The Archbishop of Canterbury will tomorrow be making his first official visit to the Pope. His three-day visit aims to keep alive the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue, despite differences on issues such as women priests and papal authority.