New York : Inhaling fumes while micro waving popcorn appear to cause harm, a leading lung expert has warned.
The food-flavouring fumes contain a butter-flavour chemical called diacetyl used by some of the companies who produce microwave popcorn. This chemical when inhaled appears to cause this harm, the expert said.

New York: Fairbank Farms, a U.S. ground beef producer has recalled beef patties sold to Shaw’s Supermarkets in New England due to concerns about bacterial contamination.

The patties could have been bought by consumers between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. in that area, said Fairbank Farms.

New York, Sept 14: "High School Musical" star, Vanessa Hudgens, has another embarrassment to add to her kitty after more pictures of her hit the Internet.

The actress, who was earlier caught up in a scandal over her nude pictures that were posted on the Internet, was trying run away from the limelight.

However, she won’t been able to do so for long, for in the new photographs, she is once again caught in compromising positions.

Apparently, one of the pics shows Hudgens engaged in girl-on-girl kissing.

New York, Sep 14: Actor Colin Farrell has shown that he is a big-hearted man by taking a homeless man on a shopping spree.

The Irish actor splashed 2,100 dollars helping the homeless man to acquire new clothes and outdoor gear, reports the New York Post.

Farrell took the heart-warming decision while promoting "Cassandra's Dream" with co-star Ewan McGregor and director Woody Allen in Toronto.

The actor was informed by the man begging outside the Hotel Inter-Continental, "It's my 55th birthday tomorrow."

New York, Sept 14:  Roger Federer is reportedly getting a little help in the fashion department from none other than Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Wintour, who introduced the tennis ace to the LA Fashion Week, has reportedly been sending clothes from some of the best fashion designers to Federer.

"Anna sends stuff to Federer with little notes that say 'This would look great on you,'" the New York Post quoted a source, as saying.

New York, Sep 18: It seems that rather than throwing punches at public events, rocker Kid Rock should utilize his energy in watching his girlfriend, model May Anderson.

Latest reports have claimed that while Rock was fighting with Tommy Lee at the VMAs on Sep 9, Anderson was trying to romance other men.

According to sources, May was cozying up to Calvin Klein underwear model and Bloody Social rocker Jamie Burke in New York.

New York, Sept 18: Anyone would jump at a chance to be on Oprah Winfrey’s show, but surprisingly, Rosie O'Donnell has declined the talk show host’s offer.
 
Winfrey invited O'Donnell on her show to discuss the comedienne’s latest book ‘Celebrity Detox’, which lambastes Barbara Walters, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Donald Trump and others.
 
A source said that instead, O'Donnell is doing an interview with Diane Sawyer.
 
“She's doing an interview with Diane Sawyer instead,” the New York Post quoted a source, as saying.
 

New York, September 19 : Pop singer Michael Jackson’s children were disguised in wigs and baseball caps when he took them to see ‘The Long King’ at the Minskoff Theatre on Sunday.

"All of a sudden, Michael Jackson appears with his three kids - who all had wigs and baseball caps on," the New York Post quoted Aspen magazine fashion editor Sue Hostetler as saying.

Hostetler was backstage at the time of Jackson’s entry with his kids.

She revealed that the singer introduced his children as Paris, Prince and Blanket to the cast.

New York, Sep 19 : Melanie Brown reportedly left her 2-month-old daughter with her cleaner for four days when she eloped with Stephen Belafonte.

The Spice Girl’s former housekeeper, Tonia Lamere claims that the singer left young Angel Iris with her while she fled to Sin City with Belafonte.

"One evening of baby-sitting turned into four days!" the New York Daily News quoted Tonia, as telling Star magazine.

"The child was sick, there was no nanny, and when Mel called, she never even asked about the baby,” she added.

New York, Sept 19: A Canadian celebrity chef has given a insight into the diva act that celebs like Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado put up when they visited the Rain restaurant in Toronto, Canada recently.

Chef Guy Rubino revealed that after reserving a table for 10, Furtado showed up late and brought in five extra people.

Rubino also claimed that the singer objected to the pre-fixe type menu and was rude to him.

He added that her manager ordered them to prepare individual dishes.

New York, Sept 20 : Nicole Kidman and hubby Keith Urban are packing up and moving out of their Nashville home.

Kidman and her country musician hubby have put their four-bedroom, five-bath house on sale for the sum of 2.5 million dollars.

The 7,000-square-foot mansion, in a ritzy and gated section of Nashville, also comes with its very own gym, pool and spa.

A friend of the couple revealed that Nicole and Keith had decided to put their place on sale because they wanted to find a house that was “theirs”.

Washington, Sept 20 : It seems that rehabbing actress Lindsay Lohan is planning to pen a post-rehab memoir.

The ‘Mean Girls’ star, who is undergoing treatment in Cirque Lodge facility in Utah, will recount her addiction to alcohol and drugs in the tome.

A source said that the 21-year-old has been reading memoirs written by others and wants to put down her experiences in the form of a book.

“She found solace in reading memoirs of others who suffered to overcome their addictions, and she wants to similarly put her experiences out there," Contactmusic quoted the source, as saying.

New York, Sept.20 : New York City officials have reportedly pulled out all stops to prevent The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from laying a wreath at Ground Zero during his visit here next week.

New York Police Department, Secret Service and Port Authority officials are reported to have told the Iranian Mission that no one is allowed in the pit because it's a live construction site and dangerous. They said that if a wreath was to be laid, it could be "shoved" from a distance.

New York: According to a new study carried out by the US researchers revealed that diets, which are high in starchy carbohydrates not only inflate waists but also lead to fatty liver that raises the chance of swelling that can cause hepatitis and even death.

West Nile virus has been widely studied after it affected New York City for the first time in 1999. But, there is still little known about how the ecosystem of mosquito-borne sicknesses differs between urban and rustic domains.

John Drake, Assistant professor at the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology expects to throw light on these differences with a recently honored $578,619 grant from the National Science Foundation.

New York: Credit Suisse has maintained neutral rating for Tektronix Inc (TEK). As per the view of Technical Analyst W Stein, the target price for Tektronix Inc. is now $33. He further added that the less business from Japan in the company's summer orders list will impact the sales in coming quarters and will have negative effect on profits.

The company has reported higher than expected revenues for F1Q08. The EPS for the current results is also marginally above market estimates. However, the guidance for F2Q08 is lower than market expectations.

New York: P Chidambaram, Indian finance minister stated that fiscal deficit will be lowered to below 3% by the coming year (2008). This is the gap between the government’s spending and grosses from sources excluding extra borrowing.

New York, Sept.26 : In an historic effort to cut maternal and child deaths, a global coalition of governments and organizations will launch a major advocacy drive today entitled Deliver Now for Women + Children.

The launch will take place at public rallies in the city center and the Bronx. Women leaders of the United Nations will also hold a special discussion Saving 77 Million by 2015: Advancing the Health of Women and Children.

New York: You could be hurting your liver, if your treatment for a hangover involves taking stacks of painkillers, and chasing it with mugs of coffee. Yes, this is true.

A new study by US researchers has revealed that caffeine can respond with the painkillers to triple the levels of noxious toxins in your blood and give rise to liver damage.

New York: Palm Inc has launched its smallest smartphone, making its initial entry into the low end phone market in a bid to perk up growth plans, and provide a cheesier option to Apple Inc’s iPhone.

For its new “Centro,” a smaller and lighter edition of its Treo smartphone, Palm has determined the price of just $100 to attract more and more customers. Sprint Nextel Corp will sell ‘Centro’ for the rest of the year in the United States.

New York, Oct 5 : Secret Service agents guarding US President George Bush’s daughter Jenna were left red-faced after they locked themselves out of their car.

The agents had escorted Jenna Bush into the CBS studios on 59th and Fifth for an interview on 'The Early Show'.

It was only when they returned to the car that they realised that they had locked the keys inside the vehicle.

"They had escorted Jenna into the CBS studios on 59th and Fifth for an interview on 'The Early Show' and returned to find they'd left the keys inside," the New York Post quoted a source, saying.

To make matters worse, CBS cameramen made use of a golden opportunity when they began shooting the agents as they waited for a spare key.

New York Oct 9 : If anyone has to be thanked for the long running Sherlock Holmes series, it is author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s mum, a new book on the writer-physician has revealed.

The tome ‘Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters,” that will hit bookshelves next month has some of the letters Doyle wrote to his mother.

In one such letters, the Scottish writer told his mum that he wanted to kill-off the detective.

However, his mother vehemently opposed his decision and asked him to continue writing more crime stories based on the brilliant London-based detective.

New York, October 15 : Former US President Bill Clinton had sent a “racially insensitive” postcard to his grandmother Edith Cassidy in 1966, which showed a black youth eagerly polishing a gigantic watermelon.

He was just a 19-year-old sophomore at Georgetown University at that time.

"Dear Mammaw, Thought I would send you one of your cards just to prove I'm using them! My tests are over and I'm just starting the second term. Hope you are well and happy . . . Love, Bill," the New York Post quoted him as writing in the postcard.

Online auction house rrauction.com will sell the card, entitled ‘Hope, Arkansas - Home of the World's Largest Watermelon’, on Wednesday.

New York, Oct.16 : Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton says that she gets her inspiration from words former U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt echoed.

"She said, 'You know, if you're going to be involved in politics you have to grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros," Clinton told an audience of female political activists.

"So occasionally, I'll be sitting somewhere and I'll be listening to someone perhaps not saying the kindest things about me. And I'll look down at my hand and I'll sort of pinch my skin to make sure it still has the requisite thickness I know Eleanor Roosevelt expects me to have," the New York Daily News quoted her, as saying.

New York, Oct.22 : The New York Police Department (NYPD) has prepared a confidential report that chronicles all the wrongdoings of its personnel, including using drugs, stealing property - even from the dead - and committing other acts of corruption and extorting sex from female suspects.

According to the New York Post, the tawdry tales include stories of cops not only betraying their badges, but also their brother and sister officers in blue.

New York, Oct 23 : The hours between 9 to 5 are getting lighter and jovial by the day, with many companies making a conscious effort to incorporate the ‘fun’ element in their everyday work routine.

‘Fun’ has become the buzzword, as some companies have looked for innovative ways to lighten up their offices and keep employees happy.

For instance, in the Manhattan offices of the search engine Hakia.com, employees can express themselves on blank canvases that hang on the walls. At the offices of Motley Fool, a financial Web site, workers can unwind through a couple of networked Xboxes hooked up to a 5-foot plasma screen in a dedicated game room.

New York, October 23 : A private detective who worked for O. J. Simpson has alleged that the former American football star once hired high-profile Los Angeles private investigator Anthony Pellicano to bug and harass his late ex-wife Nicole Brown.

"I know for a fact that Nicole Brown Simpson was a victim of stalking and that her cars and residence had been wiretapped," the New York Daily News quoted Bill Pavelic, the lead investigator for Simpson's defense team during his criminal trial for the murders of Nicole and Ron Goldman, as saying.

New York, Oct 26 : Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton celebrated her 60th birthday with an array of praises from none other than her husband and former US President Bill Clinton.

Hillary’s 60th birthday bash, that included performances from comedian Billy Crystal and rockers Elvis Costello and the Wallflowers, also saw her husband go gaga over her.

Addressing the supporters, who raised more than 1.5 million dollars with the event, Clinton noted that his wife was “still looking, I think, very beautiful” at 60 and said she was in the presidential contest for the right reasons.

New York, Oct.27 : Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, it appears, was more focused on her presidential dreams than with her husband’s sexual dalliances in and outside the White House between 1992 and 2000.

According to the book “For Love of Politics” authored by Sally Bedell Smith, when Hillary got wind of Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, her first reaction was that “he couldn't be that insane."

The statement itself, according to Smith, is a pointer to Hillary’s thought process, a process that was less motivated by emotion and more by ambition and of having a place in history by becoming America’s first female president.

New York, Nov 2 : Some of New York’s famous and scenic spots like the Empire State Building, Times Square and George Washington Bridge are among the sites often chosen by the tourists to commit suicide.

According to a new study, more than one in 10 people who kill themselves in Manhattan are "suicide tourists," and their deaths cluster around the city’s well-known places.

"I don't think any of us were aware or even conscious of thinking of suicide among tourists, that people would travel to a city specifically for that," said study author David Vlahov of the New York Academy of Medicine.

New York, Nov. 8 : An Indonesian maid who was allegedly kept enslaved in a Long Island mansion by her Indian American employers managed to smuggle out a desperate letter to her kids begging them to save her by hiring a "witch doctor" to curse her tormentor.

"Please look for a witch doctor to cast a spell. The spell must not be directed at me. This spell is to be cast to the employer. I need help. Please help a thousand times," The New York Daily News quoted Samirah, 51, as saying in her letter.

Samirah's July 2006 letter was read out in court on Wednesday at the trial of Varsha Sabhnani and her husband, Mahender, millionaires who are charged with holding two Indonesian servants against their will for years.

New York, November 12: Actress Katie Holmes was given VIP treatment even when she participated in a marathon with the thousands of other runners last Sunday.

New York Road Runners Club spokeswoman Sarah Hunninghacke has revealed that the actress entered the race through the 90,000-entry lottery.

Sarah also revealed that Holmes’ representatives asked her to accommodate the actress at a time when the date of race was “very close”.

“We offer VIP positions to people who have compelling stories who do not get in through the lottery . .. not necessarily celebrities, " the New York Post quoted her as telling Access Hollywood.

New York, Nov 14: Lawyers of New York staged a protest here, expressing solidarity with lawyers and judges in Pakistan.

New York, Nov 14 : Controversial publisher Judith Regan has filed a 100-million-dollar suit against her former bosses at HarperCollins and News Corp alleging them of launching a smear campaign against her for protecting former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani's presidential bid.

In a 70-page complaint, she claims that a News Corp. executive had asked her to withhold damaging information about former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, which could sabotage Giuliani's campaign.

The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, said a News Corp. boss advised Regan not to give up any "relevant documents" that could aid the government's investigation into Kerik.

New York, Nov 18: If you want your kids to be healthy and fit, teach them the basic etiquettes of saying, "thank you,” says a new study.

According to psychologists at the University of California and University of Miami, youngsters who took part in daily gratitude exercises reported higher levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy.

The researchers also reported that the children were also more likely to help someone than members of a control group who focused on daily hassles.

Sue Chain, a mother of two kids, started a family tradition at Thanksgiving in which everyone around the table takes a turn reflecting on what they're most thankful for over the past year.

New York, Nov. 19 : Six weeks ago, one time Manhattan cook Amarjit Singh saved psychologist Susan Barron's life by staving off a stabber, but today he is without a job, and desparately needs help.

Singh never thought the mugging incident would alter his life, but it has.

"Now it's a very different life. Before, I worked and I was happy. Now I stay at home all the time, thinking. I'm going crazy. I've no money, no nothing. I want anybody to help me, " the New York Daily News quoted 56-year-old Singh, as saying.

Singh was the first target of 38-year-old Lee Coleman, who went on a bloody rampage along New York's Second Avenue on October 6.

ICICI Bank, the Second largest bank in India is ready to setup a branch in New York to offer wholesale banking services and trade financing. The presence of ICICI Bank in New York will be beneficial for Indian companies having subsidiaries in the United States. ICICI has got approval from US Federal Reserve and the branch will be operational within few weeks.

ICICI Bank is already providing select services in Russia, United Kingdom, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Canada.
Mr. KV Kamath, CEO, ICICI Bank said, "We already have got approval from the US regulator, it will come up in few weeks."

New York, Nov 21: Disney's Hannah Montana doll, based on the popular TV series, has emerged as the most wanted toy among young girls.

The doll has overtaken Barbie and Bratz as the most desired toy for young girls.

Hannah Montana is an American Emmy Award-nominated teen television series focusing on Miley Stewart (played by Miley Cyrus), who lives a double life as an average teenage girl at school during the day and a famous pop singer at night, concealing her real identity from the public other than her close friends and family.

New York, Nov 23: The Human Rights Watch has demanded that the Pakistan Government should immediately release deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, his family members and other judges held under house arrest since November 3.

The New York-based rights watchdog decried President Bush’s support of Musharraf, saying "Washington should suspend further dealings with him and the army until he releases the judges, restores them to office, and reverses the state of emergency."

The watchdog noted that Chaudhry and his family had not been allowed out of their home in Islamabad’s Judges’ Colony.

New York, Nov 24 : Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis has accused guards at the Grady County Law Enforcement Center of abusing him during his stay at the Oklahoma prison facility.

Francis was held at the jail from May 17 to June 4 while being moved from a Florida jail to a federal facility in Reno, Nev., where he is awaiting trial next year on a tax evasion charge.

The 34-year-old has claimed that the guards denied him food and blankets and also threatened to strap him naked to a chair for 48 hours.

He also said that the people who tortured him also killed a 14-year-old boy.

