Los Angeles - From health care to taxes, Iraq to Iran, Joe Biden to Joe the Plumber - the candidates in Tuesday's presidential election are blitzing the US airwaves with an avalanche of ads.

It's their final chance to persuade voters at the climax of the most expensive campaign in electoral history, and Democratic nominee Barack Obama holds the advantage.

Beijing, Oct 30 : The Chinese government is learnt to have chalked out a new schedule for holding another round of talks with His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s representatives “in the near future”.

The announcement of the planned talks came a day after the Dalai Lama reportedly called a special meeting of Tibetan exile communities and political organizations next month.

The five-day gathering, scheduled for mid-November, could mark a shift in the Dalai Lama''s strategy for dealing with the central government, foreign media have reported.

London, Oct 30 : After being ‘hammered’ by the Democrats in the Nov 4 presidential poll, the Republican Party will be left in wilderness for up to 12 years, a senior black Republican has warned.

Michael Steele, a rising star in the party and one of its most prominent African Americans, said the first challenge for the Republicans was to admit that their demise was “all of their own making”. He urged a David Cameron-style reinvention to broaden the party’s appeal in the near future.

Washington, Oct 30 : Scientists have found evidence which indicates that the 2004 tsunami that inundated Indian Ocean coastlines, leaving behind a trail of destruction, was not a first-time occurrence, as the mega waves have repeatedly washed over a Thai island during the last 2,800 years.

The evidence was found by a research team, led by Kruawun Jankaew of Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, working on Phra Thong, a barrier island along the hard-hit west coast of Thailand.

The team unearthed evidence of at least three previous major tsunamis in the preceding 2,800 years, the most recent from about 550 to 700 years ago.

Nairobi/Kinshasa - A rebel Tutsi general has called a ceasefire after four days of fighting in which his forces routed the Congolese National Army and came on the verge of taking the major eastern town of Goma.

General Laurent Nkunda told the BBC Wednesday night that he was calling a ceasefire to prevent panic in Goma and requested government forces do the same.

The French ambassador to the United Nations, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said he hoped the ceasefire "would stand" and called on Nkunda to cease hostilities from Thursday morning.

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