Washington  - Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain will make their first joint appearance of the 2008 election next month at a mega-church in California, the church announced Monday.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Obama and his Republican rival McCain have agreed to attend a religious forum at the 22,000-member Saddleback Church in Orange County on August 16, in what is likely to be the only meeting of the two White House hopefuls before the parties hold their nominating conventions later in the month.

Washington, July 21 : With many states introducing new voting technologies and millions of new voters heading to the polls this November, election officials and voting monitors fear the combination is likely to create long lines, stressed-out poll workers and late tallies on the election day.

As quoted in the New York Times, about half of all voters will use machines unlike the ones they used in the last presidential election, experts say, and more than half of the states will use new statewide databases to verify voter registration.

Washington, July 21: Indian and Pakistani students currently on a visit to the United States have said that they have a deep desire to know each other better, and believe that the wall of suspicion that prevails in both of their countries needs to be broken down sooner than later.

Keshav Pasari, a member of 14-member Indian team visiting Washington D. C., said that his interactions with his Pakistani counterparts had convinced him that “Books are not a reliable source of information when it comes to India-Pakistan relations.”

Washington, July 21: A new study has shown that traces of ancient DNA can survive more than two millennia underwater, which can shed light on what was shipped in particular forms of amphorae in ships in ancient days.

According to a report in The Times, amphorae were the workaday containers of the ancient world, used to ship everything from aromatic wine to smelly fish sauce around the Mediterranean and beyond.

Thousands have been found, in shipwrecks and in fragments at their destinations.

Washington, July 21: US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman (JCSC) Admiral Mike Mullen has warned that there is a “joining and a syndication of various extremist and terrorist groups” in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which could pose an internal threat to that country in the near future.

In an interview on Fox Television, Admiral Mullen, who recently visited Pakistan and Afghanistan, said there is “no firm evidence that Al Qaeda is shifting its fighters from Iraq to Afghanistan.”

He said that during his visit to the region, the whole issue of FATA and safe havens for foreign fighters of Al Qaeda and the Taliban had come up.

Washington, July 20 : Analysis of an extensive terrorism database housed at the University of Arkansas in the US has revealed patterns in activities of terrorists preparing for an attack, information that can be invaluable for law enforcement agencies seeking to prevent terrorist attacks.

The analysis was made by Brent L. Smith, director of the university''s Terrorism Research Center, along with colleagues Jackson Cothren and Paxton Roberts, and, Kelly Damphousse of the University of Oklahoma.

While law enforcement agencies know a great deal about the behavior of traditional criminals, until now little information has been available about how terrorists prepare for attacks.