Washington, Sept 7: The Bush Administration is all set to push the Indo-US civil nuclear deal through the US Congress after the historic waiver from the 45 member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in Vienna on Saturday.

The short session of US Congress begins on Monday and will take up ratification of the 123 Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement signed between President, George W. Bush and Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in July 2005.

Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Algiers that she has already talked to the heads of the Committees of both the Houses of Congress for pushing through the deal.

Washington - Residents of the Caribbean Turks and Caicos islands began surveying damage on Sunday following the devastating impact of Hurricane Ike, as the "extremely dangerous" category 4 storm continued on its path toward the Bahamas and Florida Keys.

At 8 a.m. (1300 GMT) Ike had winds of over 215 kilometres per hour, just east of Grand Inagua in the Bahamas.

Residents of Turks and Caicos islands said on Sunday that the worst there had passed, but the damage looked "pretty huge."

Speaking to US news channel CNN, Audley Astwood, a reporter at a radio station on Grand Turk island said that "it looks very dismal outside."

Washington, Sept 7 : With United States getting the most Olympic medals and China winning the most golds, it might seem difficult to rank the nations. But, according to a leading statistician, both the countries are ‘dead even’.

“Every four years, the question of how to rank countries comes up,” said Knut Wittkowski, the Rockefeller University statistician who performed the analysis.

“The large number of conflicting rankings attests to the fact that it’s not easy to present an answer. This year, some rankings show the U. S. on top while others show China,” Wittkowski added.

Washington, Sept 7 : U. S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned that time is "very short" to get clearance for the Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation deal in the Congressional session, which begins on Monday.

Hailing the waiver given by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Rice said: “The first thing is that we still have a little more to do on the determinations for the Hyde Act, and we will try to complete that.”

Rice made this statement at a round table with the travelling press in Algiers.

Washington, Sept. 7 : Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Hussain Haqqani has ruled out a cooling of ties between Islamabad and Washington in the wake of the recent attacks by international forces in Pakistan’s tribal regions, saying bilateral ties are resilient and would withstand the difficulties coming in the way.

Addressing the Carnegie Endowment for Peace here, Haqqani said that Pakistan expects the United States to persuade its NATO allies and Afghanistan to look upon it as a partner.

Washington, Sept 7 : The Republican nominee for vice president, Sarah Palin, is very different from other female leaders around the world, at least in one respect – her political career does not follow that of a male relative.

That’s the conclusion of an expert on women in global politics. 

Many female leaders around the world had a family connection to a politically powerful male, said Pamela Paxton, associate professor of sociology and political science at Ohio State University.