New York: Fortune, a global business magazine, has named Rattan Tata, India’s top business leader, as one of the top 25 most influential business leaders together with steel magnate L N Mittal and Pepsi Co's Indra Nooyi

The ranking made by ‘Fortune’ has closely followed a list by another global business publication Forbes, which was released earlier this month.

Forbes has named Mr. Mittal as India’s richest person and placed him on the first position, while Ambani brothers were placed on second and third positions respectively. Forbes does not mention Ratan Tata’s name in the list.

New York, Dec 8: Hawkins, the gunman who went on a shooting rampage in a US shopping mall on Wednesday afternoon killing eight people before shooting himself, said in a suicide note that he was “just snapped, ” adding that he did not want to “be a burden on the ones that I care for my entire life. ”

"I know everyone will remember me as some sort of monster but please understand that I just don't want to be a burden on the ones that I care for my entire life, " he said in the suicide note released on Friday.

"I just want to take a few pieces of (expletive) with me, " the New York Post quoted the letter, as saying, adding that that it combined love for his friends and family with contempt for his random victims.

New York, Dec 17: Pete Doherty is encashing money from his stormy romance with Kate Moss, say reports.

The junkie rocker is reportedly all set to sign off on a six-figure deal to 'Kiss and Tell' about his former relationship with the supermodel for a television documentary.

"We are in talks with Pete Doherty and are finalizing a deal for the documentary and there is a production company in place ready to start filming, " New York Post quoted a source close to ITV2, as saying.

The deal will give Doherty a share of the film's worldwide rights and he could rake in more than a million dollars on sales alone.

In return, he has to tell all about the notoriously troubled relationship that began back in January 2005.

New York: Matt Fulgieri’s wedding’s scheduling saved his life. The sales manager, Rick Bellando, of a Long Island banquet hall donated his kidney to Fulgieri, one of his former customers.    

On Nov. 6, Fulgiri, 42, successfully received the kidney transplant from Bellando, 42.

When Fulgieri was booking his wedding in 2002 at the Oheka Castle in Huntington, he met Bellando and both become friends.

Fulgeiri was suffering from polycystic kidney disease, a genetic disorder which also caused death of his mother, grandmother and brother. He needed a kidney to survive by year’s end. Bellando served as a perfect donor and saved Fulgieri’s life.

“I’m so thankful,” said Fulgeiri expressing his gratitude towards Bellando.

New York, Dec. 29: The New York Police Department has boosted security across the city Thursday in response to Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

Security was increased at several "points of interest, " including Pakistani businesses and neighborhoods, The New York Daily News quoted a police official, as saying.

Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said additional cops also were placed at five Pakistani banks and two airline offices, as well as the Pakistani Consulate on E. 65th St.

New York, Dec 28: Leading publisher HarperCollins has hastened the release date of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's new book, which is a political treatise-cum-memoir, following her assassination on Thursday.

After receiving the manuscript of “Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West,” HarperCollins decided to move it quickly to get it on the shelves by February, the Dawn reported.

HarperCollins had signed up the book for an estimated advance of 75,000 dollars just ahead of her return to Pakistan in October after eight years of self-imposed exile.

Washington/New York/Islamabad, Jan. 7: The recent assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the inability of the caretaker government in that country to stop terror tactics in the tribal badlands, may convince U. S. President George W. Bush to consider expanding the covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the area, the New York Times reports.

According to an article contributed to the paper by Carlotta Gall in Islamabad and David Rohde in New York, American security advisers and the military have reportedly advised President Bush to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in Pakistan's tribal areas.

New York, Jan 26: The grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Arun Gandhi, has resigned from a peace institute he founded here after condemnation of his reported comments calling Israel and Jews "the biggest players" in a global culture of violence.

In his resignation letter to the board of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Non-Violence, Arun Gandhi wrote that his January 7 essay posted on an online forum "was couched in language that was hurtful and contrary to the principles of non-violence.

New York, Jan 28: US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama was hailed as the next J. F. K. by the late President’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy.

The praise and support comes after Obama’s landslide victory in the South Carolina primary election.

Writing in a New York Times Op-Ed, Caroline, who has conventionally steered clear of politics, declared that Obama is the most inspirational leader since her father, John F Kennedy.

New York, Feb 2: A leading US newspaper says that “successfully moving Pakistan from military rule to civilian-run democracy is essential to combating extremism,” and adds that President Pervez Musharraf can play a major role in this regard.

New York, Feb 4: Former US President Bill Clinton’s security detail played havoc on kitchen staff’s nerves when he arrived at Jim Brown’s Amer-I-can dinner at Canal restaurant in Arizona.

The former US Prez charmed throngs of onlookers inside and outside the restaurant when he turned up at the restaurant after a speaking engagement.

However according to the New York Post, the chefs at the eatery were none to please with his security detail.

New York, Feb. 9: Sharia laws are being applied in secret in Muslim communities across the United Kingdom in clear defiance of the country's legal system, the Daily Express reports.

According to the paper, Islamic scholars sit in mosques, converted living rooms and even a former pub to issue fatwas, or rulings, and adds that they have decided thousands of cases over the last 25 years.

This fresh development assumes significance in the wake of the condemnation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, statement calling for an “accommodation” of some Islamic legal codes within the British legal system.

New York, Feb. 20 : The results of the February 18 elections in Pakistan are much better than what the United States could have hoped for, and more than President Bush deserved after over investing in President Pervez Musharraf and his anti-democratic excesses, a New York Times editorial has said.

The White House has long insisted that there was no choice but to look the other way as Musharraf jailed journalists and lawyers, dismissed the Supreme Court and declared emergency rule.

New York, Feb 26: Pakistan People's Party Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari has said that he would seek a working relationship with President Pervez Musharraf since their coalition government may not able to impeach him.

"The ground reality is that we do not have a two-thirds majority in the Parliament" required for a successful impeachment, Zardari said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal (ESJ).

"Our main objective is to work for the smooth transition to the democracy," he added.

New York, February 28 : Barack Obama has revealed that his daughters are huge fans of American pop rock band ‘The Jonas Brothers’.

The politician, who is a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 U. S. presidential election, said that he did not have any idea as to what the three-brother band was until he discovered their posters with his 15-year-old daughter Malia.

“I didn’t know who these guys were, and I come home one day and Malia has all these prepubescent boys on her wall,” the New York Post quoted him as telling the Morning Show host Kidd Kraddick.

New York, Mar 1 : The gun that was used to kill ex-US President John F. Kennedy’s assassin is set to be a part of an auction, which is being touted as the greatest postwar collection of pop culture ever assembled.

Other items to go under the hammer include the hat belonging to the Wicked Witch of the West in 'The Wizard of Oz’, Madonna's ‘Like a Virgin’ wedding dress, a whip and the Holy Grail from ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.’

The strange amalgam, worth at least 5 million dollars, has been put together by a New Jersey collector.

While the auction includes astonishing things such as John Lennon's ‘Imagine’ jacket, Superman's movie outfit, Houdini's straitjacket, the star attraction of the do is Jack Ruby.

New York, March 5 : It seems that Hillary Clinton doesn’t carry a soft corner for the press, for the US presidential candidate did the unbelievable by setting up an impromptu press room in a men's bathroom, complete with urinals.

On the night before the Texas and Ohio primaries, the senator’s media entourage was asked to work from a men’s room of a separate community center.

Former New Yorker and Talk editrix Tina Brown was among the couple dozen journalists who set up tables inches away from porcelain urinals.

New York , Mar 6: India is home to the largest number of billionaires in Asia, and four of them figure in top 10 billionaires of the world, according to the new Forbes list.

Forbes magazine released its list of the globe's wealthiest billionaires on Wednesday, and four of the top 10 are from India.

Only one of those, Lakshmi Mittal, was among last year's 10 richest per son of the world, moving up from fifth place to fourth in the new list.

By nationality, the United States still easily led the rankings with 469 billionaires up from 415 last year, but Russia replaced Germany as the second placed country with 87 billionaires.

New York, Mar 6: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf would resign if the new federal government concedes to ex-premier Nawaz Sharif’s demand of reinstating the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, because he does not want to be an ineffective President, a western diplomat in Islamabad considered a close aide of Musharraf, said.

Citing a reason for Musharraf resigning in such a situation, he said that restoration of the deposed CJ would reopen the question of Musharraf’s eligibility to be the President and the legality of suspension of the Constitution in November by him.

New York, March 6, 2008: In a report that could have damaging ramifications for the Sri Lankan Government, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has laid the blame for widespread abductions and disappearances of the country’s citizens at the latter’s doorstep.

According to the 241-page report titled “Recurring Nightmare: State Responsibility for ‘Disappearances’ and Abductions in Sri Lanka,” documents relating to 99 of the several hundred cases, examines the Sri Lankan Government’s response, which its says has been grossly inadequate.

New York – The US pharma major, Wyeth on Thursday reported that it has appealed against verdicts in an Arkansas trial, in which jury has ordered the drug manufacturer to $58 million to three Nevada women who claim one of its drugs caused their breast cancer.

The appeal filed on Wednesday has asked the Nevada Supreme Court to overturn the Feb. 21 award by Washoe County District Judge Robert Perry.

New York, Mar 10: New York will play host to the first-ever Non-Resident Pakistanis (NRP) summit on July 5 and 6.

Shaukat Mahmood, one of the organisers of the summit said the idea of the summit evolved from the example set by Indian Diaspora, which as a group, has contributed approximately 50 per cent to the growth and progress of India, the Dawn reported.

According to the Dawn, the NRP Summit - 2008 has been planned to develop a strategic insight for future growth and progress in Pakistan among NRPs and others interested in the country’s growth. (ANI)

New York, Mar. 12: The Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, is likely to resign today in the wake of revealtions that he has been soliciting and having flings with high-priced prostitutes.

Aides of the Governor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Spitzer could hand over charge to Lt. Gov. David Paterson.

"The resignation will be coming [today], but I can't tell you the exact time at this point," one Spitzer administration official told the Daily News. Another official, while less definite, called a departure on Wednesday "likely."

New York, Mar 12: New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was expected to quit on Wednesday, succumbing to threats of impeachment and media pressure over his involvement in a sex scandal, The New York Times reported.

Spitzer, reeling from revelations that he had been a client of a prostitution ring, will resign today, some of his staff members said they have been told.

Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson would likely be sworn in to replace him at some point after that.

Spitzer on Monday apologised for what he called a "private matter," saying he had violated his obligations to his family.

New York, Mar. 13 : Five years after leaving a broken home on the Jersey Shore to come to New York City, 22-year-old Kirsten unwittingly finds herself as the yet unseen star behind Governor Eliot Spitzer’s fall from grace and power.

Kristen, the prostitute described in a federal affidavit as having had a rendezvous with Spitzer on February 13 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, has spent the last few days in her ninth-floor apartment in the Flatiron district of Manhattan.

New York, Mar. 14 : The call girl responsible for the exit of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is reportedly on her way to becoming a millionaire from the sex scandal.

Ashley Alexandra Dupré sex romp with Eliot Spitzer netted her a couple of thousands of dollars, but if a Daily News report is to be believed, she stands to make millions from the scandal.

Penthouse wants her on the cover, every news organization in the world wants an interview and her music is getting downloaded at rates she never could have imagined.

Not bad for a 22-year-old runaway from New Jersey.

New York, Mar. 14 : As New York's Attorney General, former Governor Eliot Spitzer busted the escort service that had hired the call girl who eventually brought about his exit from office.

According to the former owner of the escort service, Jason Itzler, Ashley Dupre, a rock star escort even at the age of 19.

"She was spectacular. In my opinion, she was the hottest, sexiest escort we ever had," Itzler told CNN's Larry King.

New York, Mar. 15: Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the high-priced hooker who spelt curtains for the political career of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, says that she realized it was him only during their last encounter.

"Oh, my God! Do you know who this guy is?" a shocked Ashley Alexandra Dupre asked her bosses at the Emperors Club VIP escort service, a source was quoted by the New York Post, as saying.

The comment came after her 4,300 dollar meeting with Spitzer at a Washington hotel on February 13.

New York, Mar. 18: New York Governor David Paterson has shocked one and all by admitting that he too has slept with another woman while married to his wife, Michelle.

In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.

In the course of several interviews in the past few days, Paterson said he maintained a relationship for two or three years with "a woman other than my wife," beginning in 1999.

New York, Mar. 20 (ANI):In an extraordinary public confession less than 24 hours after taking office, New York Governor David Paterson has said he has had affairs with "a number of women" in the not-so-distant past - including a current state employee.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with his grim-faced wife, Michelle, the governor said his "conscience is clear" - now that he has come clean about his private infidelities. He said he hopes now to focus on public's business.

New York, Mar 21 : The Mazda 2, a small and spunky fuel saver, has been named the World Car of the Year at the 2008 New York Auto Show.

The car that zips around corners, looks sleek and sporty was given the title on March 20.

The Mazda2 defeated Mercedes-Benz C-Class and Ford Mondeo to grab the ultimate crown at the New York International Auto Show at the Javits Center.

The Audi R8 scooped up awards for Best Design and Best Performance, and the BMW 118d was named the greenest car on the planet.

But it was the little Mazda2 that stole the show - proving small can be mighty.

New York, Mar. 21 : Lila Kirton, the gal pal of New York Governor David Paterson, never saw her affair with him being made public.

A week ago gubernatorial gal pal Lila Kirton was so confident of her rising stock in state government, she was busy deciding who would sit where in the offices of soon-to-be Governor Paterson.

Paterson's disclosures less than 24 hours after his swearing-in of marital infidelity stunned Kirton and quickly outed her as the governor's former lover.

New York, Mar. 23: The Bush Administration has expressed alarm and concern over leaders of Pakistan’s new coalition government saying they will negotiate with militants behind a series of attacks across Pakistan, and that it will use military force only as a last resort.

According to a New York Times report, American officials fear this softening stance will hamper Washington's free hand to strike at militants using pilot-less Predator drones.

New York, Mar. 24: Foreigners and local residents of Tibetan capital Lhasa who were witness to the anti-Chinese violence, have said that they were simply stunned by what they saw.

They claimed that so chaotic was the situation in the first 24 hours that riot police officers initially fled and were often nowhere to be found. Some Chinese shopkeepers begged for protection, they added.

According to them Tibetans rampaged through the city's old quarter, waving steel scabbards and burning or looting Chinese shops. Clothes, souvenirs and other tourist trinkets were dumped outside and set afire as thick grey smoke darkened the midday sky.

New York, Mar. 24: Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had a strange fad of keeping his black stockings on when romping with hookers in Florida.

According to a letter sent to the federal investigation authorities by a controversial political strategist, Spitzer "used the services of high-priced call girls" in Florida - and kept his socks on while he did.

New York, Mar. 25: Fifty-three-year-old New York Governor David Paterson has sprung another revelation by admitting to snorting cocaine and marijuana when he was in his 20s.

Governor Paterson admitted to this on Monday night, according to a New York Daily News report.

Paterson has already admitted to cheating on his wife, Michelle, and to making some questionable uses of campaign money.

He revealed his use of drugs during a rapid-fire Question and Answer session with New York 1 anchor Dominic Carter.

New York, Mar. 25: If former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer wore calf-length black socks before and during his romps with highly-priced hookers, it may have signaled a fear of intimacy, claim sex experts.

"Maybe keeping socks on is a symbol that he's not committing, that he's going to get up and leave afterwards, that this is a short tryst and not a long-term commitment," the New York Daily News quoted New York-based Jamye Waxman, a sex educator and the author of "Getting Off", as saying.

New York, Mar 26: The United Nations Security Council has said that it will consider a UN investigation into the assassination of PPP leader Benazir Bhutto only after a formal request is made by the Pakistan government.

It said that so far no request has been received from Islamabad in this regard.

"So far we have not received any request," The Nation quoted United States Ambassador to the world body Zalmay Khalilzad as saying while responding to a question at a Pakistan Day reception in New York.

New York, Mar. 26: The gateway to the Tibetan plateau, Chengdu, a city of 10 million people in the middle of China, has been blocked off at various points by police and paramilitaries, and if a New York Times report is to be believed, a virtual war is on the region between the Tibetans and the Chinese.

The paper quoted a monk in Chengdu’s Luhuo County as saying that “Tibetans are dying for no reason. This is happening in remote places, and nobody knows.”

New York  - Key officials from US software giant Microsoft and internet company Yahoo failed to reach agreement in talks over a multi-billion takeover bid, the Wall Street Journal newspaper said on Friday.

According to the paper, officials were unable to solve their differences of opinion during the meeting, which took place this week at Yahoo's headquarters in Sunnydale, California.

Microsoft launched a takeover bid of originally 45 billon dollars more than two months ago, which was rejected by Yahoo for being too low.

New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Friday that the conditions in Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur have worsened, four years after the UN Security Council first turned its attention on the ethnic conflict there.

"The situation remains grim today, as then, if not worse," Ban said in assessing the situation. "Violence targeting civilians, including women and girls, continues at alarming levels with no accountability, or end, in sight."

