London, July 28 : Astronomers have suggested that comets might be fragments of larger bodies that crumbled as they entered the inner solar system, seeing the puzzling abundance of comets in short solar orbits.

Short-period comets take less than 200 years to circle the sun and are thought to originate in the Kuiper belt of icy objects beyond Neptune.

London, July 28 (ANI): Scientists have invented a new device that can focus a fuzzy laser beam into a tightly focused “knife” of light, replacing the mirrors and lenses usually needed.

Lasers might be thought of as needle-like crisp beams. But the semiconductor lasers used for everything from CDs to fibre-optic broadband are more like the fuzzy, spreading beams from a flashlight.

Intricate arrangements of curved mirrors or lenses are needed to tame these into usable beams, especially if they need to travel long distances.

According to a report in New Scientist, a new device that fits to the front of the laser source makes the process much simpler and more efficient.

London, July 28 : New recruits in Zimbabwe’s army lack the most basic training and a soldier now earns 11 pounds less than the World Bank’s definition of absolute poverty which is a monthly wage of 15 pounds a month.

Corporal Peter Choto, who joined the army 10 years ago, painted a vivid picture of a military machine in headlong collapse.

President Robert Mugabe relies on the army to keep him in power and its generals are now believed to be the most powerful men in Zimbabwe.

London, July 28 : A majority of British citizens believe that the Conservative Party leader David Cameron is ready to govern the country after next election, an opinion poll has pointed.

According to ComRes poll, a majority of people (53 per cent) think that the Tories are ready to govern after the next election, while 37 per cent disagree.

Almost one in four Labour voters (23 per cent) agrees. The findings increase the pressure on Prime Minister Gordon Brown as he tries to head off moves by his own party to force him to stand down, The Independent reported.

London, July 28 : The major milestone in Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s campaign after his Berlin moment in front of 200,000 Germans, will be the selection of a vice presidential candidate.

The selection of a vice-presidential candidate is “the one last remaining wild card in any campaign for the presidency,” said Obama’s spokesman Robert Gibbs after the Illinois Senator wrapped up his 16,000-mile tour in London.

“It will cause a pretty big ripple,” The Independent quoted Gibbs, as saying.

London, July 28 : When it comes to seducing a woman, nothing, as it turns out, works better than a man with a self-deprecating sense of humour.

What''''s more is that this finding is based on a two-year scientific research which found that men who can poke fun at themselves are most the ones that are sexual magnets for women.

As a part of the study lead author Gil Greengross, of the University of New Mexico in the US and her colleagues asked female students to listen to tape recordings of men talking about themselves.

The women were then asked to score the men on sexual attractiveness.