Hancock (New York), Mar. 24 : If you didn''t know where to look, you''d probably never find Islamberg, a private Muslim community in the woods of the western Catskills, 150 miles northwest of New York City.

This town, sitting on a quiet dirt road past a gate marked with No Trespassing signs, is home to an estimated 100 residents.

Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, a Pakistani cleric who purchased a 70-acre plot and invited followers, founded Islamberg in 1980. It consists mostly Muslim converts.

New York  - Canadian oil companies Suncor Energy Inc and Petro-Canada Monday announced a merger worth about 15.4 billion US dollars that would create the country's largest energy company and provide protection against any foreign buyouts.

Suncor is the world's second-largest oil-sands producer, and Petro-Canada is the country's second-largest refiner. The steep decline in global oil prices last year made the merger inevitable.

Suncor reported its first quarterly loss in its history in January.

New York  - US stocks staged the biggest rally since November after the US government unveiled the details of a long-awaited plan to take toxic mortgage assets off the balance sheets of US banks.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner put forward a 1-trillion- dollar public-private partnership that the administration hopes will go a long way to stabilize the crumbling US financial system.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its fifth-largest points gain in history, and US financial firms gained 18 per cent on the announcement.

New York  - The meeting of the world's 20 leading economies in London on April 2 has the potential of making profound changes in the global economy that is suffering a deep recession, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.

"The stakes at the London summit are large," Ban told the UN General Assembly, which convened to discuss the world economic downturn, triggered initially by a US financial crisis and which threatens funding for UN programmes.

New York  - Tiffany & Co, the world's second-largest retailer of luxury jewelry, on Monday reported lower fourth-quarter profits that beat analysts' expectations, sending its shares up 15 per cent.

To deal with lower sales in these tough economic times, the company said that it cut costs and jobs, but did not cut prices.

Net income dropped 76 per cent to 31.1 million dollars, while revenue fell 20 per cent to 841.2 million dollars in the three months ended January 31.

New York, Mar 23: Americ