New York, Apr 5: Hillary and Bill Clinton earned nearly 109 million dollars during the past eight years, after the latter quit as US President, with most of it coming from lecture tours and books written by the duo, and royalty worth 15 million dollars from Bill’s book “My Life”.

Bill’s vigorous lecture schedule where his speeches command more than 250,000 dollars, brought in almost 52 million dollars during the said period.

New York - US stock indices were mixed Monday as an expected 5-billion-dollar cash infusion for Washington Mutual helped offset fears of technology earnings.

Washington Mutual, the largest US savings and loan bank, climbed the most in 25 years according to Bloomberg News on reports it was in talks on the new investment with private-equity firms.

Oil companies rose as the price of crude oil climbed above 109 dollars per barrel.

Aluminium producer Alcoa Inc shares fell on speculation that first- quarter profits would fall below expectations. Their profit report comes at the start of first-quarter earnings season in the United States.

New York - The Washington Post won a list of prizes for its distinguished journalism including national and international reporting and feature writing, Columbia University's Pulitzer Prize board said Monday.

The Post won the prizes for public service and breaking news reporting. Its reporters Jo Becker and Barton Gellman won the prize for national reporting and Steve Fainaru for international reporting.

Fainaru won the prize for his "heavily reported series on private security contractors in Iraq that operate outside most of the laws governing American forces."

New York -  US banking firm Citigroup is in negotiations to sell 12 billion dollars worth of bad loans to a group of financial institutions in an effort to reduce the effects of the US credit crisis on its balance sheet, US media reported Wednesday.

According to an unnamed source quoted by the Bloomberg news agency, the sale of the loans to Apollo Management LP, Blackstone Group LP and TPG Inc are to shield the bank from further losses.

The group of private equity firms are said to be paying around 7.6 billion dollars for the Citibank loans, according to the Wall Street Journal.

New York, Apr. 10: Pioneering publisher Gopal Raju, who founded the India Abroad newspaper, passed away in New York early on Thursday morning. He was 80.

India Abroad, which he launched in 1970, gave the growing Indian-American community a voice to express themselves, and quickly became an influential voice in the United States's ethnic media.

After he sold the newspaper to rediff. com in April 2001, he continued to be involved with the Indian-American media, notably the weeklies News India Times and Desi Talk.

He also founded the India Abroad News Service, later called the Indo-Asian News Service. He was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman last year.

New York- Slasher-flick remake Prom Night waltzed to the top of the North American box-office rankings over the weekend with a three-day gate of 22.7 million dollars, according to preliminary studio estimates issued Sunday.

The movie opened Friday, starring Brittany Snow as a student terrorized at a school dance by an obsessed former teacher who escapes from prison.

The 1980 original, considered a classic in the horror genre, had Jamie Lee Curtis in the lead role. (dpa)

New York, Apr. 14: Tibetan spiritual leader --The Dalai Lama -- said on Sunday that his aides are in touch with the Chinese Government over the protests in Tibet.

“Just a few days these are going on,” the Dalai Lama, was quoted by the New York Times, as saying. But he said he was unclear what the talks might yield, as he was not directly involved.

Western leaders have encouraged China to resume discussions with the Dalai Lama in the wake of the unrest in Tibet, which began on March 10.

As recently as Saturday, President Hu Jintao echoed the views of other Chinese leaders who have accused the Dalai Lama of encouraging violence.

New York, Apr. 14: Silda Spitzer, the wife of former New York State Governor Elliot Spitzer, is trying to pick up the pieces of her shattered marriage and coping privately with two other family tragedies.

Her sister's husband is on his deathbed, according to Trilby Wall, Silda's mom. Ray Grayson - the adored 64-year-old husband of Silda's younger sister, Susan - is under hospice care at their Richmond, Virginia, home.

New York, Apr 15 : The 19-year-old Bhutto-Zardari scion and son of former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is known to be placed at the 20th slot in the list of top influential people in the world prepared by the Time magazine.

He is placed even ahead of US President George Bush.

Bilawal, the PPP Chairman, has reportedly bagged 7875 votes in the survey conducted by the Time magazine among its readers, who were asked to vote for leaders, artists, entrepreneurs and thinkers who shape the world and deserve a spot on its annual list.

New York - Zimbabwe's unresolved presidential election outcome is not on the agenda of the UN Security Council's African summit on Wednesday, but could be placed there if the world's powers want to debate the issue, the council president said Tuesday.

The African summit at UN headquarters in New York is to be presided over by South African President Thabo Mbeki, whose mediation in settling the dispute in Zimbabwe's presidential vote count has been criticized for being biased in favour of President Robert Mugabe.

New York  -  US soft drinks giant Coca Cola reported Wednesday that its first-quarter net income reached 1.5 billion dollars, surging 19 per cent from 1.26 billion dollars in the same 2007 period.

The profit growth came on net revenues of 7.38 billion dollars, up 21 per cent from 6.1 billion dollars in the first quarter last year, with the company citing higher sales of drink concentrate, acquisitions of bottlers and favourable foreign exchange rates.

The sales and profits gains - which surpassed analysts' projections - came despite a 4 per cent slippage in sales in North America, reflecting "challenges in the US economy" as consumers were dining out less amid the economic uncertainties.

New York  -  US banking group JP Morgan Chase reported Wednesday that its net income fell some 50 per cent to 2.37 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2008, reflecting the ongoing turmoil in US financial markets brought on by the subprime mortgage crisis.

But the results, compared with record 4.8 billion dollars net income in the first quarter of 2007, compare favourably with those of other competitors with the bank saying its capital remained strong at 89.6 billion dollars and that credit reserves rose by 2.5 billion dollars.

JP Morgan said its investment-banking division had to write off 2.6 billion dollars. It also said it expected the credit crunch to weigh on its business at least through the rest of the year.

New York  -  US financial concern Merrill Lynch reported Thursday it suffered a net loss from continuing operations of 1.97 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2008 in what it called a "challenging environment" and major write-downs.

The red ink figure, coming in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, compared with net earnings of 2. l6 billion dollars in the first quarter of last year.

New York  - US airline Continental Airlines Inc. reported Thursday that it lost 80 million dollars in the first quarter of 2008, citing rising fuel costs for the downturn.

The loss compares with a profit of 22 million dollars in the first quarter of last year, and came despite a 12 per cent rise in revnues, to 3.57 billion dollars in this year's first three months.

The Houston, Texas-based company said its fuel costs in the first quarter soared by 53 per cent, or 364 million dollars, in the quarter to cut into its earnings performance.

The airline had already begun slipping into the red in the final quarter of 2007, though it managed to show a profit for the full year. (dpa)

New York  -  US financial concern Merrill Lynch reported Thursday it suffered a net loss from continuing operations of 1.97 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2008 in what it called a "challenging environment" and major write-downs.

The red ink figures, coming in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, compared with net earnings of 2. l6 billion dollars in the first quarter of last year.

The net loss for the period was 1.96 billion dollars, the company said, while the loss which includes preferred stock dividends came to 2.14 billion dollars. In the first quarter last year, the preferred stock dividends figure showed a profit of 2.11 billion dollars.

New York  - Stocks slipped across the board on Thursday after Pfizer Inc's earnings trailed estimates and Merrill Lynch investment bank reported net losses of 1.96 billion dollars.

The investment bank said it would cut another 4,000 jobs amidst the most severe US economic downturn in decades.

Stocks fell despite upbeat forecasts at International Business Machines Corp and the first rise in six months of a leading economic index by the private Conference Board in New York.

New York  - Google Inc reported a 30-per-cent jump in first- quarter earnings Thursday to 1.31 billion dollars, allaying fears that the internet search engine leader was struggling with the effects of a US economic slowdown.

Revenue also climbed 42 per cent to 5.19 billion dollars, with more than half its sales coming from outside the United States, the company said after market close.

Google's shares shot up more than 11 per cent in after-hours trading as the earnings report beat analysts' estimates.

New York - US banking giant Citigroup reported Friday it suffered a net loss of 5.11 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2008 after having to write down 12 billion dollars' worth
of loans and bonds in the ongoing subprime mortgage crisis.

The first-quarter red ink compares with a profit of just over 5 billion dollars in the same 2007 period and was somewhat higher than analysts' projections, according to the
Bloomberg financial agency.

The losses came on revenues of 13.2 billion dollars. While this was down 48 per cent from the first quarter of 2007, it was some 2 billion dollars higher than projections given
in a survey of analysts by Bloomberg.

New York, April 19: CNN International news reporter Richard Quest was arrested in New York on Apr 18 with a small amount of methamphetamine in his pocket.

However, he avoided jail when he agreed to undergo drug counselling and therapy.

The 46-year-old, who is a British citizen, was arrested around 3:40 a. m. on a possession of a controlled substance count, a misdemeanour that generally refers to a personal use amount of a drug.

Quest was also charged with loitering for being in the park after 1 a. m. when it is officially closed.

London, Apr 19 : Travellers at New York and Los Angeles airports will soon have no place to hide – for a new scanner, which can see through clothes, is going to be installed at two of the country's busiest and highest-profile airports.

The millimetre wave imaging technology, which begins trials this week, creates a picture of the body, which according to critics, amounts to a ‘virtual strip search’.

But, security officials say it can show contours of the body and can pick up hidden items, such as guns or knives, which may be more effective than a physical ‘pat-down’ in detecting contraband.

New York, Apr. 20 : United States commanders in Afghanistan have reportedly urged the Bush Administration to allow them to expand the range of their operations into Pakistan, a request that has been promptly rebuffed.

The New York Times quoted officials in Washington as saying that attacking Pakistani radicals may anger Pakistan’s new government and destabilise an already fragile security situation.

The military officials urging attacks in Pakistan have discussed a list of potential targets with the US Ambassador in Pakistan Anne Patterson, the officials said, requesting anonymity.

Officials involved in the discussions said that they had not ruled out striking militants in Pakistan's tribal areas.

New York - Pope Benedict XVI left Sunday night for Rome after completing a six-day US visit, saying "God bless America" in his final message before boarding his jet, Shepherd One.

The pope was seen off in a ceremony in a terminal building at John F Kennedy International Aiport in New York by US Vice President Dick Cheney, his wife, Lynne, and about 4,000 people including cardinals and other church dignitaries.

New York, Apr 21 : If you want your children to know about the life of Pope Benedict XVI, then all you need to do is get them the autobiography that has been penned by his cat.

"Joseph and Chico: The Life of Pope Benedict XVI as Told by a Cat", a 36-page illustrated book, has been penned by Italian journalist Jeanne Perego.

However, it takes people through a journey of the pontiff’s life through the words of his cat Chico.

New York  -  US banking group Bank of America Corp. reported Monday that its first-quarter net income fell to 1.21 billion dollars, plunging 77 per cent from 5.26 billion dollars a year earlier in the further fallout from the US economic slump.

The second-largest US bank said rising unemployment and write- downs on housing prices were factors in the drop.

New York  - Most US stocks fell Monday after Bank of America reported a sharp drop in earnings, sparking fears that the country's credit crisis may not be over just yet.

The second-largest US bank said profits declined 77 per cent to 1.21 billion dollars in the first quarter. Chief executive Kenneth Lewis said the results were "much worse" than the company had predicted only three months earlier.

The price of oil meanwhile reached yet another record, climbing to 117 dollars per barrel in New York trading and boosting energy shares.

New York  - Serbian President Boris Tadic told the UN Security Council Monday that only renewed talks can resolve the "bad situation" resulting from Kosovo's declaration of independence.

Tadic made yet another appearance before the 15-nation Security Council, but this time behind closed doors, to plead again for UN action to stop the independence of Kosovo, which Serbia still considers its province.

New York  -  US telecoms giant AT&T reported Tuesday that it achieved net income of 3.5 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2008, surging nearly 21.5 per cent from the previous-year period thanks to strong wireless business.

The earnings came on revenues of 30.7 billion dollars, up 6 per cent year-on-year, the San Antonio, Texas-based company said.

AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson commented, "We delivered an excellent first quarter and a solid start to the year" and said the company was sticking to its full-year growth projections.

New York  -  US electronics concern Motorola Inc. reported Thursday that it suffered a net loss of 194 million dollars in the first quarter of 2008, amid a 21 per cent drop in sales.

The loss surpassed the 181 million dollars in red ink in the first quarter of last year.

Net sales, at just under 7.45 billion dollars, were down 21 per cent from 9.43 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2007, the Schaumburg, Illinois-based maker of telecommunications equipment and mobile phones reported.

New York - Microsoft Corp on Thursday said third-quarter profits fell 11 per cent to 4.39 billion dollars amid an economic slowdown in the United States.

Revenue at the world's largest software maker was stagnant at 14.5 billion dollars compared to the third fiscal quarter in 2007. The earnings report, released after markets closed, prompted a more than 4-per-cent drop in shares in after hours trading.

Microsoft is in the midst of an effort to buy internet company Yahoo Inc in the hopes of competing with rival Google and bolstering its online unit, where revenue increased 40 per cent.

The solid online earnings were tempered by a 24-per-cent drop in sales of Microsoft's Windows operating system.

New York - Altria Group Inc, which spun off its overseas unit last month, Thursday reported an 11 per cent net income decline in the first quarter, due to the costs of shutting down its New York headquarters and the waning demand for cigarettes in the US.

But the company said it did better than had been expected on demand for Marlboro cigarettes and cigars.

Net income was 2.45 billion dollars, down from 2.75 billion dollars a year ago.

Spinning off its international division sent two-thirds of profit overseas, leaving Altria dependent on the shrinking US cigarette market.

New York, Apr. 26 : A proposed book on former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s sexcapades, which ended his career in politics, is expected to fetch 350,000 dollars at the start.

Peter Elkind, a Fortune magazine writer and co-author of a book about Enron, is the author of the book. His agent, Liz Darhansoff of Darhansoff, Verrill and Feldman, refused to confirm the figure, though she said she expected to have the deal wrapped up by Friday.

New York  - A day before the US central bank sets interest rates, US stocks were mixed as consumer confidence slid to a five- year low, property values continued to slump and a drop in oil and metal prices pushed commodity producers lower.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc and Newmont Mining Co declined as gold and copper retreated, while homebuilders dropped for the first time in four days on a report that housing prices plunged by the most on record.

Merck & Co, the third-biggest US drugmaker, tumbled the most in a month after failing to win approval for a cholesterol pill. Apple Inc and Google Inc advanced, leading the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index to its fourth gain in five days.

New York  - Microsoft's board held a protracted meeting Wednesday but failed to decide whether to sweeten its unsolicited bid for Yahoo, walk away from the deal or pursue a hostile takeover deal, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Microsoft had given the web portal until Saturday to accept its 41.9-billion-dollar offer but the deadline passed with no further comment from Yahoo, which had originally dismissed the bid as undervaluing the company.

New York - Technology stocks led a huge Wall Street rally on Thursday with a 2.8 per cent gain, followed by well-over-1-per-cent upswings for the other two leading indices.

Stocks closed at the highest levels since January, helped by financial firms like Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Citigroup Inc which enjoyed a rare bit of good news with a rebounding dollar.

The dollar was boosted by speculation that the US central bank was done cutting interest rates after the Federal Reserve on Wednesday lowered the benchmark rate another 0.25 per cent to 2 per cent.

New York, May 4 : The United States is considering sending up to 7,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year to make up for a shortfall in contributions from NATO allies, the New York Times has reported.

The report appeared a day after U. S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the US could consider taking over NATO’s command in southern Afghanistan, where some NATO allies have been reluctant to provide combat forces.

Citing unnamed officials from George W Bush administration, the NYT said sending up to 7,000 additional troops would increase US numbers in Afghanistan to some

New York - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday called on world leaders to attend a food summit in Rome next month armed "with fresh ideas" to combat the global food crisis.

"If not properly handled, this crisis could cascade into multiple crises affecting trade, development and even social and political security around the world," Ban told reporters at UN headquarters in New York on returning from trip to Africa and Europe.

He said the UN task force on the global food crisis will be moving at full speed and would hold its first meeting next Monday. Ban announced the new international Task Force - composed of heads of key UN agencies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - last week.

New York, May 6 : The D. C. madam, who hanged herself behind her mother's trailer, has begged for her forgiveness, saying she committed suicide because she couldn't bear to "live the next six to eight years behind bars."

Deborah Jean Palfrey, who faced up to six years in jail, called her prosecution "a modern day lynching" in a handwritten suicide note police made public yesterday in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Palfrey, 52, wrote that she did not want "to come out of prison in my late 50s a broken, penniless and very much alone woman."

The note was dated April 25, seven days before she hanged herself near her mother's Tarpon Springs mobile home.

New York - A Claude Monet painting fetched 41.48 million dollars at a New York auction, breaking the record for a work by the French Impressionist painter.

An anonymous buyer picked up The Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil Tuesday night at a sale at Christie's auction house, The New York Times reported.

