Warsaw  - Poland will toughen criteria for getting loans from banks amid the recent US financial crisis, reported the daily Dziennik on Thursday.

The changes will likely take effect at the end of this year, the head of Poland's Financial Supervision Authority told the daily. They will affect consumer and mortgage credit in all currencies. The move could lower property prices as less people would be able to afford homes.

"We see in the example of the US where excessive optimism leads in judging client's financial conditions," Krzysztof Broda of the Financial Supervision Authority was quoted as saying.

New York, Sept 18 : Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has slept with 35,000 women in his 82 years of life, according to an upcoming documentary.

"He slept with at least two women a day for more than four decades - one for lunch and one for supper,” the New York Post quoted an ex-Castro official named "Ramon" as telling filmmaker Ian Halperin.

“Sometimes he even ordered one for breakfast," the official said.

"I don''t think he would have stayed on as long as he did if not for all the incredible women he had access to as president,” the official added.

Washington, Sept. 18 : The latest forecast of the Electoral College suggests that John McCain is way ahead of his Democratic rival Barack Obama.

The research to be presented at the annual meeting of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences on between October 13 and 15, less than three weeks before the election, says that as of September 16, the margin in electoral votes could be as high as 282.8 votes for Senator John McCain against 255.2 for Senator Barack Obama, depending on the forecasting scenario.

Washington, Sep 18 : Faced with a surge in voter registrations leading up to US Presidential election on November 4, election officials across the country are bracing for long lines, equipment failures and confusion over polling procedures that could cost thousands the chance to cast a ballot.

The crush of voters will strain a system already in the midst of transformation, with jurisdictions introducing new machines and rules to avoid the catastrophe of the deadlocked 2000 election and the lingering controversy over the 2004 outcome.

Washington, September 18 : An engineer, at the Iowa State University in the US, along with his colleagues, is studying engines in an effort to reduce emissions and improve their efficiency.

The engineer in question is Song-Charng Kong, an Iowa State assistant professor of mechanical engineering.

With the help of 15 graduate students and all kinds of sensors recording engine cylinder pressure, energy release and exhaust emissions, is looking for cleaning and improving engine performance.

“There is still a lot of work to be done to improve engine performance,” Kong said. “All of this work will lead to incremental improvements,” he added.

Kong and his students are working on a lot of combustion projects in the lab.

Islamabad - Pakistan on Thursday denied that the United States forewarned it of the overnight missile strike in its north-west tribal region that was carried out hours after US assurances of enhanced coordination on critical security issues.

"No Sir! We were not informed," Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told journalists in Islamabad a day after the US aerial attack killed six suspected Taliban militants in Baghar Cheena village of South Waziristan tribal district.

Wednesday's strike came shortly after Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, met Pakistani leadership during his unannounced visit and reaffirmed "the US commitment to respect Pakistan's sovereignty."