Washington  - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Thursday eliminated 22,000 part-time and temporary government jobs to save cash as the state faces a multi-billion-dollar deficit.

He also ordered that 200,000 state workers receive the federal minimum wage until the 2008-2009 state budget is approved.

"Today I am exercising my executive authority to avoid a full- blown crisis and keep our state moving forward," Schwarzenegger said.

Washington - The Phoenix Mars mission, which has spent the last two months examining the red planet for evidence that it could support life, will be extended through September, NASA scientists said Thursday.

Phoenix landed on Mars May 25 and its mission was to last three months. Instead the US space agency will spend another 2 million dollars for a few extra weeks of research, chief scientist Michael Meyer said in a press conference from Tucson, Arizona.

Washington  - A passenger was repeatedly stabbed and then beheaded on a Greyhound Canada bus as horrified travellers watched helplessly, a witness told media Thursday.

The victim was sleeping with his head against the window, when he was attacked by the man sitting beside him.

"There was a blood-curdling scream. I was just reading my book, and all of a sudden I heard it," Garnet Caton, who was sitting in front of the two men, told CNN.

Washington  - An alligator severed an 11-year-old boy's arm, when the animal attacked him in a pond in the southern US state of Louisiana, the Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans reported Thursday.

The 226-kilogramme, 3.3-metre animal bit off Devin Funck's left arm at the shoulder on Wednesday.

"It was a miracle that the boy resurfaced, and it was the miracle of all miracles that the gator did not come back a second time as the boy lay in the water," Sheriff Jack Strain told the newspaper.

Two of the boy's friends witnessed the attack and ran for help.

Washington  - Seven passengers died when a small

Washington, July 31: Researchers from Tel Aviv University (TAU) in Israel have devised a new solution to the inefficiency of current irrigation methods, by genetically modifying plants’ root systems to improve their ability to find the water essential to their survival.

Due to current irrigation methods, more irrigated water evaporates than reaches the roots of crops, amounting to an enormous waste of water and energy.

“Improving water uptake by irrigated crops is very important,” said Professor Amram Eshel, the study’s co-researcher from Tel Aviv University’s Plant Sciences Department.