The 1873 landscape depicting a Seine riverbank and two trains sitting on a railway bridge as sailboats pass underneath was sold by the Nahmad family of art dealers, which has galleries in New York and London.

The family bought the painting in 1988 for 12.6 million dollars at a Christie's auction in London.

New York - Want to take a photo immediately? No photo opportunity will be lost, if you have a pair of sunglasses with an integrated digital camera.

A tiny lens has been built into the frame of the 100 dollar sunglasses and uses 1.3 mega pixels to take still images.

Fans just have to press a button to take a photo or use the remote control which can be kept in your pocket.

New York  - A life-sized nude by the British painter Lucian Freud sold for 33.6 million dollars, the highest price ever paid at auction for the work of a living artist.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping sold Tuesday night after a bidding war to an anonymous buyer calling in by telephone at the sale by Christie's auction house in New York.

The 1995 painting of an obese woman napping on a ragged couch by the grandson of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, beat out the previous record of 23.6 million dollars paid in November for American artist Jeff Koons' sculpture Hanging Heart.

New York, May 16: China’s main centres for designing, making and storing nuclear arms lie in the shattered earthquake zone, and leading Western experts are looking for signs of any damage that might allow radioactivity to escape.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a senior US official said that the US was using spy satellites and other means to try to monitor the sprawling nuclear plants.

"There appear to be no immediate concerns," The New York Times quoted the official, as saying.

New York, May 16 : Temeka Lewis, the primary booker for a prostitution ring whose clients included former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, has agreed to tell a grand jury all she knows.

This could really be troublesome for Spitzer, as Lewis has pleaded guilty to federal charges relating to prostitution and money laundering.

Lewis read a prepared statement in US District Court in Manhattan admitting that prostitutes travelled across state lines to meet with clients.

Nairobi/New York  - The United Nations Security Council should impose sanctions on Sudanese officials who authorized "scorched earth" attacks that saw hundreds of civilians killed in West Darfur, independent body Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday.

"The destruction of town after town in West Darfur shows that Khartoum has no qualms about committing the same atrocities that we saw earlier in the Darfur conflict," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at HRW.

The body said that the UN should bring new targeted sanctions, enforce existing sanctions and ensure that the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) had enough resources to protect civilians from attack.

New York, May 21: Democrat Senator Edward M. Kennedy has been admitted to the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and been diagnosed with a malignant form of brain tumour.

According to the New York Times, doctors at the hospital are investigating the cause of a seizure that Kennedy, 76, suffered at his Cape Cod compound on Saturday.

They said preliminary results from a biopsy of the brain had revealed that he has a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe, the upper left part of his brain.

New York  - Oil prices broke the 130 dollar per barrel barrier for the first time on New York markets Wednesday.

A price of 130.01 dollars was recorded on the futures market as oil continued its upward surge.

Earlier in Vienna, the oil cartel OPEC had reported that its basket of crudes had broken through the 120-dollar barrier for the first time on Tuesday. (dpa)

New York - Ford Motor Company will not meet its goal to return to profitability by 2009, hurt by rising costs and declining interest in its fuel-hungry trucks and sport utility vehicles, executives said Thursday.

The second-largest US automaker had pledged to again be in the black by next year, but that goal has been delayed and instead the company will likely break-even in
2009, chief executive Alan Mulally said in a statement.

New York  - New York's iconic bridge connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn over the East River will be 125-years-old this weekend, a time for celebration for the mass of immigrants who treasure its usefullness and resilience.

Authorities planned fireworks and walks across the 2,000-meter-long landmark that opened on May 24, 1883. Today, it is used daily by hundreds of thousands of subway commuters and more than 120,000 vehicles.

New York, May 23 : The recent peace pact between the Government of Pakistan and the pro-Taliban tribal elders in the Swat region of NWFP might be quite different from those of the past, “because the authorities had an upper hand in the talks”, a former US State Department specialist on South Asia has said.

He said that the peace pact has been signed not with the militants but with the tribal elders to hold the latter accountable for enforcing the agreement.

New York - US stocks retreated Friday, capping the worst week since February on new reports of falling housing prices and automaker Ford warning that energy costs were impacting sales.

The National Association of Realtors said existing home sales fell 1 per cent in March, sparking a sell-off of homebuilders.

Ford Motor Co, the second-largest US carmaker, blamed falling truck sales on the surging price of petrol in the United States.

New York, May 26: Members of the Kennedy family are furious with Hilary Clinton invoking the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy to explain why she hasn’t given up the race to become the Democrat candidate for the next US Presidential elections.

A Kennedy clan member said that Clinton’s remark could also be the one that dooms her campaign.

"That comment may be the last nail in her campaign's coffin," the New York Post quoted the family member, as saying.

New York, May 26: Hilary Clinton’s camp is blaming Senator Barack Obama’s team for fanning the fire over her RKF assassination gaffe.

Clinton’s campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe put the blame on Obama’s supporters when he appeared on Fox News Sunday, saying that they had ‘tried to take the out of context’, reports the New York Daily News.

"It's unfortunate - a hyped-up press over Memorial Day weekend, the Obama campaign inflaming it, tried to take these words out of context," he said.

New York, May 27 : Newly appointed chief of NATO’s command in Afghanistan and Maj Gen in US Army, Jeffrey J Schloesser has said that Pakistan was a sovereign country and it was in NATO’s interest that peace agreements between the Pakistani government and militants were enforced.

In an interview with the Newsweek, Schloesser said that he favoured talks with legitimate tribal leaders in Afghanistan as well.

“We concentrate on working with tribal leaders who are legitimate in the eyes of the people…we believe that’s culturally accurate, because the tribal leaders and the mullahs have positions of authority that go back hundreds of years,” the Daily Times quoted him as saying.

New York, May 27 : New York Senator Hillary Clinton has listed at least six reasons for her decision not to pull out of the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination race.

In an article that appears in the New York Daily News, Clinton said she was running because she sill believed she could win on merit.

New York  - A drop in oil prices and a tech share rally lifted US stocks across the board on Tuesday, after last week's worst performance since February.

The 2.5-per-cent drop in oil prices was the steepest decrease this month, and gave counterbalance to a huge drop in US consumer confidence reported Tuesday.

The consumer index maintained by the New York-based Conference Board dropped to its lowest level since 1992 in April, increasing the likelihood of a further slowdown in the world's largest economy.

New York  - Amnesty International Wedmesday delivered fierce charges against the United States and the European Union for failing to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), demanding they apologize to the world.

The London-based human rights advocacy group also singled out several countries for their failures, including China, for consistently flaunting the UDHR, which celebrates its 60th birthday this year.

"World leaders owe an apology for failing to deliver on the promise of justice and equality in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," Amnesty said.

Its annual Report 2008 details violations of the principles adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948.

New York - US stocks edged up on Wednesday as rising oil prices spurred energy companies and the government said durable goods orders unexpectedly rose in April.

Crude oil climbed 2.18 dollars to 131 dollars per barrel in New York trading. Morgan Stanley forecast that Brent crude from the North Sea could hit 150 dollars per barrel.

New York, June 1 : While most children would crib about going to school daily, Raquel Williams from East Flatbush is an exception.

The 18-year-old will soon be graduating from High School for Health Professions and Human Services without having missed a day of school in her life.

In the Williams’ household, it's a tradition not to miss a day of school.

Following a long line of excellence, Williams will graduate next month from high school with a perfect attendance record that dates back 14 years.

"I thank my mom now," the New York Daily quoted her, as saying.

New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon voiced "deep concern" on Monday over Israel's intention to build new homes in occupied East Jerusalem, saying the move contradicts peace accords.

Ban said Israel's invitation of new tenders for the construction of some 900 new homes is "contrary to international law and to its commitment under the road map and the Annapolis process," which was reiterated on May 2 in London by the UN, the European Union, the United States and Russia, the quartet on Middle East peace process.

New York, June 3: Sal Carbone, from Brooklyn has broken his own record by gobbling down 15 slices and one bite of pizza at a contest.

Carbone, from Bar Ridge, set the bar last year after eating 15 pizza slices in the contest at Rocco's Pizzeria, which raises money for the child welfare organization MercyFirst.

"It started out as a friendly bet with my friends Danny and Rocco, but they knew the way I could eat. So I won it last year with 15 slices,” New York Daily News quoted Carbone, as saying.

“This year I beat my record, 15 slices and one bite," he added.

The runner up William Millender was able to eat about 12-1/4 slices. (ANI)

New York  - The United States called Tuesday for strengthening the control of the manufacture and trade of chemical precursors, compounds used to refine heroin and other dangerous drugs.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad submitted a draft resolution to the 15-nation council, aiming at the drug problems in Afghanistan, whose widespread poppy cultivation provide the world with the largest export of heroin.

Khalilzad holds the rotating presidency of the council in June, taking over from Britain.

New York, June 4: Senator Barack Obama of Illinois laid claim to the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday night, taking a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the America's first black President.

“Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States," Obama said during a huge rally in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“America, this is our moment, this is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past,” the 46-year-old senator said in his first appearance as the Democratic nominee-in-waiting.

New York, June 4 : Bill Clinton lost his cool on Vanity Fair and its writer Todd Purdum, who recently wrote major profile piece on him in the magazine, suggesting he had not only had an inappropriate relationship with actress Gina Gershon, but that the former US President was a man of "abiding anger".

Purdum blamed Clinton’s temper for many of wife Hillary’s political woes.

New York, June 4 : New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who sought to be the first woman President of US, refused to withdraw from the race, after Senator Barak Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama’s victory will be made official with the vote of delegates at the Democratic convention in late August.

A defiant Clinton paid tribute on Tuesday night to all that Obama had accomplished, but stopped well short of acknowledging him as the Democratic Party’s nominee.

New York, June 4 : The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today presented a comprehensive early recovery package aimed at immediately re-establishing livelihoods for communities in Burmese villages.

This initiative will run parallel to the ongoing humanitarian operations in the cyclone-hit Ayeyarwady Delta region and bring together the expertise and resources of multiple UN agencies to deliver as one.

The early recovery basic services package comprises a combination of cash grants for immediate livelihoods support and cash-for-work schemes for rehabilitating social infrastructure.

The package will directly benefit 20,000 households, or about 100,000 cyclone survivors, in 250 priority villages.

New York  - The UN General Assembly elected Wednesday a Catholic priest and controversial former Sandinista foreign minister of Nicaragua as its president for the 63rd session scheduled to open in September.

Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann was elected without a vote by the 192-nation assembly to the rotating leadership post, which falls this year to Latin America and the Caribbean. He was the choice of that region and had no challengers.

New York, June 5 : Bringing a close to her 17-month old campaign for the White House, New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is all set to endorse Senator Barak Obama as Democrat nominee for the President post, aides have said.

The New York Times quoted Hillary’s aides as saying that her decision came after Democrats urged her on Wednesday to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around Obama.

Howard Wolfson, one of Hillary’s chief strategists, and other aides said that she would express support for Obama and party unity at an event in Washington on Saturday.

“Senator Clinton will be hosting an event in Washington, D. C., to thank her supporters and express her support for Senator Obama and party unity,” Wolfson said.

New York, June 5 : New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has said that she is open to the idea of being Illinois Senator and Democratic arty presidential nominee Barack Obama's running mate.

In a conference call with New York lawmakers, she is said to have expressed interest for the first time in the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket.

"I am open to it," Clinton said when asked whether she'd be willing to join a "dream ticket."

Clinton said she was receptive to "anything that would help Democrats win in December," according to a source.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned Thursday both Israel and Hamas militants for military activities that have caused civilian deaths, including that of a 4-year-old Palestinian girl killed by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday.

He condemned Gaza-based Hamas for mortar and rocket attacks against Israel, killing one Israeli and injured several others.

He condemned the Israeli Air Force for the death of the Palestinian girl and wounding her mother.

New York  - US markets rallied on Thursday on booming oil prices and strong sales at major discount chains.

Energy companies helped lead the advance after oil prices rose 5.49 dollars to 127.79 dollars per barrel. Investors also responded to better than expected sales at retail giants Wal-Mart and Costco.

"While the economy is weak, it's not deathly weak," Alan Gayle of Ridgeworth Capital Management told Bloomberg financial news. "The markets may very well be breathing a sigh of relief."

New York, June 9: Al Qaeda is said to have lately started attracting alienation from fellow jihadists because of its brutal campaign in Iraq, as most of its victims around the world are Muslims, as also that the terror network has continued to target civilians for slaughter in the West, writes Cruickshank in the New York-based Daily News.

Cruickshank is a fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security and the co-author of the current cover story “The Jihadist Revolt against Bin Laden” published in the New Republic.

New York, June 10 : A new book has revealed that President Pervez Musharraf had allowed the US to set up a secret CIA base inside FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) in January this year to plan missile strikes by drones on militants.

In his book “Descent into Chaos”, senior Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid reveals that under US’ pressure for military actions in the tribal areas, Musharraf allowed a secret CIA base for attacks through predators.

New York  - Some of the largest internet service providers plan to block access to sites connected with child pornography, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday.

The move by Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable marks a significant change in the industry that had previously rejected responsibility for online content.

Verizon and Time Warner Cable are two of the nation's five largest service providers, with roughly 16 million customers between them, and negotiations are continuing with other service providers.

New York - Major stock indices were mixed on Tuesday as energy and metals prices plunged and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke again suggested a pause in interest-rate cuts was likely.

Energy company shares fell as the price of crude oil dropped more than 3 dollars per barrel to 131.31 dollars, while gold producers saw share drops due to a decline in precious metals.

Bernanke, in a speech in Boston Monday night, said inflation was a key concern for the US central bank amid the continuous rise in commodity prices, while downside risks to growth had softened. Last week Bernanke said maintaining price stability was a "top priority."

The Fed has lowered its benchmark federal funds rate by 3.25 per cent since September.

New York, June 11 : Bill Clinton’s former gal pals Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones dish the dirt about infamous White House intern Monica Lewinsky and the size of his manhood in a new pay-per-view video on the internet.

For USD1.99, viewers of genniferandpaula. com can get see and hear the two women confide that Lewinsky was dumping the Democratic Party because it “left a bad taste in her mouth”.

Dubbed "Two Chicks Chatting," the seven-video package also shows Flowers and Jones exchanging notes on the former US President’s private parts.

Jones also recounts the time when Bill Clinton, then Governor of Arkansas, supposedly propositioned her in a Little Rock hotel room.

New York  - The UN Security Council adopted Wednesday a resolution calling on the world community to strengthen the control of the manufacture and trade of chemical compounds used to refine heroin and other dangerous drugs.

The move was aimed at stopping the illicit use of chemical agents used to refine poppies into heroin, opium and other dangerous drugs in Afghanistan, which is the world's largest exporter of drugs derived from its widespread poppy cultivation.

New York  - Major US stock indices plunged on Wednesday as the price of oil climbed, financial shares plummeted and the Federal Reserve warned the economy has remained sluggish over the last two months.

The US central bank said economic activity had "remained generally weak" in late April and May, according to its survey compiled from the reports of 12 district branches around the country.

The so-called Beige Book report said consumer spending had slowed in the past months due to rising energy and food prices.

New York, June 12: A married couple did something that not many couples would take on – have sex for 101 days straight.

And, they’ve even penned a book about it called "Just Do It".

Married for 11 years, Annie and Doug Brown decided to have sex for over 3 months and write a book about their experiences after Doug attended a conference where he came met married couples who hadn't had sex for 100 days.

New York, June 12 : A former Bill Clinton employee has taken a shot at the poor state of security in White House during the former US president’s tenure in a play depicting his life of politics and heroin use.

Mike Evans has claimed in his forthcoming play - "Sex, Drugs, Clinton & Me” - that he faked his way into White House employment time after time, thanks to the negligent security staff.

According to Evans, he first attached himself to Clinton's '92 campaign in Little Rock, Ark.

Shortly after working in the White House mailroom, he claims he stole a security pass to get higher levels of clearance.

New York  - Major US stock indices closed higher Thursday after better-than-expected retail sales suggested the world's largest economy may yet avoid a recession.

Retail sales climbed 1 per cent in May from the previous month, according to the Commerce Department, as 130-billion-dollars worth of government tax rebates began reaching the pockets of consumers.

April's sales figure was also revised to a 0.4-per-cent increase. The department had earlier reported a 0.2-per-cent drop.

New York  - The major US markets were mixed on Monday as more stocks fell than gained on Wall Street amid further speculation that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates.

"This whole financial mess still has to work itself out, so a comment from the Fed that they want to fight inflation, that's not what the market wants to hear," Bucky Hellwig of Morgan Asset Management in Birmingham, Alabama, told Bloomberg financial news. "The market as a whole is not going to do anything significant as long as the financial sector continues to deteriorate."

New York - Both the UN Security Council and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday condemned the flare-up in fighting by Chadian armed groups in eastern Chad, which attacked border areas and the European Union peacekeeping troops.

