COLOMBO - SRI Lanka said on Friday its troops had finally captured the unofficial capital of the Tamil Tigers, dealing a major blow to the rebel outfit and its decades-old struggle for a separate homeland.

'The national flag is now flying at Kilinochchi,' said ruling party spokesman Maithripala Sirisena, who is also minister of agriculture.

HONG KONG - TWO former members of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) were arrested while trying to rob the graves of the rich and famous in a Hong Kong cemetery, a local newspaper reported Friday.

Police confronted five men armed with knives, gloves, and fire lighters acting suspiciously in the Tseung Kwan O Chinese Permanent Cemetery in the early morning of Dec 30, a police spokesman told AFP.

BEIJING - A GROUP of scared parents whose babies suffered from melamine-tainted milk called on Friday for urgent research into the long-term effects of the chemical, as five others said they were detained by police here.

'The issue of adding melamine into food is a new problem, no one has scientific information or evidence,' Jiang Yalin, the 33-year-old mother of a baby who drunk milk made from powder tainted with melamine, said in Beijing.