LONDON - ALWAYS concerned about staying in touch with her subjects, Queen Elizabeth II has invited Britain's royal family to follow her example and tighten the purse strings during the financial downturn.

The 82-year-old monarch has warned her grandsons Princes William, 26, and Harry, 24 - third and fourth in line to the throne - that all ostentatious signs of living it up would be inappropriate, according to newspapers.

ROCHESTER (New Hampshire) - UTILITY officials trying to recover from a devastating ice storm in the US northeast warned there could be more outages on Sunday as drooping trees and branches shed ice and snap back into their original positions, potentially taking out more power lines.

Roughly 800,000 customers were still without power in upstate New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine late Saturday. Utility officials in hardest-hit New Hampshire said power might not be restored to the region until Thursday or Friday, a week after the storm knocked down utility lines, poles and equipment, leaving 1.4 million in the dark.

SCHWERZENBACH (Switzerland) - TWICE a week, on average, in a nondescript building by the railroad tracks, a foreigner comes to die.

Most are terminally ill. Some are young and physically healthy except for a permanent disability or severe, debilitating mental disorder.