The council condemned all attempts at destabilizing Chad and reiterated its support for that country's sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence.

New York, June 17 : US President George W Bush and his Pakistan counterpart Pervez Musharraf are regarded as most untrustworthy leaders in an opinion poll.

Musharraf fared worst in the poll. Only in China, 37 percent of the people felt that he instilled confidence as a leader, outweighing 30 percent people’s opinion, a poll conducted by Worldpublicopinion. org found.

Nigeria remained divided over the Pakistani leader and the other 18 nations gave negative reactions for him in a poll conducted in 20 countries including India.

New York - US President George W Bush is to propose ending a federal ban on offshore oil drilling, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The move reflects the growing political impact of the relentless rise in oil prices, and aligns Bush with Republican nominee Senator John McCain who proposed similar action on Monday.

The paper quoted White House press secretary Dana Perino saying Bush would urge Congress to "pass legislation lifting the Congressional ban on safe, environmentally friendly offshore oil drilling."

New York  - The United States called Wednesday for a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the situation in Zimbabwe, saying that concerns have grown about the deteriorating humanitarian and political situation there.

But US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said some countries in the 15-nation council were opposed to holding the meeting before Zimbabwe holds its presidential elections in Zimbabwe on June 27. The US currently holds the rotating presidency of the council in June.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed on Wednesday a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza Strip.

Ban said he hopes that the pact, which was to enter into force Thursday, would "provide security and an easing of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and end rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli targets."

New York - US stocks suffered significant declines Wednesday, after the second-largest US package company FedEx reported a loss and a financial analyst warned of more credit crisis writedowns.

FedEx reported a fiscal fourth-quarter loss of 241 million dollars. The company had posted a 610-million-dollar profit in the year-earlier period.

New York  - Two former hedge fund managers of crippled financial firm Bear Stearns were arrested Thursday relating to their roles in the company's spectacular collapse earlier this year.

Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin were arrested at their homes in New York and New Jersey, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.

New York  - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday called for "broader and stronger" action to stop the political, social and economic deterioration in Zimbabwe as it prepares for run-off elections.

The meeting at UN headquarters, attended by diplomats, many of them Africans, and UN officials, was aimed at helping the UN formulate measures to deal with the crisis in the build up to the June 27 vote.

"Clearly we have reached the point where broader, stronger international efforts are needed," Rice told the meeting.

New York  - Major US stock market indices halted a three-day slide after the price of oil fell Thursday.

The price of crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) dropped 4.75 dollars per barrel to close at 131.93 dollars per barrel.

The oil market moved after the Chinese government announced a hike in subsidized petrol prices. China, the world's most populous country, has one of the fastest growing economies and is the second- largest consumer of oil, trailing only the United States.

New York  - Major US stock market indices slid Friday to a three-month low, led by consumer and technology companies, as oil prices jumped and analysts said demand for electronics may weaken.

Declines came after Standard & Poor's said it may cut credit ratings on automakers General Motors Corp and Ford Motor Co because of higher fuel costs, sending GM to its lowest level since 1982.

The price of crude oil rose 2.69 dollars to 134.62 dollars per barrel.

New York - Major US stock market indices slid Friday to a three-month low, led by consumer and technology companies, as oil prices jumped and analysts said demand for electronics may weaken.

Declines came after Standard & Poor's said it may cut credit ratings on automakers General Motors Corp and Ford Motor Co because of higher fuel costs, sending GM to its lowest level since 1982.

The price of crude oil rose 2.69 dollars to 134.62 dollars per barrel.

New York  - The top UN official responsible for personnel security and safety resigned Tuesday in the wake of the terrorist attacks that killed a score of UN staff in Algiers last year.

Sir David Veness, the under-secretary general for the UN department of safety and security, submitted his resignation and was accepted by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

New York  - The chief UN mediator in negotiations to end the ethnic conflict in Sudan's Darfur region said Tuesday neither the Sudanese government nor the rebel groups trust the process and do not believe that any peace pacts can be implemented.

Jan Eliason, a former Swedish foreign minister and president of the UN General Assembly, said also that the implementation of another peace agreement, between the Arab-led regime in Khartoum in the north and the Christian government in the south, has an important influence in the peace process in Darfur.

New York - Pilots at Delta and Northwest agreed Tuesday to a tentative joint contract that could clear the way for a merger of the airlines, the companies said in a statement.

Without such a deal - which irons out seniority issues among the flight crews allowing them to determine issues such as pay, flight routes and which airplanes pilots are allowed to fly - the merger was unlikely to take place.

New York  - Major US stock market indices edged lower Tuesday as consumer confidence fell to its lowest level in 16 years and housing prices plummetted on the month.

The private New York-based Conference Board said its consumer confidence index declined to 50.4 in June from an adjusted 58.1 in May.

Home prices in the 20 largest US cities fell 15.3 per cent in April from a year earlier, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index, as the US housing slump appears to be showing few signs of letting up.

New York - Space needles were one thing, with a restaurant up top that rotated for an ever-changing view.

But now an Italian-based architect, David Fisher, Tuesday introduced a design that would allow every floor of a towering skyscraper of apartments to rotate at the will of its occupants or building operator, offering scenes of sunrise and sunset all from one location.

The first "rotating tower" is to be finished by 2010 in booming Dubai, the second shortly after in Moscow, said Fisher at his presentation.

Buyers can get in on the deal starting at 30,000 dollars per square meter. German companies have expressed interest, but Fisher would only reveal that it could be in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt or Munich.

New York  - One of Germany's most historic and scenic sites, the Dresden Elbe Valley, may stand to lose its status as a World Heritage site when UNESCO meets next month to review criteria of some of the more than 800 sites on the list.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said Wednesday it will meet in Quebec, Canada, July 2-10, to decide the fate of 30 sites on the so-called List in Danger because they failed to follow rules to remain on the World Heritage List. The Dresden site is one of them.

New York  - Sudan and the UN Development Programme agreed Wednesday on a plan to re-integrate 180,000 ex-combatants into society three years after Khartoum and rebels in southern Sudan signed a peace agreement to end their decades-long civil war.

Khartoum's government of National Unity, the government of Southern Sudan and UNDP signed the agreement after donors, particularly Japan, decided to financially back the re-integration programmes estimated at 430 million dollars over a four-year period.

New York  - MasterCard Inc, the world's second- biggest credit-card network, Wednesday agreed to pay up to 1.8 billion dollars over three years to American Express.

The amount is to settle AmEx complaints that MasterCard had blocked banks from issuing American Express Cards, MasterCard said in a statement.

American Express welcomed the agreement, saying it would help defray borrower defaults, which it said are likely to be more than expected, Bloomberg financial news service reported.

New York - Major US stock-market indices closed higher Wednesday after the Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady and sounded more positive on US economic growth.

The US central bank kept its benchmark federal funds rate at 2 per cent, after slashing 3.25 percentage points since September.

A statement from the Fed's monetary-policy board sounded more optimistic on economic growth but warned of greater inflation risks.

New York  - The United Nations Security Council on Friday extended a three-decade old observer force in the disputed Golan Heights claimed by both Israel and Syria.

The 15-nation council, in a unanimous decision, prolonged for another six months the 1,000-strong UN force that has been observing a ceasefire between the two countries since 1974.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in a report to the council, said the region had remained "generally quiet" over the last six months, but warned that it would remain "tense" until the Middle East situation was resolved.

New York  - US stocks closed lower on Friday as oil reached yet another record and investors predicted a slump in company earnings.

Crude oil climbed above 142 dollars per barrel in New York, a new high, after topping 140 dollars for the first time on Thursday.

Markets were little moved by a better-than-expected 0.8-per-cent rise in consumer spending in May, spurred mostly by government tax rebate cheques that began reaching consumers at the beginning of the month to help boost the sagging US economy.

New York  - Britain said Monday the UN Security Council may consider sanctions against individuals in Zimbabwe who subverted the presidential vote that re-elected President Robert Mugabe for a sixth consecutive term.

But British Ambassador John Sawers said the council would peg its discussion on the sanctions to decisions by the African Union summit that met in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, beginning on Monday.

New York  - The construction of the new World Trade Center in New York is facing financial difficulties, which may delay its completion until at least the middle of 2010, a news reports said Monday.

The Port of Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the 16-acre site known as Ground Zero following its destruction by terrorists on September 11, 2001, may have to spend an additional 3 billion dollars to complete the new project, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said.

New York  - Major US stock indices closed about even Monday to the end of the worst month for US markets in six years.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 10.2 per cent of its value over the month, its largest June retreat since 1930, at the depths of the crash during the Great Depression. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index plummeted 8.6 per cent in June.

New York  - Vietnam took over the UN Security Council presidency on Tuesday, a position that will for the first time thrust the communist regime into the role of top keeper of world peace and security.

The monthly rotating post among the 15-nation council has placed some of the world's poorest and smallest countries on a par with more powerful nations. The council is dominated by permanent members: the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain.

New York - The new World Trade Center will not be completed on time to mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, overwhelmed by cost overruns and an over optimistic schedule, news reports said Tuesday.

News headlines said construction efforts had become stuck at Ground Zero, the 16-acre site of the former center's 110-storey twin towers that were destroyed by the terrorist attacks that killed more than 2,700 people.

New York  - An Italian 15th-century half-moon sculpture of the Archangel Michael crashed to the floor of New York's Metropolitan Museum, but officials said it can be repaired, media reports said Wednesday.

The glazed blue-and-white terracotta relief sculpture by Andrea della Robbia (1435-1525) "came loose from metal mounts" and fell to a stone floor sometime early Tuesday morning, the museum said in a statement on its website.

New York  - Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday his government will consider new proposals by the five UN Security Council permanent members and Germany, which aim at settling the dispute over Iran's uranium enrichment programme.

Mottaki said at UN headquarters in New York that the package of proposals was being "examined" by Tehran.

New York  - The United States and Britain proposed Wednesday that the UN Security Council impose a freeze of assets and travel ban against Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and those in his government who were responsible for the violence and presidential elections' crisis.

New York - US stock indices saw mixed results on Thursday as oil prices continued climbing to record highs and the US economy shed more jobs.

The US Department of Labour said 62,000 jobs were lost in June, the sixth straight monthly decline, though the unemployment rate remained steady at 5.5 per cent.

Crude oil contracts for delivery next month climbed above 145 dollars per barrel for the first time amid fears that new demands on oil from China could further strain supplies.

The New York City
department of health is implementing a new anti-trans fat program in the city.
It had earlier formulated new rules to stop use of trans fat in hotels and
restaurants. In the first phase restaurants were asked to refrain from using
frying oils. The new regulation will now cover previously excluded items such
as baked goods, frozen foods, and doughnuts. Restaurants and bakeries will be
given a three month grace period to comply with new health rules. After that a
fine of $2,000 will be imposed from October 1.

New York  - The lowly hot dog, symbol of US Independence Day picnics, Friday again moved to the center of an annual competition, with the winner forced to endure an eat-off to break a tie.

It wasn't enough for Joey Chestnut, 24, of California, the defending world champion, to swallow 59 hot dogs in ten minutes. So did his long-time rival, Japan's Takeru Kobayashi, 30.

That put the two of them into overtime at the flagship hot-dog manufacturer Nathan's stand on Coney island, New York City's amusement outpost.

New York/Quebec City - The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO approved three new additions Sunday to its prestigious list of world heritage sites.

At the annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to expand the list.

Added are Saudi Arabia's archaeological site al-Hijr, Mauritius' Le Morne cultural landscape and an earthen architectural site in the southern Chinese province of Fujian, the so-called Fujian Tulou, a grouping of 46 buildings that date from the 12th to the 20th centuries.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned in the "strongest terms" the suicide bombing that killed more than 40 people in Kabul.

The attack near the Afghan ministry of interior and India's embassy in Afghanistan killed 44 people and injured 147 others, Afghan officials said. The dead included high-ranking India embassy officials.

New York/Quebec  - In one of the most controversial decisions of its eight-day meetings, UNESCO on Monday named a Hindu temple in Cambodia to the World Heritage list that has been under the cloud of a border dispute with Thailand for decades.

Preah Vihear is a stunning clifftop temple dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva perched on the cliff that defines the Thai-Cambodian border.

Cambodia sought designation for the millennium-old temple, but Thailand has challenged the move over a border spat dating to a 1962 International Court of Justice ruling.

New York - US stock indices recorded their biggest jump in a month as oil prices fell sharply Tuesday and the Federal Reserve opened the door to extending emergency lending into 2009.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the central bank's unprecedented lending to investment banks, set up in March at the height of the credit crisis for a six-month period, could be extended into 2009 if the financial sector's "unusual and exigent circumstances continue to prevail."

New York, July 9: Fury has erupted over the shabby treatment of the supersonic airliner, Concorde, in New York.

The jet, one of 20 Concordes built, had been loaned by British Airways to New York’s USS Intrepid Air-Sea Museum, but was moved when a pier was rebuilt.

Today, according to the New York Daily News, it lies rotting and vandalised – abandoned on an old airfield.

The iconic jet has had its nose cut off by a lorry, its windscreen cracked by footballs and its engines full of birds’ nests. Its wheels and fuselage are spattered with bird droppings, while the paint has peeled off.

U. S. air expert Phil Derner Junior was quoted as saying that the jet was a “victim of abuse and carelessness”.

New York  - Arab states asked the UN Security Council on Wednesday to re-declare Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories illegal and condemn new constructions in East Jerusalem.

Libya, a council member and head of the Arab group in the UN, submitted a draft resolution calling on Israel to immediately stop its expansion in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The United States is opposed to the demand.

"For us, the criteria for an acceptable resolution which can make it to the council, is that it is balanced," said US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, explaining that achievements or setbacks from both sides in the Isaeli-Palestinian conflicts must be reflected in the draft.

New York  - The appeal for 404 million dollars launched Wednesday by the Kabul government and the United Nations shows that the world has not done enough to meet Afghanistan's humanitarian needs, a United Nations officials said.

The appeal was launched in Kabul, just six months after the UN asked for hundreds of millions of dollars to help the country's most desperate people. The 404 million dollars being sought would go to feed 4.5 million Afghans facing by high food prices, drought and poor harvests.

New York  - Major US stock indices fell sharply Wednesday on technology sales warnings and fresh concerns of more mortgage-related losses for financial firms.

Government-chartered lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plunged to 16-year share-price lows on renewed warnings that they lack enough capital to keep their operations running.

The condition of the two largest US home-loan providers has ignited fears of another batch of mortgage-related writedowns and led a sharp drop in financial shares.

New York  - The observances of World Population Day on Friday present an opportunity to highlight the importance of family planning and to integrate it into national development plans, the UN Population Fund said Thursday.

The fund, known by its acronym UNFPA, has been the target of attacks by conservatives in the United States, which charged the fund for favouring abortion in China. UNFPA has rejected the charge.

New York - The oil-rich government of Dubai has bought a 90-per-cent stake in the Chrysler Building, one of the few art deco constructions of the 1930 era in New York City, news reports said Thursday.

The reports said the Abu Dhabi Investment Council snapped the pricey real estate from Tishman Speyer and German real estate investors for 800 million dollars, reducing those two groups' holding to about 10 per cent.

New York - The United Nations appealed Thursday for a whopping 482 million dollars to help Myanmar's military regime rebuild the nation devastated by Cyclone Nargis in May, which killed an estimated 140,000 people and left 2.4 million others in dire needs.

John Holmes, the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian assistance, said at UN headquarters in New York that the new appeal would cover 103 projects, ranging from food supplies, agriculture, water and sanitation, health, to schooling and shelter.

New York  - Major US stock indices climbed Thursday as top US economic policy officials sought to allay mortgage-market concerns and called for more financial regulation, while Dow Chemical announced a 15-billion-dollar acquisition of rival Rohm & Haas.

The stock gains came despite a 5-dollar leap in the price of crude oil. Increases in metals prices spurred on producers.

Mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued a week of steep share declines amid continuing concerns that they lack adequate capital to maintain operations.

New York  - The UN Security Council met Friday to decide whether to take action on a draft resolution that would impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and other sanctions on President Robert Mugabe and his associates.

China's UN Ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters that the draft's language was "unacceptable" to him and his colleagues, whom he did not name.

New York  - Russia on Friday vetoed sanctions against Zimbabwe when the UN Security Council took action on a draft resolution to punish the government of President Robert Mugabe.

Nine of the 15-nation council voted for and five against. But the Russian negative vote constituted a veto as it is a permanent member of the council. (dpa)

New York, July 13 : Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said that there are no US or other foreign military personnel on the hunt for Osama bin Laden in the tribal areas, and none will be allowed in to search for the top al-Qaeda leader.

In an interview with foreign news agency, Qureshi said his nation’s new government has ruled out such military operations, covert or otherwise, to catch militants.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday voiced "deep satisfaction" about the swap of prisoners and bodies between Israel and Lebanon, and hinted that another deal could be in the works.

