Washington, September 6 : Climate scientists have suggested that Asian pollution from Asian power plants, cooking and heating could create summer hot spots in the central United States and southern Europe by the middle of this century, thus spurring further warming in the region.

According to a report in ENN (Environmental News Network), unlike the long-lived greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the particle and gas pollution cited in this report only stays in the air for a few days or weeks, but its warming effect on the climate half a world away could last for decades.

Port-au-Prince - The United Nations handed out food and water to desperate Haitians on Friday after the first shipload of aid arrived in the flooded and devastated city of Gonaives.

At least 163 people have died in Haiti as a result of Tropical Storm Hanna, officials said Friday, as it sped toward the south-eastern US coast.

Of the confirmed deaths, 119 in the region around Gonaives, Marie-Alta Jean Baptiste, head of civil protection in Haiti, said Friday night.

Washington, Sep 6 : The White House has disputed several elements of a new book detailing internal administration battles over Iraq, saying that a news story about the book wrongly portrays President George W Bush as detached from decision-making and misleading in his public statements about the war.

The book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward, “The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008,” depicts an administration driven by dissension and slow to confront the deterioration of its strategy in Iraq during the summer and early fall of 2006.

The book, due for release on Monday, also says Bush privately believed US efforts were failing during that period, even while declaring publicly that the war was being won.

Beijing - US and Chinese officials on Saturday discussed the latest setback in the six-nation process to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, after a US envoy said his key concern was the verification mechanism for the dismantling of the programme.

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill met China's chief envoy in the nuclear talks, Wu Dawei, and said his South Korean and Japanese counterparts also planned to meet Wu in Beijing on Saturday.

Hill said late Friday that North Korea had indicated concerns about how the disablement and dismantlement of its nuclear facilities would be verified.

"They are very clear they have concerns about the verification protocol," Hill told reporters.

Washington, September 6 : A new report has provided the most comprehensive evidence available to confirm that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)’s switch-on, due on September 10, poses no threat to mankind.

Located on the border of France and Switzerland, the LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator complex.

The LHC Safety Assessment Group have reviewed and updated a study first completed in 2003, which dispels fears of universe-gobbling black holes and of other possibly dangerous new forms of matter, and confirms that the switch-on will be completely safe.

New York, Sep 6 : Republican presidential candidate John McCain attracted a record 38.9 million television viewers to his acceptance speech last night, edging Democratic rival Barack Obama and his running mate, Sarah Palin.

The total exceeded the 38.4 million who watched Obama accept the Democratic nomination in Denver on August 28, Nielsen Media Research said today in a statement.