Washington, Sept 10 : US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that it was unacceptable to see that blacks had negligible representation in the State Department. Lamenting about the lack of blacks in the US administration, like herself, she wished to see more blacks in the State Department.

Rice is the second black person to become secretary of state after Colin Powell.

Washington, Sept 10 : The sticky glue secreted by the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus may hold the key for making an effective vaccine against MRSA 
(Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), according to a new study.

While Staphylococcus aureus stay as a biofilm fairly harmlessly on most of the people who carry the bacteria, it may rarely cause severe and life threatening infections that are significant medical problems.

New York, Sept. 10 : A new CBS Poll has found that uncommitted voters could favor John McCain rather than Barack Obama

Although it is less than 2 months before the U. S. presidential election, many voters throughout the nation still remain undecided.

According to CBS, about a third of the voters were still uncommitted to either Obama or McCain one month ago, but now, they seem to have made up their minds, and settled on the Republican ticket than the Democratic one.

Washington, Sept 10 : After conducting case studies in India, Brazil, Canada, Kenya the United States, the European Union, Japan and Australia, experts have said that the world''s biotechnology patent system is broken.

The study by an international coalition of experts has claimed that the crisis in biotechnology has led not only to economic problems but to endemic mistrust among its various actors that is stopping lifesaving technologies from reaching the people who need them most in developed and developing countries.

Washington, Sept. 10 : The McCain-Palin campaign has termed Barack Obama’s ““lipstick on a pig” comment as "offensive and disgraceful" and demanded an apology. 

The McCain campaign mobilized its new “Palin Truth Squad” Tuesday to accuse Obama of comparing Palin to a pig, and called on him to apologize.

The “Truth Squad” consists of dozens of McCain supporters.

London, Sept 10: A new survey conducted in 22 countries has found that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was more preferred to his Republican rival John McCain.

Conducted by the BBC World Service, the poll found that the most common view that emerged from different countries was that Obama should win the November poll. A total of 22,500 were interviewed during the survey.