Frankfurt, Sept. 23 : The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, after a night halt at Frankfurt, left for New York on Tuesday afternoon on the first leg of his ten day visit to the United States and France.

A busy schedule awaits Dr. Singh in New York. He will have bilateral meetings with the Pakistan President, the Chinese Premier tomorrow apart from having discussions with the World Bank President.

New York  - US President George W Bush, in his final speech before the United Nations on Tuesday, called on the world to unite in the fight against extremism and terrorism.

Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York, Bush said it is not enough to condemn acts of terrorism that have already occurred, but instead the international community "must continually confront terror."

"Like slavery and piracy, terrorism has no place in the modern world. Around the world nations are changing these words into action," Bush said.

Washington- The government's chief financial gurus plan to tackle growing public anger over the White House's mammoth bank bailout plan before Congress on Tuesday by painting a dire picture of economic collapse if lawmakers fail to act.

"The market turmoil we are experiencing today poses great risk to US taxpayers," Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will say, according to a copy of his testimony released in advance.

Paulson, a former top Wall Street figure, and Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke are to appear before the Senate banking committee starting at 1400 GMT.

New York - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned Tuesday that a series of global crises were threatening the world at a time when the leadership to address the turmoil was lacking.

In a stark address before the General Assembly, he said: "We all recognize the perils of our current passage. We face a global financial crisis. A global energy crisis. A global food crisis."

But "we also face a crisis of a different sort ... a challenge of global leadership," Ban said.

New York  - The US chemical concern DuPont announced Tuesday that it was elevating executive vice president Ellen Kullman to the position of president as of October 1 and chief executive officer effective January 1, 2009.

The 52-year-old Kullman, who has worked for DuPont since 1988, is to replace Charles O Holliday Jr, a 38-year veteran of the 206-year- old company based in Wilmington, Delaware. Holliday has been CEO from 1998.

Kullman, in her role as group vice president of the company's safety and protection unit from 2002 to 2006, helped increase revenues in the unit from 3.5 billion dollars to 5.5 billion dollars.

Washington, Sep 23 : Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s running mate Joe Biden has said that a campaign ad that mocked Republican presidential candidate John McCain as computer illiterate was “terrible” and would not have been done had he known about it.

Obama, McCain’s Democratic rival, launched the ad earlier this month, part of an aggressive push to slow McCain’s rise in the polls after he chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate.