Washington, Mar. 9 : Despite US President Barack Obama's admittance that Washington was open to dialogues with the moderate elements of the Taliban, officials have said that the US is planning a dramatic intensification of the Predator drone attacks on the Taliban in the tribal areas of Pakistan. "There will be talks but the Taliban are going to experience a lot of pain first, on both sides of the border," a top US diplomat said.

Washington, Mar. 8 : Barack Obama''s weary approach towards Gordon Brown''s Washington visit last week has been attributed to president's exhaustion over America''s economic crisis, White House sources said.

Despite British diplomats insisting that brown's visit was a success, official sources told the Sunday Telegraph that Prime Minister should have been granted a full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as was customary.

They conceded that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

Ankara (Turkey) Mar. 8 : US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that President Obama will fulfill his promise of visiting a Muslim nation within 100 days of joining the office by traveling to Turkey in the "next month or so."

At a news conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, Clinton said Obama had asked her to deliver the message that he would visit the country soon to discuss the safest, most effective way to withdraw US forces from Iraq, Fox News reports..

Caracas (Venezuela), Mar.

New Delhi, Mar. 8 : Despite US President Barack Obama's anti-outsourcing policies, global financial firm Moody''s has said India will continue to remain a top outsourcing destination.

"India will remain a top outsourcing destination because of its tech-savvy and English-proficient urban workforce whose wages are much lower than their western counterparts," Moody''s economist Sherman Chan said.

Sherman, however, added that India''s outsourcing industry would certainly be affected by the global economic meltdown, as demand for IT support or telemarketing has weakened significantly in recent months.

London, Mar. 8 : Genealogists have traced the family roots of Barack Obama, the 44th US President back to a seventeenth-century Pilgrim settler who emigrated from England to America as one of the founding fathers of the colony of Plymouth, Massachusettes.

They found that President Obama is the 13th-generation descendant of Deacon Thomas Blossom, who was born in the village of Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire, around
1580.

Research by Charles Blossom, 63, and his close family had already revealed that they, too, are related to Thomas Blossom.