Washington, Mar. 17 : President Barack Obama has decided that he is too busy to attend the Gridiron's annual banquet later this month.

He will be the first president since Grover Cleveland to skip the white-tie-and-tails affair in his first year in office.

The official line from the Gridiron Club - a society of Washington reporters, columnists, and bureau chiefs - is, "We understand."

But some Gridiron veterans make clear they don't understand.

New York, Mar 17 : A loudmouth on the sets of `American Idol' has claimed that the producers and judges of the show have already decided which contestants will make it to the final four in the competition.

One of the lady staffers has said that the bosses on the show have already picked the final four contestants, and that too when 11 contestants are still battling to be the latest pop star.

Washington, Mar 17 : Researchers have developed a new technique in which DNA patches are used to treat dogs with the canine version of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a paralysing and often fatal disease of muscles.

Called "exon skipping", the technique uses tailor-made snippets of DNA-like molecules as molecular "patches", which cover up mutant DNA sequences that code for making an important muscle protein.

Washington, Mar 17 (ANI): Risk factors including age, gender, diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, smoking and risk of gastrointestinal bleeding, should be taken into account before patients go for aspirin to prevent heart attacks or strokes, according to new recommendations from the U. S. Preventive Services Task Force.

The organisation has updated its 2002 recommendation about using aspirin to prevent heart attacks or strokes.

Washington, Mar 17: Adult stem cells have a major role to play in curing type 1 diabetic mice, according to a new study by an Indian-origin scientist.

In the study, the researchers focussed on a study by Dr. Lawrence C. B. Chan and colleagues in his Baylor College of Medicine laboratory, in which they cured mice with type 1 diabetes by using a gene to induce liver cells to make insulin.

"Now we know how it works. The answer is adult stem cells," said Chan.

Washington, Mar. 17 : Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, has outrightly rejected suggestions that the US played a role in the latest political solution in Islamabad.

Haqqani said that US as an ally might have concerns over Pakistan’s emanating internal situation, but it had no role in the internal politics of Pakistan.

He added that Pakistan’s internal politics were exclusively a matter of the people of Pakistan.