Peshawar, Sept 18: Once again marking their presence in Peshawar, three Taliban operatives snatched away the car, cash and valuables from a Pakistani woman working with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and threatened to kill her if she didn’t stop working for the US organization.

Dr Aneesa Arif, the female USAID employee, said that three armed men with long hair and beards stopped her in front of her house in Hayatabad and demanded she stop working for USAID.

According to her, the men told her they were Taliban and would kill her if she did not stop working. Dr Aneesa said the Taliban stole her car, bearing registration number 
7522, cash and valuables, and fled the scene, reported the Daily Times.

San Francisco - Anonymous hackers penetrated the private email account of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and Wednesday posted screen shots of the account on the internet.

The intrusion came amid growing reports that Palin used her private email account to conduct official business in an effort to avoid public scrutiny.

It was strongly condemned by the McCain-Palin campaign as a "shocking invasion of privacy" and both the FBI and Secret Service launched investigations into the incident.

Washington - Texas was still picking up the pieces after Hurricane Ike on Wednesday as states across the Midwest tallied the number of dead and injured from the mammoth storm that cut a swath of devastation across the United States.

Houston Mayor Bill White proclaimed his city's water safe to drink, telling reporters he had tried it and urging other Houstonians to do the same.

The bottled water being brought in by state and federal rescue officials should be reserved for people truly in need, he said.

Washington - In a country that prides itself on free-market principles, US taxpayer dollars are are already on the hook for more than 300 billion dollars in financial industry bailouts, and, by some accounts, the government is just getting started.

The Federal Reserve's unprecedented, 85-billion-dollar loan and effective takeover of the largest US insurer, American International Group Inc, was only the latest in a string of emergency interventions this year on Wall Street.

Los Angeles - Hollywood royalty turned out in force to back Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama in two glittering events Monday night that raised a record 9 million dollars.

In the midst of the worst US financial crisis in decades, Obama kept television cameras away from the star-studded parties in a bid to minimize criticism that he was celebrating as the country suffered.