Amsterdam, Jan 12 - Miep Gies, the woman who preserved the diary of Anne Frank after Nazis seized the child from her hiding place in the Netherlands, has died, her website said.

Gies was 100 years old. She died Monday night.  (dpa)

Amsterdam - An asteroid between the planets Mars and Jupiter on Sunday became known as Miep Gies, in honour of the Dutch woman who preserved the diary of Anne Frank that later became an international bestseller.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) said it wanted to draw attention to the steadfast courage of the now 100-year-old last surviving helper of the Frank family who hid in a building behind a house in Amsterdam during World War II.

London, Aug 14 : Playwright David Mamet plans to write a script for a film on Holocaust victim Anne Frank, it has emerged.

Walt Disney announced that his screenplay would pick up information from Frank''s diary and a Pulitzer-winning 1950s play by husband and wife team Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich.

The diary of the Jew woman reports the horrors of belonging to her religion in Nazi-occupied Holland.

Amsterdam - Arson was the cause of the fire that destroyed the barracks where Anne Frank worked during her imprisonment in a Dutch concentration camp during World War II, Dutch police said on Wednesday.

Police said their investigation had ruled out any technical cause for Sunday's fire that virtually destroyed the barracks where Anne Frank, had worked in 1944. No suspects of the fire have yet been detained.

Amsterdam - Police in the Netherlands were on Monday investigating the cause of a fire that destroyed the barracks that housed Anne Frank in the former concentration camp of Westerbork during the Holocaust.

The current owner of the barracks, Jan Egges, told journalists that he suspects arson as "there was nothing in the shed that could have caused the fire" that started Sunday. Officials from the fire brigade said the barracks had housed only agricultural machinery.

Amsterdam  - Had it not been for her own mother and Edith Frank (the mother of Anne Frank), Frieda Menco-Brommet might not have survived Auschwitz.

The former radio journalist, now 83 and living in Amsterdam, told the German Press Agency dpa shortly before the Dutch commemoration of Anne Frank's 80th birthday on June 12 that her mother and Anne's mother searched for food together in Auschwitz.

The two women dug a hole in a barracks where they hid the food they subsequently gave their daughters, she said.

Amsterdam  - Pupils of an Amsterdam elementary school on Thursday received the first copy of a so-called transfer diary marking the start of the memorial year of Anne Frank's 80 birthday on June 12.

The diary of the Jewish teenager, published as "The Secret Annex" in 1947, is one of the most famous documents recounting the Nazi persecution of the Jews during World War II.

To commemorate Anne Frank upcoming 80th birthday, the Dutch Anne Frank Foundation launched a national diary writing competition among Dutch elementary schools.