New York - Toy producers Mattel Inc and Hasbro Inc were bracing for one of the worst holiday sales seadons in a generation, saying Monday the squeeze of high costs and reduced consumption spell trouble for the coming months.

The world's two largest toy manufacturers posted slow sales. Mattel's third quarter sales trailed analysts' estimates, while Hasbro posted the slowest sales growth in seven quarters.

New York - With some tickets priced at 25,000 dollars, the seminal concert last week by legendary rockers Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel was always destined to be a huge fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

On Monday the New York Daily News reported that the concert Thursday at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom raised a staggering 7 million dollars for the campaign.

New York, Oct 19 : When it comes to surfing the Web, men and women have completely different approaches, according to a new study.

The research on of Internet habits led by USC Annenberg Centre for the Digital Future found that while a majority of Internet users – 55pct - said they "feel as strongly" about their online communities as they do about their real ones, men feel a stronger connection to their cyberspace friends and are more likely to meet up with someone they met on the Net.

New York, Oct. 18 : United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer has said that the present meltdown on Wall Street should be seen as an opportunity to create and enforce policy which stimulates private competition to fund clean industry.

Talking to reporters here, de Boer said the chance to grow a greener world economy will come this December in Poznan, Poland, where governments will begin to formulate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming.

The deadline for a final agreement is December 2009.

De Boer pointed out that global demand for energy is expected to surge by 50 per cent by 2030, so investment in clean technologies must start now.

New York, October 18 : U. S. Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has hinted that she will appear on the NBC comedy show ‘Saturday Night Live’ this weekend.

"I haven''t seen a script - not at all. Haven''t been hinted about what that script is going to say," the New York Daily News quoted the hockey mom as telling syndicated radio host Neal Boortz on Friday.

New York - Wall Street took another tumble on Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average spiralling down by more than 700 points amid renewed worries the United States is already in the grip of a recession.

US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke warned that the emergency action taken by the Bush administration in response to the financial crisis is unlikely to produce a swift economic recovery.

"Stabilization of the financial markets is a critical first step, but even if they stabilize as we hope they will, broader economic recovery will not happen right away," Bernanke said to the Economic Club of New York.