Washington, Sept 9 : While it's well-known that a person''''s walk reflects his or her gender, age and mood, a new study has gone a step further by revealing that an observer finds a masculine motion as coming toward them and a characteristically feminine walk looks like it''''s headed the other way.

The study was done by illuminating only the joints of model walkers and asking observers to identify various characteristics about the largely ambiguous figures.

Washington, Sept. 9: Surveys have revealed that the presidential contest between John McCain and Barack Obama will be competitive in the key states of Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

According to Fox News, four of the five state polls show Obama and McCain within three percentage points of each other. In Ohio, however, McCain has a 51 to 44 percent advantage.

Citing the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll as a source for its conclusions, the Fox News report concludes the following:

Washington, September 9 : Zoologists at Tel Aviv University have discovered that a dog and a cat introduced to each other while still a puppy and a kitten, respectively, can actually learn each other’s body language.

"Like children, who learn a new language more easily than adults, so too did the cats and dogs learn their new ''language'' more easily, the younger they were," Discovery News quoted Joseph Terkel, a professor in the Department of Zoology at the university, as saying.

Havana/Port-au-Prince, Haiti - The whole of Cuba was in a state of emergency as Hurricane Ike looked likely to batter Havana Tuesday as well as western sections of the island after already leaving four dead.

More than 24 hours after making landfall Sunday night at Cabo Lucrecia in the east, Ike continued to lash the Caribbean island with sustained winds of 130 kilometres per hour.

Washington, Sep 9: US President George W. Bush is to describe Pakistan as a major battleground for the war on terrorism, like Afghanistan or Iraq on Tuesday, and is going to urge Islamabad to shoulder its responsibility to fight extremists.

Bush, in remarks prepared for delivery to the US National Defense University and released by the White House late on Monday, is to say that all three countries “pose unique challenges for our country” in the worldwide conflict.

Washington, Sep 9 :The US hopes that Pakistan’s new President Asif Ali Zardari will provide some stability within the government so that it can get down to the task of countering the terrorism and extremism that currently threatens the country.

Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation, America’s leading conservative think tank, is of the view that for the last several months, political infighting has created a power vacuum in Pakistan that the extremists have exploited.