Srinagar, Oct 31: Filing of nominations for the first phase of Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections comes to an end today.

Polling will be held on November 17 in 10 constituencies. The date of scrutiny is November 1 and last date for withdrawal of candidature is November 3.

Meanwhile, the Centre has dispatched 70 companies of para-military forces for ensuring security during the seven-phase elections in the State.

Security officials said that the Centre has so far sent 70 out of 425 sanctioned companies for ensuring security for polls during first phase of polling on November 17.

Washington, Oct 31: A new study has suggested that an eight-armed creature colonized a large section of the world’s oceans over 300 million years before the first dinosaurs emerged.

According to a report in Discovery News, the findings represent the first comparable animal fossils from the Ediacaran Period, 635 to 541 million years ago, which appear in two drastically different preservation environments - black shale of South China and quartz rock of South Australia.

After shifting the Nano Project from West Bengal to Gujarat, The Tata Motors will return the leased land at Singur to the state Govt. WB Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee informed this in a left front meeting at Kolakata.

The Tatas took the lease from West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation.

The CM further informed his partners that his government didn't release the Rs 200-crore soft loan that Tatas had sought to set up the small-car factory. The State Govt. is exploring other alternatives for the Singur area he added.

London, Oct 31: A study that has accurately dated sophisticated stone tools made by our ancestors has suggested that technological innovation is more likely to have spurred the first modern humans to migrate out of Africa than climate change.

Scientists have long argued about the forces that drove the transition to modern human behaviour after our species evolved in Africa up to 280,000 years ago.

Most scholars agree that Homo sapiens passed a threshold between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago, with evidence for more complex technology, ornaments and symbolic art turning up in the archaeological record.

Human genetics research also suggests that the population expanded markedly during this time.

Taipei - Taiwan stocks rose nearly 4 per cent Friday on an overnight rally on Wall Street and in expectation of expanded Taiwan-China exchanges.

The Taiex index soared 187.02 points, or 3.99 per cent, to close at 4,870.6.

Analysts attributed the surge not only to Thursday's rally on Wall Street, where the three major indices rose more than 2 per cent, but also to China's promise to ease restrictions on mainlanders visiting Taiwan.

The Orissa government has ordered for Crime Branch enquiry to the death of Father Bernard Digal. Father Diggal was allegedly attacked in Kandhamal and died in Chennai in Last Tuesday.

A criminal case in this regard had been registered in a Police Station at state Capital Bhubaneswar. Father Joseph Kalathil, the vicar-general of the archbishop's house in Bhubaneswar has lodged the complaint, said police DG M.M Praharaj. Father Digal will be creamated today near St.Vincent Church. A post-mortem was conducted at the Capital Hospital here after the deceased's body was flown from Chennai via Mumbai.