Washington - The United States on Friday froze the assets of two high-ranking Venezuelan intelligence officials accused of arming rebels in neighbouring Colombia, amid a growing diplomatic standoff between Caracas and Washington.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday expelled the US ambassador to Venezuela and recalled his own from the United States. The move was out of solidarity with Bolivia, which has accused the US of fomenting unrest in the country and pulled its own ambassador from the US this week.

New York  - Urgent moves were afoot Friday to sell embattled Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, the fourth-biggest US investment bank which this week reported record losses, US media reports said.

Lehman was reported to be urgently shopping around for a possible takeover, while there were reports that the government had agreed to subsidize any takeover of the bank, one of many still reeling from the ongoing credit crisis in the United States.

The bank posted its largest-ever quarterly loss of 3.9 billion dollars on Wednesday. Lehman's own shares tumbled more than 40 per cent in Thursday's trading.

New Delhi, Sept. 12 : Though Indo-US bilateral relations have come a long way in the last decade, there are many underlying issues that the two countries need to tackle together, said Ambassador Frank Wisner, Vice-Chairman, American International Group, at a session on ‘After US Elections: Next Steps in the US-India relationship’, organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Aspen Institute India in New Delhi today.

Washington, September 12 : Archaeologists in Israel say that the figs they discovered while excavating at the sit of an 11,400-year-old house near the ancient city of Jericho may be the first cultivated crops.

The researchers say that the find provides evidence that cultivated crops came centuries before the first farmers planted cereal grains.

New York, Sept. 12 : Mexican magnate Carlos Slim''s purchase of six per cent of the “Old Grey Lady”, as the New York Times is referred to from time to time, has triggered more speculation about the sale of the newspaper.

According to the NYT, Slim clawed himself back to the No 2 spot on the world''s rich list with purchases that stretch from cigarette manufacturers, to restaurant chains, to car parts distributors, to – most lucratively – telecoms companies.

And when he puts down 120 million dollars, people take notice. When that bet is on a 6.4 per cent holding in the beacon of the United States newspaper business, The New York Times Company, people take a lot of notice.

Washington, Sept 12 : Kids whose mothers are exposed to violence grow less, according to a new study.

The study found that violence against women in a family has serious consequences for the children''s growth, health, and survival.

Kajsa Asling Monemi from Uppsala University studied women and their children in Bangladesh and Nicaragua and showed that children whose mothers are exposed to violence grow less and are sick more often than other children.

Kajsa Asling Monemi, paediatrician, the Department of Women''s and Children''s Health, monitored more than 3,000 children in Bangladesh from the women''s pregnancy tests till when the children were two years old.