Washington, September 20 : NASA''s Swift satellite has found the most distant gamma-ray burst ever detected, designated GRB 080913, which arose from an exploding star 12.8 billion light-years away. 

"This is the most amazing burst Swift has seen," said the mission''s lead scientist Neil Gehrels at NASA''s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "It''s coming to us from near the edge of the visible universe," he added.

Because light moves at finite speed, looking farther into the universe means looking back in time.

GRB 080913''s "lookback time" reveals that the burst occurred less than 825 million years after the universe began.

Peshawar, Sep 20 : Increasing home-grown militancy, mounting American frustration at the continued Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and militant ‘safe havens’ in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas will dominate President Asif Ali Zardari’s maiden address to the joint session of parliament in Islamabad today.

New York, Sept. 20: Republican presidential candidate John McCain has launched another broadside against Democratic rival Barack Obama.

Using his starkest language to date in the run-up to the November 4 presidential poll, McCain on Friday repeatedly asked the American voter to make a choice between “Country First” or “Obama First”

Lahore, Sep 20: A long-delayed plan to send dozens of US military advisers to Pakistan to train the Pakistani Army in counter-insurgency could begin in a matter of weeks on a training base north of Peshawar under a new agreement.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen as saying that the US and Pakistan had cleared the remaining obstacles to the arrival of the advisers.

Washington has been urging the Pakistani military to accept the training team for months, the report said. However, Pakistan has resisted such advice, and asked for additional weaponry and equipment that the paper said “some US officials believe is best suited for its standoff with regional rival India”.

Washington - The United States on Friday condemned violence against Christians in India that has escalated in recent weeks, leaving about 20 dead and thousands homeless.

"We urge all parties to refrain from violence and urge government officials to protect religious freedom throughout India and thus preserve India's longstanding tradition of religious tolerance," Thomas Hanford, ambassador at large for international religious freedom, said in Washington at the annual release of the State Department's International Religious Freedom Report.

New Delhi, Sept 20: Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh will convene a meeting of all members of the Planning Commission here today to discuss the integrated energy policy and take stock of the country''s nuclear energy programme.

The meeting comes ahead of Dr. Singh’s U. S. visit, to which he will leave on Monday to attend the meeting of the 63rd session of UN General Assembly in New York.