"I believe that these steps will contribute to improving the overall humanitarian situation in the region," Ban said in a statement.

He said he expected "action to be taken soon for the release of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit (by Hezbollah) and Palestinian prisoners (by Israel)."

New York - The UN Security Council condemned on Wednesday "in the strongest terms" the killing of seven peacekeepers in northern Darfur, calling the attack "pre-meditated, deliberate and intended to inflict casualties."

The ambush and attack on July 8 against the joint UN-African Union mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was the most severe since the forced began deploying six months ago. The attack injured 22 other peacekeepers, seven of them seriously.

New York - The largest newspaper publisher in the US, Gannett Co, reported a sharp drop in profits Wednesday as the flight of readers to the internet amid harsh economic conditions continued to wreak havoc in the newspaper industry.

The publisher of USA Today and more than 80 other newspapers said that profit dropped 36 per cent to 233 million dollars as advertising plummeted by 16.6 per cent.

The company said it will incur charges of 2.5 billion to 3 billion dollars to account for the company's declining market value as newspaper readership declines. Many readers still visit Internet news sites, but online advertising rates are still too low to cover the losses in print editions.

New York - Stocks rallied on Wall Street Wednesday after better-than-expected earnings reports at Wells Fargo bank caused investors to buy-up financial shares.

"It was really quite an extraordinary rally," John Carey of Pioneer Investment Management told Bloomberg financial news. "There was panic buying. A lot of people have been quite underweight the financials, and yet they remain an important part of the market. If there's a sense they're going to move higher, you have a lot of people coming in to buy all the names at the same time."

New York  - Soft drink giant Coca-Cola said Thursday that profits fell 23 per cent in the second quarter on writedowns by its largest bottler.

Net income was 1.4 billion dollars, or 61 cents per share, in the quarter, dropping from 1.9 billion dollars, or 80 cents a share, in the year-earlier period, the Atlanta, Georgia-based firm said. Revenues rose 17 per cent on strong international sales to 9 billion dollars.

New York  - Technology colossus IBM reported second quarter income of 2.77 billion dollars Thursday, up 22 per cent over the year ago quarter on strong global growth in sales of services, hardware and software.

Revenue rose 13 per cent to 26.8 billion dollar, with 7 per cent of that growth stemming from currency gains caused by the record weakness of the US dollar.

New York - Stocks rallied on Wall Street for a second day Thursday on falling oil prices as companies have begun to report better than expected fourth quarter earnings.

JPMorgan, the largest US bank by market value, led financial shares to their biggest-ever two-day surge as profit beat estimates by 22 percent, according to Bloomberg financial news. A number of other banks also climbed on earnings that exceeded projections. Home- improvement chains Home Depot Inc and Lowe's Cos led gains in all

New York - Technology colossus IBM reported second quarter income of 2.77 billion dollars Thursday, up 22 per cent over the year ago quarter on strong global growth in sales of services, hardware and software. 

Revenue rose 13 per cent to 26.8 billion dollar, with 7 per cent of that growth stemming from currency gains caused by the record weakness of the US dollar. 

"IBM had an outstanding quarter and a strong first half for 2008. These results demonstrate that IBM has the ability to thrive in both emerging and established markets," said Samuel J Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. 

New York - US manufacturer Honeywell said Friday profits rose more than expected in the second quarter on strong demand for its airline parts and automation and control systems.

Second-quarter profits rose to 723 million dollars, up 18 per cent from the year-earlier period, the Morristown, New Jersey-based company said.

Revenue rose 13 per cent to 9.7 billion dollars.

Honeywell is the world's largest maker of cockpit electronics and also is involved in the production of chemicals and transportation technology. (dpa)

New York  - The Marshall Islands said Friday electrical power in the small Pacific nation may be switched off in September when its fuel supplies are expected to run out, as high food and energy prices have begun to hit hard some developing countries, particularly small islands isolated from the rest of the world.

New York - US stocks defied a week of gloomy predictions and controversial financial decisions by US officials, bouncing back by Friday after a slump on Monday and Tuesday.

For Friday, better-than-estimated results from Citigroup Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo & Co relieved worries that they would extend their yearlong slump, Bloomberg financial news reported.

US banking giant Citigroup Inc reported a loss of 2.5 billion dollars in the second quarter amid credit losses and write downs in the troubled financial market.

New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday welcomed an assessment for future international humanitarian assistance to Myanmar following the devastation by cyclone Nargis in May.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) presented the assessment for medium-term recovery needs in Myanmar at a meeting in in Singapore on Monday, attended by John Holmes, the chief UN humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed Monday the agreement between Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to hold talks on sharing power and ending the political crisis in that country.

"The secretary general encourages all sides to engage, in good faith, in serious talks that would lead to a lasting solution to the political crisis and address the urgent economic and humanitarian needs of the Zimbabwean people," UN spokeswoman Michelle Montas said.

New York  - US stocks edged lower Monday for the first decline in four days, after a key economic gauge declined and oil prices rose.

The private Conference Board's leading economic index dropped 0.1 per cent in June. Crude oil prices gained more than 2 dollars to close above 131 dollars per barrel in New York, after hitting a six- week low last week.

Health company shares dropped after a popular cholesterol drug sold by Merck & Co and Schering-Plough Corp was linked to cancer by new research.

New York  - Violent actions have dropped in Gaza Strip in the past month while a number of "encouraging" developments have taken place across the Middle East, the United Nations said Tuesday.

The drop in violence in Gaza was "a significant, but fragile, achievement," B. Lynn Pascoe, the chief UN political affairs officer, told the UN Security Council.

New York  - Somalia called on the UN Security Council on Wednesday to deploy an international peacekeeping force without delay in order to put an end to its 17-year-old civil war.

It asked for a much smaller force than the previously proposed operation of 26,000 military and civilian personnel, and for proper funding so the force can do a "good job under reasonable circumstances."

New York  - The US automaker Chrysler, the country's third largest and deep in the red, Wednesday said it planned to cut another 1,000 salaried jobs as sales tumbled 22 per cent in the first six months this year.

The company would use "retirements, special programs and attrition," to complete the reductions by September 30, spokesman Dave Elshoff was quoted as saying by Bloomberg financial news.

New York  - South African judge Navanethem Pillay was named Thursday High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN's top position that is tasked with promoting and protecting human rights worldwide.

The UN General Assembly will meet on Monday to approve the nomination made by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon. If Pillay won approval by the 192-nation assembly, she would replace Louise Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, beginning in August for a four-year term.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday Israel's intention to erect new Jewish housing in the West Bank would violate agreements reached in negotiations to resolve the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

Ban's spokesperson Michelle Montas said, "The secretary general has stressed many times before that settlement construction or expansion is contrary to international law and Israel's commitments under the road map and the Annapolis process."

New York  - The United States said Thursday that it would seek to impose "stronger measures" if Myanmar's military regime continues to refuse to implement democratic reforms and release political prisoners, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said following a UN Security Council meeting that UN special envoy for Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari must bring back "concrete results" from his scheduled mid-August visit to Myanmar.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday sent a "warm welcome" to the decision by Cypriot leaders to restart full- fledged peace talks in September for a comprehensive solution to the ethnically divided island.

Greek Cypriot leader Dimitris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat agreed to start the peace talks on September 3. They announced the new schedule for the peace talks in Nicosia Friday.

New York  - US small appliance maker Black & Decker said Friday profits shrank in the second quarter as declining demand in Western Europe and the United States coupled with rising costs.

Net profits fell 18 percent to 97 million dollars. Revenue fell 3 per cent to 1.6 billion dollars, and the Towson, Maryland-based firm predicted the week sales would continue in the second half of the year.

New York  - China on Friday asked the international community for 33.4 million dollars for a first phase of recovery programmes for areas stricken by the devastating earthquake in Sichuan province.

The appeal was worked out by UN agencies based in China for mid- to-long-term assistance plans aimed at rebuilding the lives of earthquake victims, by paying for shelters, water and sanitation, health and nutrition, education and protection of vulnerable groups and the environment.

New York - Major US stock indices rose Friday on the back of some better-than-expected economic data, giving investors hope that a nationwide slowdown in growth may be slowly coming to an end.

The Commerce Department reported that durable goods orders rose 0.8 per cent in June, marking the first consecutive monthly rise since July of last year. Economists had expected a 0.3-per-cent decline.

New York, July 28: Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s ongoing visit, his first after becoming PM, to the US will give President George Bush an opportunity to recast relations with Islamabad, making it clear that Washington is committed to strengthening both Pakistan’s democracy and its ability to fight extremism.

That will require a lot more economic assistance and more carefully monitored military aid, said an article in the New York Times.

New York  - The UN General Assembly approved Monday South African judge Navanethem Pillay as the body's high commissioner for human rights, citing her struggle against apartheid and judicial career.

Pillay was selected by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who asked the 192-nation assembly to approve her nomination. Pillay will take over the post on August 1 for a four-year term, replacing Louise Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice. The office of the high commissioner for human rights is based in Geneva.

New York  - Verizon, the second-largest US telecom firm, reported strong second-quarter profits on Monday thanks to its growing mobile phone division.

Net profits rose nearly 12 per cent to 1.9 billion dollars, or 66 cents per share, despite a decline in traditional land-line phone service, the company said in New York.

Revenue rose 4 per cent to 24.1 billion dollars in the April-to- June period.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday strongly condemned the weekend bombings in Turkey and India and presented his condolences to families of the victims.

Istanbul was hit by a pair of bomb attacks on Sunday, killing at least 16 civilians and injuring more than 100.

Ban said in a statement he "deeply regrets the loss of life and conveys his sympathies to the families of the victims and the wounded."

New York  - The United Nations called Monday for a cessation of hostilities worldwide during the Summer Olympics Games in Beijing next month.

"Though limited in duration, this truce has unlimited potential," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a message to UN members asking them to observe the Olympic Truce in order to allow athletes from all countries to travel and compete in the games without the threats of war.

The call for the observance of the Olympic Truce was endorsed by the International Olympic Committee and the UN General Assembly.

New York  - Kraft Foods, the world's second-largest producer of grocery products, said Monday earnings rose in the second quarter after it increased price to accommodate higher costs for ingredients and energy.

Net profit rose 4 per cent to 732 million dollars, or 48 cents per share, from from 707 million dollars, or 44 cents, in the year- earlier period, the Northfield, Illinois-based firm said. Revenues rose 21 per cent to 11.2 billion dollars.

New York  - Chewing gum maker Wrigley said profits rose 14 per cent in the second quarter ahead of its scheduled take-over by candy giant Mars.

Profits were 194 million dollars, or 70 cents per share, the Chicago-based company said. Revenue rose 14 per cent to 1.6 billion dollars.

The company was boosted by the weaker dollar that aided international sales, which accounted for most of the firm's revenues.

New York  - The government in Myanmar has made "quite a lot of progress" in post-Cyclone Nargis reconstruction efforts since the disaster struck in May, the top UN humanitarian affairs official said Monday.

John Holmes returned to New York following a three-day visit to Myanmar, saying he saw a return to normalcy in areas affected by the devastating cyclone, which left more than 140,000 dead and missing people. Some 2.5 million people still need assistance to cope with the disaster's aftermath.

New York - Major US stock indices posted steep drops Monday after the International Monetary Fund predicted more losses for financial institutions and "no bottom" in sight to the US housing crisis.

The IMF stood by its prediction of 1-trillion-dollar combined losses in the financial sector stemming from the one-year-old credit crisis in the United States - more than double the writedowns reported to date by banks and mortgage lenders.

New York - Major US stock indices posted steep drops Monday after the International Monetary Fund predicted more losses for financial institutions and "no bottom" in sight to the US housing crisis.

The IMF stood by its prediction of 1-trillion-dollar combined losses in the financial sector stemming from the one-year-old credit crisis in the United States - more than double the writedowns reported to date by banks and mortgage lenders.

New York  - Starbucks will close nearly three-quarters of its stores in Australia as part of a massive ongoing restructuring move to cut costs amid weaker sales, the coffee giant said Tuesday.

The Seattle, Washington-based firm also announced Tuesday that it would cut another 1,000 jobs at its US stores and eliminate its chief operating officer position.

The moves are part of overall cuts that chief executive Howard Schultz said earlier this month would see the closure of 600 under- performing US stores.

New York  - Major US stock indices rallied on Tuesday, led by surging steel profits, lower oil prices and a jump in financial stocks despite some worrying new housing data.

US Steel Corp, the second-largest US steel producer, climbed 14 per cent after more than doubling its profits in the second quarter of the year. An index of steelmakers jumped by the most since 2002, according to Bloomberg financial news.

Crude oil fell more than 2.50 dollars to 122.19 dollars per barrel in New York, part of a weeks-long drop since topping 140 dollars per barrel in early July.

New York  - The UN Security Council voted unanimously Wednesday to terminate the mission of military observers at a disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The 15-nation council decided to entirely withdraw the mission, which since last year had begun relocating their personnel out of a temporary security zone after Eritrea increasingly limited the peacekeepers' movements with measures such as cutting off petroleum for their transportation.

New York  - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called Wednesday for tough UN sanctions to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Barak met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at United Nations headquarters in New York, saying that economic sanctions would hurt Iran's nuclear programmes. Iran has said that its uranium enrichment programme was intended for peaceful, civilian nuclear energy and not for weapons.

"We believe that no options should be removed in this regard from the table," Barak told reporters.

New York  - Starbucks reported losses in its third quarter due to costs related to the closure of 600 stores in the United States, the coffee giant said Wednesday.

The Seattle, Washington-based firm lost 7 million dollars in the quarter down from earnings of 158 million dollars in the year-earlier period. Revenue rose 9 per cent to 2.6 billion dollars.

New York  - The temperature in the United Nations Secretariat will go up a few degrees in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions and save money, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday.

On Friday, the landmark headquarters of the United Nations in New York will heat up and the more than 4,000 employees will be working in 25-degree-Celsius temperatures, up from 22 degrees. The major conference rooms will be a little bit cooler, at 23.9 degrees Celsius.

New York  - Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Wednesday that the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will not endanger peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Visiting the United Nations, Barak said that Olmert, who has been ensnared by a corruption scandal, made the right decision by not seeking re-election as Kadima party leader, meaning he will leave office in September.

New York  - The Walt Disney Company said Wednesday that earnings rose in the third quarter led by profits from its theme parks and cable television networks.

Net profits rose 9 per cent to 1.3 billion dollars, or 66 cents per share, including one-time profits, from 1.2 billion, or 58 cents per share, in the year-earlier period. Nearly half the profit came from the purchase and sale of subsidiaries, including the acquisition of Disney Stores North America and the sale of movie. com.

New York  - Major US stock indices rose Wednesday after a surge in oil prices led energy companies to their largest gains in six years, while the Federal Reserve said it would extend borrowing to investment banks.

Crude oil jumped 4.58 dollars to 126.77 dollars per barrel in New York trading as petrol inventories declined, sending an energy sector index up 5.6 per cent.

New York  - US breakfast cereal maker Kellogg Company said Thursday profits rose in the second quarter despite increased costs for its raw ingredients as it passed on the prices to consumers.

Net profits rose 4 per cent to 312 million dollars, or 82 cents per share, from 301 million dollars, or 71 cents per share, the Battle Creek, Michigan-based firm said.

Revenue rose 11 per cent to 3.3 billion dollars on the weaker dollar and higher prices for its popular cereals.

New York  - Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni reiterated Thursday a warning often heard from her government that the current conflict in the Middle East is between extremist and moderate militants and not between Israelis and Palestinians.

Livni was at United Nations headquarters in New York for talks with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about the situation in the region and the "global threat" of Iran.

New York  - US tabacco company Altria, whose brands include Marlboro, said Thursday second-quarter profits rose after it spun-off its international operations on higher cigarette costs in the United States.

Earnings rose 30 per cent to 930 million dollars over year-earlier earnings excluding international operations. Revenue rose 4 per cent to 5.1 billion dollars, the Richmond, Virginia-based company said.

New York  - The UN military observer mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea began Thursday to liquidate its headquarters in the capital cities of both countries, one day after the UN Security Council terminated its mandate.

The council's decision stemmed from the failure of both countries to accept a compromise solution over their border dispute. The two- year war between Ethiopia and Eritrea ended in 2000 with a ceasefire that was to be monitored by the UN mission. The UN said the war claimed at least 70,000 lives on both sides.

New York  - A United Nations rapporteur is scheduled to visit Myanmar next week to discuss human rights concerns, it was announced Thursday.

The UN rapporteur for human rights, Tomás Ojea Quintana, will be in Myanmar, formerly Burma, from Sunday to Thursday for a first visit to the country ruled by the military for more than four decades, and which has not considered human rights issues a top priority.

New York  - The Eastman Kodak Company, manufacturer of cameras, film and other photography company, said Thursday that profits fell in the second quarter on higher materials costs.

