World News

Washington, Feb. 10 -- NASA planned to launch a solar probe on Wednesday to help unlock more secrets about the sun, whose massive storms affect earth's weather and can pose danger to earth dwellers.

New York, Feb. 9 -- Two American box office phenomena for 2010 appeared to end their spectacular runs this weekend. James Cameron's Avatar was toppled from the number one spot and Raj Kumar Hirani's 3 Idiots could well end its theatrical run in the United States within the next couple of weeks. 3 Idiots has grossed about $6.5 million in the US, just about a 100th of Avatar's takes.

Real Madrid?s Brazilian playmaker Kaka believes he has shaken off a lingering groin injury and his form is improving with each match and training session.

It was a couple of weeks after the earthquake whken word began to spread in a small, poor village here. American missionaries, a local emissary told the people, were offering to take children to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic and give them an education and a better life.

Stoke City striker Ricardo Fuller was arrested after an incident at a nightclub in the early hours of Sunday, the Premier League club said on Monday.

Australian Open champion Serena Williams stayed on top in the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) rankings published on Monday.

For sale: one radar base. Previous owner: the Soviet Union. Price: $3.1m (£2m). Some 20 years after the end of communism, Latvia on Sunday auctioned off one of its most striking cold war artefacts ? a Soviet early warning station formerly known as Skrunda-1.

Haiti's child welfare system was broken before the earthquake struck. But as the quake shattered homes and drove hundreds of thousands of people into the streets, the number of children needing care grew exponentially.

Washington, Feb. 8 -- Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia were digging out Sunday from a massive snowfall that paralysed the Mid-Atlantic region and left hundreds of thousands without power.

?The war in Afghanistan is doomed to fail in the long run and the U.S. [United States] is not invincible,? said Swedish Leftist intellectual and writer Jan Myrdal, during a lecture at St Xavier?s College, near Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, on Saturday.

Three Indian nationals were killed when their pick-up collided with a passenger bus in the northern Philippines, police said on Friday. The victims were driving late on Tuesday along a highway in Ilagan town in Isabela province, 300 km north of Manila, when the accident occurred. Chief Superintendent Roberto Damian, a regional police commander, said the Indian nationals died on the spot.

President Barak Obama has urged newly re-elected President Mahinda Rajapaksa to lead Sri Lanka towards national reconciliation in the post-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) era and heal the divisions created by conflict.

During Barack Obama?s presidential campaign in 2008, his finance committee refused to accept any contribution from controversial hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal, because of the latter?s ?background and baggage?, a member of his campaign finance committee told Hindustan Times.

Rajiv Shah, the seniormost Indian-American in the Obama Administration, may be coordinating the American relief effort in quake-hit Haiti, but a senior Congressman has demanded for his removal from the post of Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for lacking minority staffers.

China on Thursday threw a roadblock in the path of a US-led push for sanctions against Iran, saying that it is important to continue negotiations as long as Iran appears willing to consider a deal to give up some of its enriched uranium.

Government offices and schools closed several hours ahead of schedule in Washington on Friday to enable people to head home before a major snowstorm hit.

When the US Department of Defence?s 2006 Quadrennial Defence Review or QDR was released, many analysts saw within that the prospect of cooperation between India and the US on a common threat ? loose nuclear weapons in Pakistan.

The US government had banned DDT, a synthetic pesticide used to kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes, in 1972 because of allegations that it could harm the ecology and human health.

India, Feb. 4 -- Avatar has reached yet another milestone, smashing the North American box office record previously held by the 1997 James Cameron epic Titanic, Fox studios announced on Wednesday.

Even as U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told a Senate Armed Forces Committee that the ?Don?t ask, don?t tell? policy about gays serving in the U.S. military should end, a young Indian-American Air Force officer played a significant role in influencing the decision.