Washington - By bringing Joe Biden into his presidential bid, Barack Obama has taken a major step toward shoring up what many believe is a key weakness running against John McCain: lack of foreign policy experience.

Biden, a longtime senator from Delaware and venerable chairman of the upper house's Foreign Relations Committee, is an old hand at international relations and will likely appeal to voters sceptical of Obama's foreign affairs credentials.

Washington  - Russia has not complied with a declared ceasefire that calls for the withdrawal of soldiers on Georgian soil outside of the disputed breakaway regions, the White House said Friday.

"We are not seeing that they are in compliance right now," Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said in Crawford, Texas, where President George W Bush was vacationing.

"They have not completely withdrawn from areas considered undisputed territory. And they need to do that," Johndroe said.

Washington  - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to Israel and the West Bank on Sunday for discussions aimed at nudging along the peace process, the State Department said.

Rice is still seeking a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians by the end of the year that includes the creation of a Palestinian state, spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to a US-hosted Middle East conference in November to complete negotiations on an accord by the end of 2008.

Washington, Aug 22 : At an estimated worth of 35 billion dollars, Thailand''s King Bhumibol Adulyadej has emerged as the world’s richest royal in the list prepared by the Forbes magazine. He took the top spot from the only other Asian monarch on the list, the Sultan of Brunei with a worth 20 billion dollars, one of the two rulers whose total worth depleted compared to last year.

Washington, August 22: Tel Aviv University researchers have joined forces with a company to see the possibility of growing trees in such a manner that they provide all civic amenities like homes, playgrounds, and bus stops, among others.

Professors Yoav Waisel and Amram Eshel have revealed that pilot projects of ‘eco-architecture’ underway in the U. S., Australia, and Israel include benches for hospitals, playground structures, streetlamps and gates.

“The approach is a new application of the well-known botanical phenomenon of aerial root development. Instead of using plant branches, this patented approach takes malleable roots and shapes them into useful objects for indoors and out,” says Prof. Eshel.

Washington, August 22: A team of Wisconsin scientists have explained the mechanics of how the male lion got his mane, how the bull moose acquired such an impressive set of antlers, and, how the peacock got its magnificent tail.

The work is an extension of a research about the molecular details of how a simple genetic switch controls decorative traits in male fruit flies and how that switch evolved.

A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison molecular biologist Sean Carroll described the regulation and evolution of a genetic circuit in fruit flies that permits the male to decorate its abdomen.

The work also shows how the regulation of the same genetic circuit in females represses such ornamentation.