How can I get path aliases arguments from a URL in a template? I have a content type which has an automatic path alias to latest-news/[title] (e.g. latest-news/example-news-title).

I need to get the first part of the path alias in my page.tpl.php file, but when I use arg(0) I am given node and not latest-news.

How can I get the first part of an aliases URL in a page template?
You can use function drupal_get_path_alias() to get the path alias, then strstr() to get the first component of the path, like so.

echo strstr(drupal_get_path_alias(), '/', TRUE);