Washington, September 11 : After the first beam of photons was sent zooming at nearly the speed of light around the 17-mile-long underground circular path of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva on September 10, scientists have said that it will take them a month to align the proton beams traveling in opposite directions in the LHC so that proton-proton collisions are generated.

The LHC is the world’s largest and the most powerful particle accelerator.

Washington, Sept 11 : Matt Damon has lashed out at U. S. Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin - insisting her presidency would be like ‘a really bad Disney movie.’

The actor fears that Palin''s running mate John MCCain won''t survive a full four-year-term as president, and claims the Alaskan governor taking over would be ‘a really scary thing.’

"I think there''s a really good chance Sarah Palin could become president, and I think that''s a really scary thing," Fox quoted Damon, as saying.

San Francisco - The United States might be fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but back on home soil, another kind of war is heating up as the country counts down to the November 4 elections.

Since Republican presidential candidate John McCain chose the gun-toting, deeply conservative and devoutly Christian mother of five Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, the country has become embroiled in a resurgence of the culture wars that dominated US politics during the 1990s.

Islamabad, Sept 11 : Pakistan Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani has categorically said that no external force is allowed to conduct operations inside Pakistan and that his country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be defended at all costs.

Kayani said that the US forces should show patience and desist from unilateral strikes on Pakistani soil, else it may prove “counter-productive”.

New York, Washington - With a moment of silence and the dedication of a Pentagon memorial, the United States on Thursday marks the seventh anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, which led the country into two wars.

US President George W Bush has called for a minute's silence at 8:46 am (1246 GMT), the moment when the first hijacked airliner smashed into the north tower of New York's World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Washington - The US-led coalition toppled the Taliban with relative ease following the September 11 terrorist attacks, but seven years later the United States and its NATO allies are in a tough fight with the resurgent Islamic militants.

After years of taking a back seat to the conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan has re-emerged as a major national security concern and taken a central role in the November presidential campaign.