New York - US insurer AIG, suffering from a declining share price and facing a possible downgrading of its credit rating, is being forced to extreme measures, including perhaps selling off subsidiaries to extricate itself from billions of dollars in losses, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition Sunday.

Citing an AIG insider, the respected US business journal said AIG was considering a teleconference with analysts on Monday, at which the process of restructuring would be outlined.

Washington, Sept 14 : The Bush administration has reportedly proposed new guidelines that would give its investigating agency the FBI more tools to assess national security and foreign intelligence threats.

FBI Director Robert Mueller will testify about the guidelines before the Congress next week, while it is learnt that the officials want these guidelines to be implemented as early as Oct. 1, reported cbs. com.

Miranshah (Pak), Sept 14 : Amid the recent increase in the number of air raids by the US-led NATO forces from across the Afghan border, the tribal elders in North Waziristan in Pakistan have reportedly vowed to defend the country’s frontiers by fighting alongside security forces against any ‘possible American attack’.

They said that if the American forces did not stop attacking the Tribal Areas, they would feel the repercussions of such attacks in Kabul, Bagram and Kandahar, reported the Daily Times.

New York, Sept 14 : An American foreign policy expert has reportedly cautioned the US administration against repeating the cross-border attacks inside Pakistan, saying this approach was “not a long-term solution to terrorism”.

“We need to get the Pakistanis to see this as their war, and that''s going to require some major new initiatives on the American side. Commando raids and Predator strikes are not a long-term solution to this problem,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think-tank.

Riedel, a former high-ranking CIA and Pentagon official, said this in an interview with CFR. org, a website publication for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Washington, September 14 : A new research has suggested that roadsides could serve as nature preserves for crucial pollinators, particularly native bees.

The research was started by Jennifer Hopwood, while she was in graduate school in ecology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

“I just became really interested in the idea that roadsides could be potential habitat for animals and could also be a haven for plant species,” she said.

According to a report in Discovery News, roadsides planted with native plants hosted more than twice as many total bees and almost 50 percent more bee species than roadsides covered in non-native grasses, as indicated by findings from the study.

Houston - Post-hurricane rescue efforts focused Sunday on Galveston on the Texas coast after Hurricane Ike roared inland from the Gulf of Mexico.

Residents of the hard-hit coast and Houston, where 4 million people live 60 kilometres inland, were surveying the damage from the storm. Ike made landfall with winds topping 170 kilometres an hour and a huge storm surge that pushed water up to 2 metres deep into the streets of Galveston and parts of Houston.