Washington  - A man was charged in the United States on Wednesday with trying to sell a golden bookmark once given to Adolf Hitler to cheer him up after losing the Battle of Stalingrad.

Christian Popescu, 37, of Kenmore, Washington, was arrested after FBI agents posing as potential buyers set up a meeting to purchase the 18-carat-gold artifact in a Starbucks parking lot, the US Justice Department said.

New York - US stocks soared Wednesday for a fourth straight trading session.

Since its November 20 close, the broad-based Standard & Poor's 500 Index has gained 18 per cent as president-elect Barack Obama has announced appointments to financial posts within his administration and endorsed a push for major financial stimulus legislation. He takes office on January 20.

Washington - The United States late Wednesday condemned the deadly terrorist attacks in India and offered US assistance to the Indian government.

"We strongly condemn the terrorist attacks that have taken place in Mumbai, India," State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said. "Our sympathies go out to the families and friends of those killed and injured and to the people of Mumbai."

Geneva - Climate change and its effects are occurring at a faster rate than scientists previously thought, a conservation group said Thursday, calling for governments to take action at an upcoming United Nations conference in Poland.

"We are now seeing devastating consequences of warming that were not expected to hit for decades," Kim Carstensen from the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) said.

Mumbai - Terrorists killed 80 people and wounded more than 200 late Wednesday in a series of coordinated attacks across India's financial hub Mumbai, officials and news reports said.

Heavily armed gunmen in groups of two to four opened fire with automatic weapons and lobbed grenades in 10 places in south Mumbai, including the five-star Taj and Trident hotels, the city's main railway terminus, a hospital, a cafe, a pub and a cinema hall. The targets seemed to be areas frequented by tourists.

Washington  - Cuban President Raul Castro has said he is open to meeting US president Barack Obama at a neutral location, and suggested Guantanamo Bay as a possible venue.

Castro, in an interview with actor Sean Penn published online Wednesday in the Nation, a leftist US weekly, said he would not be willing to go to Washington and understands a US president would not want to travel to Havana.