Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reiterated today that peace talks won’t begin until violence ends, and Israel will not return to its ‘‘vulnerable’’ borders that existed before the 1967 Mideast war.

The husband of a woman killed in an IRA bomb has branded ‘‘offensive’’ a weekend commemoration in Dublin of republicans killed during the Troubles.

America was tonight put in a heightened state of security alert and the Emmy awards, television’s equivalent of the Oscars, were cancelled after the first strikes on Afghanistan.