The Plan B pill which was initially only available to 18 year olds and above will now be made available to 17 yr olds and above, and that too without a prescription. Food and Drug Administration revealed on its website that a federal court ordered that the emergency contraception pill be made available over the counter to those 17 and up.

Washington - US President Barack Obama met Thursday with leaders of the credit-card industry, urging them to end unfair practices that are raising costs on indebted consumers, while US lawmakers are considering a wider crackdown on the sector.

Obama said he hoped to create a new system that "eliminates some of the abuses" including sudden interest-rate hikes and late-payment fees, which have added to unmanageable debts for some US consumers.

Washington  - The fifth and last mission to repair the ageing Hubble Space Telescope could launch a day earlier than planned, officials at the US space agency said Thursday.

The space shuttle Atlantis was to take off from its Florida launch site on May 12 and could likely take off at 2:01 pm (1801 GMT) on May 11, officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said.

"I'm fairly confident that we can make a May 11 launch date," said LeRoy Cain, deputy manager of the Space Shuttle Programme.

Washington  - General Motors, under the government's gun to prove its viability and bracing for a worsening economic downturn, Thursday announced an unprecedented series of nationwide plant shut- downs over the summer aimed at reducing ballooning inventory.

The company said it would shut down 13 assembly operations in North America for multiple weeks, staggered across the summer, with the aim of removing 190,000 vehicles from the production schedule for second and third quarters of this year.

Washington - A Florida pharmacy that mixed medication for 21 polo horses before they mysteriously died over the weekend said Thursday it incorrectly mixed the substance, the Palm Beach Post reported online.

The horses, which belonged to the Venezuelan team La Lechuza owned by Venezuelan multimillionaire Victor Vargas, died shortly before a quarter-finals match was to begin Sunday at the 105th US Open Polo Championship in Wellington, Florida.

Washington - US President Barack Obama marked Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday by warning that preventing genocide in the future depends on the world's willingness to confront hatred wherever it arises.

"Bearing witness is not the end of our obligation. It's just the beginning. We know that evil has yet to run its course on earth," Obama said. "We've seen it, in this century, in the mass graves and the ashes of villages burned to the ground and children used as soldiers and rape used as a weapon of war."