Today's news

Pepys book wins Whitbread prize
Claire Tomalin has won the 2002 Whitbread book of the year award for her biography Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self , beating her husband Michael Frayn for the £25,000 prize.
(Financial Times, Guardian, Times, Daily Telegraph, Independent)

Bangkok exams off to a shaky start
Fifty-eight students in Bangkok were arrested for allegedly hiding pagers in their underwear to cheat in an exam, Thai police said yesterday. Police said the pagers of students at the Ramkhamheang University in Bangkok were set to vibrate with answers to multiple-choice questions. Four teachers were also arrested.
(Guardian)

The new face of student protest
Star in the making Will Straw, president of the Oxford Union, and thorn in the side of New Labour, profiled.
(Independent)

Archaeologists get kicks from ancient Route 66
Scientists from the University of Chicago have discovered the ancient Mesopotamian equivalent of Route 66 buried deep beneath the Iraqi desert, using images captured by spy satellites in the 1960s and 1970s. The intricate network of roadways criss-crossing Syria and northern Iraq, and the big settlements and towns they once connected, have been hidden from view for between 4,000 and 5,000 years.
(Times)

Chips cleared in cancer scare
People who eat plenty of crisps, chips and other fried food face no greater risk of cancer, even though such foods contain acrylamide, a possible carcinogen, a study by scientists from Harvard and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden has found.
(Times, Daily Telegraph)