Washington - The economic turmoil in the United States has pushed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama ahead of Republican rival John McCain, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Wednesday showed.

Obama got the nod from 52 per cent of likely voters in the poll to 43 per cent for McCain. It was the first time since the primary season ended that Obama has taken a clear lead over McCain, the newspaper said. As recently as two weeks ago the race was a virtual tie, with McCain leading by a narrow margin.

Dublin - Dublin and Washington have signed a deal to allow 20,000 Irish school leavers to live and work in the US for 12 months and also allow 5,000 US citizens to live and work in Ireland for the same length of time, the Irish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Micheal Martin signed the deal on Wednesday with US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte in Washington.

"This represents one of the most significant developments in our visa arrangements with the US in almost two decades," Martin said in a statement.

New York  - Ailing US car manufacturer Chrysler unveiled electric versions of three of its models and said it had lost 400 million dollars so far this year, US business daily the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Despite cost cuts, Chrysler still was in the red and registered a 1.6-million-dollar loss for 2007, the paper quoted traders present at a Chrysler conference in Auburn Hills, Michigan, as saying.

According to the report, chief executive Robert Nardelli told businessmen that Chrysler had 11 billion dollars in cash.

Rome  - Gomorrah, a grim, violent portrayal of the Camorra - the Neapolitan version of the mafia - has been selected to represent Italy at next year's Academy Awards, Italy's film industry association ANICA said Wednesday.

Directed by Matteo Garrone and based on Roberto Saviano's best-selling book of the same name, Gomorrah in May won the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prix - the prestigious competition's third prize.

ANICA's announcement on Wednesday's came as Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said the Italian state is engaged in a "civil war" with the Camorra.

Washington, Sep 24 : Americans send more text messages from their cell phones than they make calls, according to Nielsen Mobile survey.

The survey revealed that for the second quarter of 2008, U. S. mobile subscribers sent and received on average 357 text messages per month, compared with making and receiving 204 phone calls a month.

In the first quarter of 2006, Americans had sent and received 65 text messages per month.

The number of messages sent and received today has increased 450 percent. But even though people are texting more, it doesn''t mean that they''ve stopped talking on the phone, reports CBS News.

New York, Sept. 24 : The Bush administration''s 700 billion dollar plan to bail out the American financial industry is being received with a great deal of skepticism.

Influential lawmakers in both the Republican and Democratic parties have demanded changes in the White House-backed proposal, and conservative Republicans have recoiled at the prospect of federal intervention into private capital markets.

Sen. Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said on Tuesday, "What they have sent us is not acceptable."

Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, said, "We have got to look at some alternatives."