Net profits fell 14 per cent to 459 million dollars, or 1.62 dollars per share, from 575 million dollars, or 2 dollars per share, in the year-earlier period.

Revenue rose just 1 per cent to 2.5 billion dollars, the Rochester, New York-based firm said.

New York  - Stocks retreated on Wall Street Thursday after US economic growth was less than analysts had predicted.

The US economy grew at 1.9 per cent in the second quarter of 2008, the government said Thursday, shaking off an ongoing credit and housing crisis that had some predicting a recession in the first half of the year.

The gross domestic product (GDP) figure was up from a revised 0.9 per cent in the first quarter, but less than the 2.3 per cent economists had predicted for the world's largest economy, according to Bloomberg financial news.

New York - Stocks retreated on Wall Street Thursday after US economic growth was less than analysts had predicted.

The US economy grew at 1.9 per cent in the second quarter of 2008, the government said Thursday, shaking off an ongoing credit and housing crisis that had some predicting a recession in the first half of the year.

The gross domestic product (GDP) figure was up from a revised 0.9 per cent in the first quarter, but less than the 2.3 per cent economists had predicted for the world's largest economy, according to Bloomberg financial news.

New York - The UN Security Council Thursday extended the joint peacekeeping mission to Sudan for one year, while at the same time rejecting demands by Libya and South Africa to defer the arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.

Prolonged by lengthy diplomatic wrangling, the council's 15 members agreed with a large majority to merely note concerns voiced by the African Union (AU) against al-Bashir's possible prosecution.

The United States abstained from the vote in protest. US Ambassador Alejandro Wolf said voicing concerns against the arrest warrant issued by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague would send the "wrong signal" to Sudan's president.

New York  - Chevron Corp, the second-largest US oil company, said Friday profits soared to a recored in the second quarter on surging oil prices.

Net profits rose 11 per cent to 6 billion dollars, or 2.90 dollars per share, from 5.4 billion dollars, or 2.52 dollars per share, in the year-earlier period, the San Ramon, California-based energy company said. Still, earnings fell below analysts' estimates.

Revenue rose 48 per cent to 82.9 billion dollars.

New York  - Stocks fell on Wall Street Friday pushed by billions in losses at largest US automaker General Motors, higher unemployment figures and rising oil prices.

GM lost 15.5 billion dollars, or 27.33 dollars per share, in the second quarter on the back of weak demand in the US car market spurred by soaring fuel prices and a weaker economy, the company said Friday from its headquarters in Detroit. The loss was worse than had been anticipated. In the same period last year, the company made a profit of 891 million dollars, or 1.56 dollars per share.

New York/Winnipeg - Debby, the oldest known polar bear in captivity, is suffering signs of decline after suffering several strokes, according to the Winnipeg Sun newspaper on Saturday.

The female bear has lost nearly 50 kilograms in the past year and is no longer interested in eating, according to zoo officials in Winnipeg, in the Canadian province of Manitoba.

"The outlook that she would recover is not good," zoo curator Bob Wrigley was quoted as saying.

New York, Aug. 4: Senator Barack Obama has described Republican rival John McCain''s campaign as cynical and negative, but not racist.

"Their team is good at creating distractions and engaging in negative attacks," the New York Daily News quoted Obama, as saying.

Speaking during a break from campaigning in Florida Saturday, Obama said that the McCain''s campaign isn''t trying to vilify him because he''s black.

New York, Aug 4 : A Pakistani-American historian and expert on South Asia has written in her new book that Al Qaeda has resurfaced in Pakistan’s tribal areas in the form of Taliban.

“Pakistan''s federally administered tribal areas (FATA) are wilder than the wild west because Al-Qaeda has resurfaced here in the form of a new breed of Taliban who are threatening both Afghanistan and Pakistan,” says Tufts University Professor Ayesha Jalal, herself a native of Pakistan.

In her new book “Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia” providing cultural and historical context to jihadi ideals in South Asia, she adds: “It is imperative to understand how this has happened if we are to combat extremism.”

New York  - The suspect in the beheading of a fellow passenger on a Canadian bus reportedly ate the flesh of his victim afterwards, a Canadian news report said Sunday.

The suspect, who has been identified as a newspaper deliverer in Edmonton, in western Canada, reportedly was observed "hacking off pieces" of his victim and "eating it," according to a leaked recording of Royal Canadian Mounted Police at the accident scene, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported online.

New York  - The board of biotech firm ImClone Systems Inc on Monday rejected as too low a 4.3-billion-dollar take-over offer from pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb.

The board of director's said in a statement that the offer undervalues experimental cancer drugs that ImClone is in the process of developing.

Activist investor Carl Icahn, who chairs ImClone's board, said he was opposed to the offer.

New York  - Motorola Inc on Monday named Qualcomm Inc executive Sanjay Jha as co-chief executive to head its floundering mobile phone unit.

Jha, 45, comes to Motorola from chip maker Qualcomm, where he served as chief operating officer. At Motorola, he will be co-chief executive with Greg Brown, 47, who will head the broadband business, the Schaumburg, Illinois-based firm said.

Motorola is in the process of splitting its mobile phone and broadband businesses. (dpa)

New York  - Wall Street stock indices dropped Monday, led by energy producers struck by another drop in the price of oil.

Crude oil futures fell 3.67 dollars to a 13-week low of 121.41 dollars per barrel in New York trading. Shares in Exxon Mobil Corp plunged to a 16-month low after the company reported record second- quarter profits last week.

Commodity prices fell to their lowest levels since March, sparking a sell-off in metals producers including Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.

New York  - A major shareholder in internet giant Yahoo Inc has requested a probe into the closely-watched re-election of chief executive Jerry Yang during last week's shareholders' meeting, US news reports said Tuesday.

The request follows speculation that Yang's share of the poll appeared higher than if votes had been cast as recommended prior to Friday's meeting, The Wall Street Journal reported in its Tuesday edition.

Yahoo however contended that independent shareholders had swayed the election in Yang's favour.

New York  - US consumer pharmaceuticals company Procter & Gamble (P&G) reported a quarterly profit Tuesday despite higher costs for energy and raw materials.

Profit in the fiscal fourth quarter ending June 30 was 3 billion dollars, a rise of a third on the year before, the company announced from its headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Sales rose by 10 per cent to 21.3 billion dollars, boosted by the exchange rate benefits of a weak dollar.

P&G products include Pampers nappies, Gillette shaving products and Ariel clothes washing products. (dpa)

New York  - New York next month will launch a citywide campaign to fight groping and sexual harassment in its crowded subway system, which has gone largely unreported and unpunished, news reports said Wednesday.

The city's transit system plans to distribute some 2,000 posters in September in the vast subway network that carry millions of commuters each day. New York City has a population of 8 million, but rush hour bring millions more people from suburbs in Connecticut and New Jersey to their offices in Manhattan.

New York  - Sprint Nextel, the third-largest US mobile phone company, on Wednesday reported losses in the second quarter as its number of customers continued to decline.

Quarterly losses were 344 million dollars, or 12 cents per share, after earnings of 19 million dollars, or 1 cent per share, in the year-earlier period, the Overland Park, Kansas-based firm said.

Revenue fell 11 per cent to 9.1 billion dollars.

New York  - Automakers Chrysler LLC and Nissan Motor Co are in talks to significantly expand cooperation and jointly produce a mid-size car, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

According to people familiar with the talks, Japan's Nissan would build a mid-size sedan that US firm Chrysler would sell and market under its own name in the United States.

New York  - The United Nations urged the Sudanese government Thursday to review the death sentences of 30 African rebels in Darfur because the decisions may have failed to meet international standards.

Sudan's counter-terrorism court ruled that the rebels took part in the failed attacks against Khartoum in May and sentenced them to death. But the UN special envoy for Sudan Ashraf Qazi raised concerns that the rebels did not receive a fair trial.

New York  - The UN mission in Iraq said Thursday it stands ready to help Baghdad's parliament complete a set of electoral laws after it failed to reach an agreement before adjourning for the summer.

Iraqi legislators and political parties did not agree on Wednesday on the law, which may affect the holding of provincial elections in October. The electoral law was aimed at consolidating gains in establishing stronger security through the electoral process.

New York  - Citigroup reached a multibillion-dollar settlement with regulators and governments on Thursday on claims it improperly urged customers to buy a type of bond that fell apart in conjunction with the subprime mortgage crisis.

Citigroup will buy back from customers 7.5 billion dollars worth of auction-rate securities - a type of bond without a set interest rate for which rates are instead set at periodic auctions.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged warring parties in South Ossetia on Thursday to refrain from action that could endanger stability in their region.

Heavy fighting broke out between Georgia and South Ossetia, a breakaway region supported by Russia. The Georgian government in Tbilisi has accused Moscow of encouraging an autonomous South Ossetia.

UN spokeswoman Michelle Montas said Ban "urged the parties to refrain from any action that could further escalate the situation and threaten to destabilize the region." (dpa)

New York  - The United Nations agreed Thursday to disburse 1.2 million dollars to purchase non-food items, like blankets and kitchen sets, that had been burned or looted from UN warehouses for refugees in Chad.

The Central Emergency Response Fund in New York decided to release the amount at the request of the humanitarian coordinator in Chad following fighting in eastern Chad in June, which resulted in the losses in relief supplies.

New York  - The United Nations Security Council has called another emergency meeting scheduled for Friday afternoon in New York, after failing Thursday night to agree on a response to the escalation of violence in Georgia.

Thursday's late night meeting was called by Russia, whose ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, accused Georgia of aggressive behaviour toward the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

New York  - Children's cartoon character SpongeBob Squarepants has a new role - he features in an artist's critique of the controversial US interrogation technique called water-boarding.

The Water-Boarding Thrill Ride by artist Steven Powers opened this week at New York's Coney Island amusement park, where fun seekers can feed a dollar into a slot to watch robotic figures demonstrate the tortuous practice.

A sign on the outside of the booth shows SpongeBob saying, "It don't Gitmo better!" - a reference to Guantanamo Bay - as another character pours water over him.

New York - Oil futures dropped 4 per cent Friday in New York to book a weekly decline for the fourth time in five weeks, sparking a rally in US stocks and a surge in the US dollar.

Crude oil closed at 115.20 dollars per barrel on Friday, just as average US retail petrol prices dropped to a 10-week low.

Declining prices for fuel and other commodities were "very favorable" for the stock market, Cabot Money Management President Robert Lutts told the Bloomberg financial news agency. "It's taking off a huge tax that was put on companies, the stock market, and people in general."

New York, Aug 9 : Republican presidential candidate John McCain stole a page from Hillary Clinton’s playbook, recycling her greatest primary hits against Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

In a new ad titled “Praising McCain,” his team ran clips of Democrats lauding the Arizona senator’s maverick independence - topped by this classic Clinton punch from March 3: “I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.”

New York  - The UN Security Council held Saturday a fresh meeting to review the situation in the breakaway South Ossetia enclave where fighting between Russia and Georgia continued for a third day.

Russia, a veto power on the 15-nation council, called for the closed-door meeting a day after the body held an open debate to hear views from Russian and Georgian representatives as well as those of council members. The council did not issue any formal statement on its position.

New York  - An ongoing investigation into the collapse of the auction-rate securities market was widened Monday to include JP Morgan Chase, Wachovia Corp and Morgan Stanley, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said.

Cuomo's office sent letters to the banks Monday asking them to begin "immediate" settlement talks to resolve probes into their sales of auction-rate securities, which are typically bonds whose interest rates are reset by periodic bidding.

New York  - The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said Monday it had launched an emergency airlift to stockpile humanitarian supplies for civilians caught in the South Ossetia fighting, which has spread to other parts of Georgia.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, released 2 million dollars to cover the needs of those displaced by the fighting in Russia and Georgia. UN personnel were being deployed to the areas as well.

New York, Aug. 12 : A Harlem-based political consultant, Kevin Wardally, has expressed the view that racism will not be a factor in the November presidential contest between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, though there have been reports of fevered insinuations about racism and race-card-playing.

"It is just overblown and over-thought," claimed Wardally, 35, an African-American whose political journey has run from City Council precincts to Hillary Clinton''s campaign for president.

New York  - A United Nations internal investigation found that peacekeepers from India engaged in sexual exploitation and abuses when they were posted in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN said Tuesday.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply troubled" by prima facie evidence that the Indian contingent in the UN Mission in Congo had committed sex crimes while on duty in the West African nation.

New York  - Fighting in central Mindanao between Philippine government forces and Muslim groups has driven some 130,000 people out of their homes, raising the spectre of a humanitarian crisis, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday.

Ban said the displaced people face threats against their lives and livelihoods in the decades-long conflict between Manila and Muslims in the south.

Ban called for "restraint, protection of all civilians as well as access for the provision of speedy humanitarian assistance to the affected population."

New York  - US markets fell Tuesday as analysts said financial firms may report more losses tied to the credit crunch and sub-prime mortgage crisis.

"It's going to be like a long, slow car crash to work through the housing situation," Joseph Veranth of Dana Investment Advisors told Bloomberg financial news. "We're still in the middle of it."

New York, Aug. 13: It is not for nothing that the New York Times is known as America’s most famous paper. Why? Because it did not think twice about issuing corrections 48 years later on two of its news items that appeared in 1960.

One related to a review of a Broadway production of West Side Story, and the other concerned a certain soldier going by the name of John McCain, now the expected Republican presidential nominee.

New York  - Deere and Co, the world's largest farm equipment maker, said Wednesday it had withstood the weaker US economy and construction market as sales of its agricultural machines led up quarterly earnings.

Net profits rose 7 per cent to 575 million dollars, in the third quarter as the Moline, Illinois-based firm also fought rising prices for raw materials. The amount fell short of analysts' estimates. Quarterly revenue rose 17 per cent to 7.7 billion dollars.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged the implementation of the ceasefire arrangement between Georgia and Russia negotiated by the French presidency of the European Union.

Ban called for an end to the hostilities and the withdrawal of forces to the positions held before the conflict erupted Thursday in South Ossetia, a de-facto independent Georgian enclave inhabited by ethnic Russians.

New York  - US markets fell Wednesday after retailers posted weaker sales as consumers hit by a weaker US economy stayed home.

The US Commerce Department said retail sales fell 0.1 per cent in July after gaining 0.3 per cent in the previous month. The news drove down retail stocks.

New York, Aug 14: The chairman of the Arkansas Democratic party, Bill Gwatney, died hours after being shot by a gunman who burst into the state party headquarters in Little Rock.

Police said that 49-year-old Gwatney died four hours after the shooting near the state Capital on Wednesday.

The officials said a gunman fired several shots at Gwatney, a former state legislator, in the party’s headquarters near the Capital. After a long car chase, the suspect was fatally wounded in a shootout with the police, the authorities said.

New York, Aug. 14: An anguished Elizabeth Edwards decided to stay with her cheating husband, John, because she is dying and worried about their two young children, one of her close friends has claimed.

"It's just tragic. That's all I can say about it," Hargrave McElroy, Elizabeth's best friend, told the Daily News.

In a longer interview with People magazine, McElroy, a North Carolina teacher, said John Edwards didn't confess his adultery with his flaky videographer, Rielle Hunter, until after he officially announced his presidential run in December 2006.

New York  - Wal-Mart reported record earnings in the second quarter despite a weaker economy as US consumers sought bargains at the discount giant.

Net profits rose 17 per cent to 3.5 billion dollars, or 87 cents per share, from 2.95 billion dollars, or 72 cents per share, in the year-earlier period, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company said.

Revenue rose 10 per cent to to 102.7 billion dollars.

New York  - United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked the government of Zimbabwe on Thursday to immediately end the ban on international humanitarian assistance in the country.

President Robert Mugabe, under attack for the violence in the presidential elections in May, retaliated by imposing severe restrictions on non-governmental organizations and private voluntary groups to assist large populations affected by the violence.

In June, Ban asked Mugabe to lift the curbs on relief groups, but Mugabe did not reply.

New York  - UN special envoy for Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari was to leave Friday for a five-day visit to the Southeast Asian nation for talks on improving democracy in the military government there.

"Mr Gambari looks forward to returning to Myanmar to continue his consultations with the government and other relevant parties in the implementation of the good offices entrusted to the Secretary General by the UN General Assembly," UN spokesman Farhan Haq said.

New York  - Serbia submitted a request on Friday for the UN General Assembly to debate Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence and for the body to ask the UN world court to rule on the issue.

Serbia's Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said Belgrade would respect and abide by an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague on whether Kosovo's declaration of independence in February was legal under international law.

New York  - Wachovia Corp reached a multibillion-dollar settlement with regulators and governments on Friday, joining the banks settling allegations they improperly urged customers to buy a type of bond that fell apart in conjunction with the subprime mortgage crisis.

Wachovia will buy back from customers 8.5 billion dollars worth of auction-rate securities - a type of bond without a set interest rate for which rates are instead set at periodic auctions.

