Washington, Sep 23 : Ahmed Zaid Zuhair, a detainee in Camp 6 of the US Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, has claimed that two guards had harassed him, with one threatening to kill him and quarter his body; and the other threatening to cut off his ears and nose.

One guard then read through his legal correspondence, confiscating several documents, the Christian Science Monitor quoted Zuhair, as saying.

On July 18, Zuhair, a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, wrote to his legal team in the US, terminating all written communication.

“Right now, my state of mind is not normal because I have been threatened with death by a guard,” Zuhair wrote. “Do not send any more papers after today.”

London, Sept 23 : Britain might soon withdraw its troops from Iraq, going by UK Defence Secretary’s statement that a “turning point” has been reached in Iraq.

According to the Mirror, at the Labour Party''s annual conference Des Browne said, "The Iraqi armed forces, supported by British and U. S. forces, have taken on and defeated the militia in Basra."

While echoing Prime Minister Gordon Brown''s statement in July that there would be a "fundamental change of mission" early next year, a phrase understood to mean a withdrawal of troops, Browne said, "We have reached a turning point in our involvement."

Washington, September 23  An exhibition in the Vatican, which is displaying hundreds of artifacts, has suggested that the mysterious Neolithic people made optical art.

According to a report in Discovery News, the exhibition, which is being held at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the Vatican, introduces a mysterious Neolithic people who are now believed to have forged Europe''s first civilization.

Archaeologists have named these people "Cucuteni-Trypillians" after the villages of Cucuteni, near Lasi, Romania and Trypillia, near Kiev, Ukraine, where the first discoveries of this ancient civilization were made more than 100 years ago.

Washington, Sept 23 : Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who is said to be having less foreign affairs experience as compared to her Democrat rival Joe Biden, has a busy schedule on the sidelines of the ongoing UN General Assembly session in New York.

She would be meeting a host of head of states congregated for the UN session, including Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, tomorrow.

Washington, Sep 23 : John McCain trying to reclaim the advantage that slipped to Barack Obama as the Wall Street mess has unfolded, has criticized his democratic rival of running the same “corrupt Chicago political machine” as convicted felon and Obama patron Tony Rezko and the Daley family, which controls Chicago politics.

McCain’s campaign in a new advertisement said they are raising the corruption issue because the press has failed to do so, the Washington Post reported.

Washington, September 23 : Researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) are developing a network of sensors that may be run on electricity generated by trees, which could be used to prevent forest fires.

What they learn also could raise the possibility of using trees as silent sentinels along the nation’s borders to detect potential threats such as smuggled radioactive materials.

The U. S. Forest Service currently predicts and tracks fires with a variety of tools, including remote automated weather stations.

But, these stations are expensive and sparsely distributed. Additional sensors could save trees by providing better local climate data to be used in fire prediction models and earlier alerts.