New York, Nov 6: US President-elect Barrack Obama's wife, Michelle, was criticised as well as praised for the dress she wore on election night.

She was wearing a red-and-black sheath by Narciso Rodriguez when she took to the stage at Grant Park in Chicago on November 4.

While some said that her dress was an eye-catching statement, others called it an eyesore.

"I voted for Obama, but I didn''t vote for that dress," the New York Times quoted Jessica Bettencourt, a homemaker and mother of three in Mequon, Wisc., as saying.

Washington, Nov 6 : A new study by scientists has determined that a type of rock found at or near the surface in the Oman and other areas around the world could be harnessed to soak up huge quantities of globe-warming carbon dioxide (CO2).

Geologist Peter Kelemen and geochemist Juerg Matter, both from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, made the discovery during field work in the Omani desert, where they have worked for years.

Washington, Nov 6: Noticing the continued decline in violence in Iraq, the US has reportedly decided to reduce its troops’ presence in the country to 14 combat brigades this month.

This reduction in US troops would be at least two months in advance as originally planned.

US Military officials said two brigades from the 101st Airborne Division will leave Iraq this month and only one will be replaced. A brigade is roughly 3500 soldiers.

Washington, November 6 : A PhD student at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research has made a significant advance towards understanding exactly how insulin prompts fat and muscle cells to absorb glucose, a problem that has puzzled researchers for over 50 years.

"Since the 1920s, when Banting and Best discovered insulin, scientists have been battling to discover how it actually works," said Professor David James, head of Garvan''s Diabetes Program.

"Then along comes Freddy Yip, doing his PhD, who unveils a completely novel action of insulin, one which we believe plays a fundamental role in glucose uptake, a process that is defective in Type 2 diabetes," he added.

Washington, Nov 6: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has dismissed reports that she is a ‘diva’, insisting that she never made unreasonable demands on the McCain campaign during her time as a vice presidential nominee.

Speaking to TV reporters in Phoenix, Palin said that rumours of tension between her and Republican nominee John McCain and members of his staff were ‘absolutely false.’

Washington, Nov 6 : Women who have a history of migraine headaches are at a significantly lower risk of breast cancer, a new study has found.

The findings have been reported in the November issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention by Christopher I. Li, M. D., Ph. D., and colleagues at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

"We found that, overall, women who had a history of migraines had a 30 percent lower risk of breast cancer compared to women who did not have a history of such headaches," said Li, a breast-cancer epidemiologist and associate member of the Hutchinson Center''s Public Health Sciences Division.