India's top cigarette firm, ITC Limited has informed that its US-based wholly-owned arm ITC Infotech has acquired US-based Pyxis Solutions.

New York based Pyxis Solution provides Quality Assurance solutions and testing services.

The enterprise value of deal is estimated at about USD 25 million, which would be funded through internal accruals. With this acquisition, Pyxis has become a wholly-owned unit of the company.

The company said that Pyxis solutions will continue to function under the leadership of its founders Amar Duggal and Greg Brener.

New York, Aug 20 : The new leadership in Pakistan – mainly PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif – will have to show personal courage and broad political support to clean up its armed forces and intelligence agency ISI of the elements which have in the past killed Indian diplomats in collaboration with armed Islamic extremists.

New York  - Russia submitted a new draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, which it claimed reflects the six-point plan worked out by France to end the conflict in Georgia.

The Russian draft was aimed at countering another draft resolution already under discussion by the 15-nation council, calling for an immediate and unconditional end to hostilities in Georgia and for Russia to end its military occupation.

The draft being discussed by the council supports Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

New York  - United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday condemned the series of terrorist attacks in Algiers.

"The secretary general extends his condolences to the people of Algeria and in particular, to the families of the victims," UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

She said Ban called on the international community to support the efforts of the government of Algeria to combat terrorism.

New York - Shoes, furniture and cars have been mass produced on assembly lines for years. Why doesn't the same apply for houses?

This question has intrigued several architects, including Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright and Marcel Breuer, all of whom experimented with the idea of building homes using modular design principles. Their part practical, part utopian ideas are part of an exhibit in New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) entitled Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling.

MoMA describes the exhibit as a survey of the past, present and future of the prefabricated home and a building project on the museum's vacant west lot. It aims to display the process of architectural design and production in equal measure with the actual end result.

New York, Aug 21 : During his seven-year rule as President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf defused tensions with India and also cut off terror infiltration routes across Kashmir, and “due to such co-operation, he was at the top of Al Qaeda’s target list and dodged three assassination attempts,” said an editorial in the Wall Street Journal
(WSJ).

New York  - Burger King saw profits rise 42 per cent in the fourth quarter on longer operating hours and new products, the world's second-largest fast food chain said.

Profits for the quarter were 51 million dollars, or 37 cents per share, up from 36 million dollars, or 26 cents per share, in the year-earlier period.

Revenue rose 9 per cent to 646 million dollars, the Miami-based company said.

During the fiscal year, Burger King opened 282 new restaurants, adding to its more than 11,500 branches in 72 countries. (dpa)

New York  - The world's largest ketchup manufacturer HJ Heinz said Thursday quarterly results were better than expected on strong international sales that overcame rising energy and raw material costs.

Profit in the firm's first quarter, which ended in July, were up 12 per cent to 229 million dollars. Revenue rose 15 per cent to 2.9 billion dollars, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based firm said.

Heinz benefited from sales in developing countries and the trend toward healthier products, with sales of its Weight Watchers products and baby food. (dpa)

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday condemned the double suicide bombings in northern Pakistan, which killed 64 people and injured more than 100.

Ban reiterated in a statement "his rejection of such indiscriminate and reprehensible acts of terrorism and extends his condolences to the families of the victims and to the government of Pakistan."

The bomb attacks tore through a weapons manufacturing plant in Wah, a town 30 kilometres north-west of Islamabad. (dpa)

New York - The UN Security Council was to meet later Thursday to discuss the situation on the ground in Georgia, where Russia's armed forces continued their slow withdrawal.

The 15-nation council has two draft resolutions on the situation, from France and Russia, which both aim to resolve the brief war between Russia and Georgia, but with different goals.

France, which holds the current European Union presidency, demands an immediate ceasefire, a definite pullout of Russian troops and respect of Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

New York  - A third tower at the World Trade Center site collapsed due to a fire, not explosives, on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, a news report said Friday.

The 47-storey tower tumbled seven hours after the center's twin towers were attacked by terrorists. No one died as the approximately 4,000 officer workers had been evacuated.

New York, Aug. 28 : U. S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra, a respected film maker, is reportedly making a documentary about Republican candidate John McCain.

According to Fox News, the documentary is unlikely to be complementary, given the antecedents of Alexandra. After all, she is from a Democrat background.

This is not the first time that Alexandra has put her film skills to use during an election year. Her "Diary of a Political Tourist" was aired on HBO right before the November 2004 vote.

She has also done a documentary on 1972 Democratic candidate Senator George McGovern. (ANI)

New York, Aug. 28 : A former FBI agent and body language expert has opined that Hillary Clinton may have publicly showed her support for Barack Obama at the recently concluded Democratic convention in Denver, but her body language suggested otherwise.

According to Joe Navarro, there was a mismatch between her verbal support and what she was conveying through her body movements.

CBS quoted him as saying that Clinton''s non-verbals were revealing.

"What we wanted to see was a Churchillian speech, something that would move her candidate to cross that magic fence. And she delivered a speech, but the gestures -- the non-verbals that give us the emotion -- really weren''t there," he said.

New York  - The UN Security Council met behind closed doors Thursday to discuss the crisis in Georgia, the first meeting of the powerful body since Russia recognized the independence of the two breakaway provinces at the heart of the military conflict.

Russia's decision on Tuesday to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia, contrary to previous Security Council resolutions, drew swift condemnation from the United States and European Union.

New York, Sep. 1: Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s running mate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been accused of misleading party supporters over a controversial bridge project in her home state.

According to the New York Times, Palin told a cheering audience in Ohio on Friday that she had turned down an offer from the US Congress to build the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere", which would have connected Gravina Island with Ketchikan International, an airport in Alaska''s southeast serving just 200,000 passengers a year.

New York, Sept. 2 : Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s decision to pick a woman – Alaska Governor Sarah Palin – as his running mate for the November 4 presidential poll, suggests that he still needs to take important lessons on gender politics, an article appearing in Fox News, has opined.

According to the article, the view going around that Palin’s selection was based on the premise that she could be an effective counter to New York Senator Hillary Clinton couldn’t be farter from the truth.

New York, Sept. 2 : The disclosure that Alaska Governor and Republican vice-president hopeful Sarah Palin’s unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant, is likely to be seen as a test case of what the American voter deems will remain in the private domain, and what will be public.

According to the New York Times, though Republican delegates are rallying around Palin on the issue, they are also citing it as a challenge for the party.

“It’s a challenge, and I just think we have to deal with it. But it’s just not going to hurt her (Sarah palin). This is a family problem that people have,” the paper quoted Katon Dawson, the Republican chairman of South Carolina, as saying.

New York, Sept 3 : The US court trying Pakistani-American doctor Aafia Siddiqui has held her guilty on charges to attack US army in Afghanistan as a member of international terror organization Al-Qaeda.

According to a statement released from the US court, Aafia has also been charged with attempt to murder, triggering terrorism, armed attacks on US forces in Afghanistan and keeping illegal armaments.

New York  - A 50-square-kilometre chunk of the Canadian Arctic ice shelf has broken off and is floating freely in the Arctic Ocean, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported Wednesday.

The ice from the northern coast of Ellesmere Island about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole broke off in early August. It could be up to 4,500 years old and 40-metres thick, making its disappearance more worrisome than the sea ice that typically forms ice bergs, researchers said.

New York, Sep 4 : The racy, historical novel about the Prophet Mohammad and his child bride, will be released next month by its new publisher Gibson Square after Random House fearing that the book could “incite acts of violence” and anger Muslims refused to publish it.

Sherry Jones’ controversial work, “The Jewel of Medina,” will be released in Great Britain next month by Gibson Square, said company’s director Martin Rynja.

New York, Sept. 4 : Even after Senator John McCain named her as his running mate on Friday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin remained an unknown quantity to most Americans.

Sixty-six percent had no opinion of her in a CBS News poll conducted over the weekend?

In polling completed on Monday and Tuesday, sixty percent still had no opinion about her.

But of those who did have opinions, 26 percent of the most recently polled were favorable, while only 13 percent were not favorable.

New York  - United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that development aid would have to increase to 18 billion dollars a year if the world was to remain on track to achieving a set of anti-poverty goals by 2015.

Countries have committed to eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, and Ban's comments came ahead of a high-level meeting on stepping up global efforts to reach the MDGs in New York on September 25.

New York, Sept. 5 : The presidential race between Senators’Barack Obama and John McCain is now even at 42 percent, according to a new CBS News poll conducted Monday-Wednesday of this week.

According to the poll, twelve percent are undecided and one percent said they wouldn''t vote.

This is in contrast to a poll conducted last weekend, where the Obama-Biden ticket led McCain-Palin by eight points, 48 percent to 40 percent.

McCain has also closed the enthusiasm gap some with Obama, but it still exists.

New York  - The United Nations said Friday it was rushing relief assistance to some of the worst-hit Caribbean islands, with Haiti and Cuba heading the list, while damage and threats to residents were being assessed.

John Holmes, chief coordinator of the UN humanitarian emergency programme, said the Bahamas, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic have been affected by heavy flooding.

The Caribbean has been hit by three Atlantic storms and hurricanes in three weeks, with the latest - Tropical Storm Hanna - now heading toward southeastern United States.

New York, Sept. 8 : Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s decision to drop his opposition to offshore drilling and calling for a gas tax holiday, besides missing several crucial votes on bills extending credits for wind and solar power, has been described by a New York Times editorial as an alarming development.

New York, Sept. 8 : His name is John McCain, but believe it or not, he is voting for Barack Obama.

Johnathan B. McCain, a Brooklyn-based musician, is not a Republican, travels frequently to Europe and says a few people have said that he looks like Obama.

According to the New York Daily News, McCain, 40, says that he has never used his famous name - or his striking resemblance to Obama to get a good table in a crowded restaurant or get out of a parking ticket.

The combination, however, has gotten him on talk radio shows around the city.

New York  - Victims of terrorist activities including high profile Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt are to speak Tuesday about their ordeals at the UN's very first symposium on terrorism to focus on victims and their families.

The event coincides with the observance two days later of the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York, Washington and on an airplane over Pennsylvania.

The UN did not draw a direct connection between the two events.

New York, Sept. 9 : Republican vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has indicated that she is ready to be grilled by what the McCain Campaign refers to as media “piranhas”.

Palin will sit down with ABC News for her first press interview at the end of the week, reports the New York Daily News.

Keen to tone down increasing criticism that Palin is being kept on a short leash while feeding off her crowd appeal, the McCain camp relented Sunday and said Palin will have her first press interview at the end of the week with ABC News.

New York, Sept. 9: Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s frequent hugs with his running mate Sarah Palin leaves “room for the Holy Ghost”, says a etiquette and body language expert.

According to Christopher Buckley, a novelist and longtime satirist of the ways of Washington, Palin “seems to be cognizant that she is wandering into the danger zone, with the result that as she hugs him, she leans away from him so as to insert some chaste space between them.”

New York, Sept. 9 : Republican vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is being hailed as a mix of Lara Croft and Britain’s “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher.

If the New York Post has praised John McCain’s decision to pick "the charming, but rock-solid, outsider Sarah Palin", the Scotsman has revealed that companies are scrambling to make dolls in Palin''s image.

One shows her as a bespectacled action figure with short white skirt, long black coat and pistol strapped to her thigh.

Republicans hope she can breathe new life into a party already demoralized by eight years of failure.

New York  - High profile Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and scores of lesser known victims of terrorism on Tuesday appealed to the international community to focus on their unique needs and stop treating them as mere statistics.

Victims of terrorist attacks in Nairobi, London, Baghdad, Amman and Colombia met at United Nations headquarters for the first UN symposium designed to give them a voice, and shared their experiences with decision-makers.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday expressed "deep concern" over the increased hostilities in northern Sri Lanka, warning that this would have grave humanitarian consequences for civilians.

The Sri Lankan government had requested the relocation of UN humanitarian staff in areas affected by the fighting between government and rebel forces.

New York - Seven years after the September 11 terrorist strikes, New Yorkers on Thursday will remember the attacks that killed more than 2,700 people with the destruction of the World Trade Center's twin towers.

The city will observe the anniversary with renewed calls for vigilance against the constant threats of new terrorist attacks. Names of the dead will be read yet again.

The presidential nominees of both US major parties, Republic Senator John McCain and his rival, Democratic Senator Barack Obama, plan to attend ceremonies at Ground Zero, site of the destroyed towers.

New York, Sept. 10 : The selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate has ensured a two-point lead for Republican presidential nominee for Senator John McCain over Democratic rival Barack Obama, according to a new CBS poll.

But there is another side to this story. The Republicans are seeking to project the view that this year’s presidential elections will not be about issues, but about Americans voting on the basis of gut instinct, a view Democrats and others would be shy of accepting.

New York  - New Yorkers got a clearer picture of the turf wars at the site of the destroyed World Trade Center on Wednesday, the eve of the seventh anniversary of 9/11, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg complaining of indecision and infighting among parties involved in the construction of the site.

Bloomberg insisted on meeting the 2011 completion deadline for the memorial to the nearly 3,000 people killed by terrorist attacks since 1993, complaining that progress to rebuild Ground Zero has been "frustratingly slow."

New York  - The United Nations asked the international community on Wednesday to finance massive humanitarian efforts in Haiti, where 328 people have died and
800,000 were left homeless from a series of natural disasters.

The UN humanitarian office made an appeal for 108 million dollars to cover essential relief demands in Haiti for six months.

The island nation has been battered by consecutive tropical storms and hurricanes in the past three weeks, which flooded residential areas as well as farms, destroying this year's crops, the UN said.

New York  - Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has bought a stake in one of the United States' oldest and most respected newspapers, The New York Times, stock exchange authorities said Thursday.

Slim - ranked by Forbes magazine in March as the world's second- richest man with an estimated wealth of 60 billion dollars behind Warren Buffett - bought a 6.4 per cent stake in The New York Times Company, which remains controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family.

New York  - "Emerging players" have created a new situation requiring the participation of all parties, in addition to governments, to resolve the world's problems, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday.

Ban topped the situation in Georgia on his list, saying that his good offices will facilitate international discussion to settle the conflict between Tbilisi and Moscow.

New York  - The United States and Britain on Thursday called for more pressure on Myanmar to end its defiance of demands for democratic progress and the release of political prisoners, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the United Nations Security Council should review UN mediation, which is being led by special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, and pressure the military government to yield results.

New York  - The UN Security Council on Thursday condemned in the "strongest terms" the attack in Lebanon that killed Saleh Aridi, a member of the Lebanese Democratic Party.

The council urged the Beirut government to bring before justice the attackers and those who planned or financed the assassination. The attack on Wednesday injured several other people.

New York  - Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain cast aside politics on Thursday to pay their respects to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks, appearing together at the former site of the World Trade Center in New York.

Democrat Obama and Republican McCain shook hands and quietly chatted as the walked down the ramp leading to "Ground Zero," where ceremonies had taken place to mark the seventh anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

New York  - Wall Street stock indices rose Thursday as transportation firms were helped by falling oil prices, and banking shares staged a late-day rally on takeover speculation about embattled Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

US railroad company CSX Corp surged more than 10 per cent as crude oil for October delivery fell another 1.68 dollars to 100.90 dollars per barrel in New York.

New York, Sept. 12 : Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama should focus more on Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s readiness to lead, says a former Hillary Clinton loyalist, adding that she still needs to be “tested” on that ability.

“I would deal with this differently, and not because (Palin) is a woman,” Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California told FOX News.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on Bolivian parties on Friday to seek a political settlement to their conflict, which has caused deaths and damage to the country's economic infrastructure.

New York  - An ambitious goal to eradicate extreme poverty in the world was thwarted by the recent upward trend in food prices, the United Nations said Friday in a report reviewing its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Poverty and hunger worsened in Africa, while China - with a population of 1.3 billion - was praised for pulling an estimated 400 million out of poverty.

New York  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon rode a Swiss-made, fully solar-powered vehicle to work at UN headquarters on Friday as part of his efforts to raise awareness of dangers of climate change.

He has already raised the thermostat by 3 degrees Celsius at UN headquarters during the summer to set an example of UN responsibility to save the climate by lowering emissions of carbon dioxide from the old UN structure built in the early 1950s.

New York  - US stocks made small gains on Friday, led by energy and metals companies, but were held down by ongoing fears about the future of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Hurricane Ike's anticipated arrival on the US mainland drove up petrol prices, helping refiners make strong gains.

The price of copper surged while gold ended a nine-day string of losses. Shares in metals giant Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc jumped more than 8 per cent.

New York - Crisis talks continued Saturday involving US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and top bankers amid ongoing fears about the future of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

US media reports said Paulson had categorically ruled out any any state aid for the bank, which is desperately looking for a potential buyer after its shares tumbled 94 per cent since the beginning of the year as the credit crisis ravaged the US financial sector.

Bank of America Corp was said to be the leading contender for a takeover, but British banks Barclays and HSBC were also seen as having a possible a role in a rescue.