Washington, May 24 : The interest of teenagers is moving away from social networking platform Facebook, and they prefer "parent-free" platforms, according to a survey.

The survey, conducted by Pew Research Center, indicates how teenagers' enthusiasm for Facebook is diminishing. The authors of the Pew report wrote how Facebook is now a "social burden" for teenaged users.

"While Facebook is still deeply integrated in teens' everyday lives, it is sometimes seen as a utility and an obligation rather than an exciting new platform that teens can claim as their own," huffingtonpost. com quoted one of the authors.

Washington, May 16 : A US gun rights activist is invoking Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, in asking 1,000 supporters to march into the American capital on its July 4 Independence Day carrying loaded rifles.

Activist Adam Kokesh, 31, who according to media reports, "has a history of rabble-rousing and self-promotion", has vowed to respond "with satyagraha," if the capital police block the protesters against "tyranny" from crossing into Washington.

Washington, May 11 : A woman slapped a sheriff's deputy in the US state of California so that she could get arrested and be put in jail, where she would not be allowed to smoke cigarettes.

Deputy Matt Campoy said the 31-year-old woman, Etta Mae Lopez, blocked his way as he left his shift at the Sacramento County Jail, CBS 13 reported.

"All of a sudden, she stepped into me and slapped me in the face," he said.

Lopez was detained at once. She apparently wanted to use California's ban on tobacco in prisons to kick the habit.

"She told us that she needed to quit smoking," Campoy said.

Washington, May 8 : The US Department of Defense has released a report that saw a sharp rise in sexual assaults in the military, highlighting a pandemic the Pentagon is scrambling to stamp out.

According to the report, an estimated 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted in the 2012 fiscal year, up from 19,000 in the previous fiscal year.

Washington, May 8 : US consumer credit increased at an annual rate of 3.4 percent in March, less than half of the 8 percent pace in the previous month, the US Federal Reserve reported.

Total consumer borrowing rose in March by a seasonally adjusted $8 billion, falling short of the market expectation of $15 billion increase, reported Xinhua.

Revolving debt, the type which includes credit cards, declined to $846.2 billion in March, down 2.4 percent at an annual rate from the revised figure in February.

Washington, May 6 : A power venture formed by Indian and North American energy professionals plans to create a role model for the world by lighting up famed Buddhist sites in Bihar with a $240 million (Rs. 13 billion) solar energy project as part of a corporate social responsibility initiative.

Founded in 2011, FJS Energy LLC, USA, aims to work around the Buddhist Circuits starting with Rajgir-Nalanda and Bodhgaya in the first phase and then taking up Vaishali and other places.

Washington, May 1 : Noting that South Asian Americans, particularly those who are Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh, have too often faced "senseless violence and suspicion", President Barack Obama has vowed to keep up the fight against discrimination.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders "have made our country bigger and brighter again and again, from Native Hawaiians to the generations of striving immigrants who shaped our history," he said, in a Presidential Proclamation declaring May as the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month.

Washington, May 1 : Sikh leaders in the US have expressed their "dismay and shock" at Congress leader Sajjan Kumar's acquittal by a Delhi court in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.

"It is shocking to see Sajjan Kumar being acquitted by the court. This certainly sends a wrong message that the legal system in India is not just," said Rajwant Singh, chairman of the Sikh Council on Religion and Education
(SCORE).

"Sajjan Kumar's acquittal should be a matter of concern for all Indians, not just Sikhs," he said.

Washington, April 27 : Chinese sensation Guan Tianlang, just 14 years old, fired a 69 in the par-72 USPGA Tour Zurich Classic after a lacklustre first round the day before.

The teenage golfer scored five birdies and two bogeys in his second round effort Friday, reports Xinhua.

His three-under-par total of 141, with an even-par opening round, was nine shots off leader Lucas Glover but within the projected cut line of two-under.

"I think I played a very good round today," said the amateur. "I made a lot of birdies and a couple of good up and downs. So I think... I made the cut."

Washington, April 23 : Facing the death penalty on charges of using a weapon of mass destruction, the surviving Boston bombings suspect has claimed that his older brother, not any international terrorist group, masterminded the deadly attack, according to a media report.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who has been hospitalised with a tube down his throat in recent days, communicated with investigators by writing and nodding, CNN reported citing a US government source.

Washington, April 23 : The three smartphone satellites sent into space Sunday by the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket are operating normally in orbit, the US space agency NASA said.

Transmissions from all the three PhoneSats, believed to be the lowest-cost satellites ever put in space, have been received at multiple ground stations on the Earth, said NASA in a statement Monday.

The satellites are expected to remain in orbit for as long as two weeks, while the PhoneSat team at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California will continue to monitor them in the coming days, reported Xinhua citing NASA.

Washington, April 23 :  Lying in hospital, a badly injured surviving suspect of the deadly Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured over 180 was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and faces the death penalty if convicted.

Washington, April 20 : Finance Minister P Chidambaram has flagged to the US Indian concerns over the proposed "discriminatory" fee hike for HiB visas coveted by Indian techies, saying "knowledge workers" should not be confused with immigrants.

The minister, who is here to attend the annual International Monetary Fund-World Bank spring meeting, flagged Indian concerns at a meeting Friday with new US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew as they did a "tour of the horizon" of issues between the two countries.

Washington, April 20 : India received $69 billion remittance in 2012, the highest in the world, followed by China with $60 billion and the Philippines $24 billion, World Bank data showed.

Other major recipients of foreign remittances were Mexico with $23 billion and Nigeria and Egypt with $21 billion each, according to the latest edition of the World Bank's Migration and Development Brief released here Friday.

Washington, April 19 : The two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, one of whom was killed and the other is on the loose, are brothers of Chechen origin -- with at least one a legal permanent resident of the US, according to various media reports.

The suspect at large was identified Friday as 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, born in Kyrgyzstan, holding a Massachusetts driver's licence and living in the Boston suburb of Cambridge, NBC News reported citing law enforcement officials.

Washington, April 19 : Indian-origin student Sunil Tripathi is not a suspect in the Boston marathon bombing, contrary to some rumours floating on the social media.

Tripathi, a 22-year-old Brown University student who went missing mysteriously March 16, was reported by some as the Boston bombing suspect number two Thursday night.

Tripathi was first suggested as a suspect for Monday's Boston Marathon bombings on Reddit, then later by the Twitter account of Kami Mattioli, who knew the college student when he was in high school, the Inquisitr, a news website reported.

Washington, April 19 : NASA's "planet-hunting" space telescope Kepler has discovered seven new planets, including two that are orbiting in the zone "between fire and ice" that could sustain life, experts said.

"We have found two planets in the habitable zone of another star and they are the best candidates we have found to date for habitable planets," said William Borucki, principal investigator for the Kepler mission at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

Washington, April 19 : As the US enhances its security partnership with India as part of Asia rebalance, American companies could see "billions of dollars" in additional weapons sales to New Delhi, according to a senior US defence official.

Noting that US military sales to India have grown from virtually zero in 2008 to more than $8 billion, Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, told reporters Thursday "we think there's going to be billions dollars more in the next couple of years."

Washington, April 17 : The lid of a pressure cooker thought to have been used in the Boston Marathon bombings has been found on a roof of a building at the scene possibly yielding vital clues, according to media reports.

The two bombs, which exploded within 12 seconds of each other at the marathon finish line Monday, killed three people and wounded 183, according to latest reports.

One of the bombs was housed in a pressure cooker hidden inside a backpack, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said in a Joint Intelligence Bulletin.

Washington, April 17 : Bill Richard, father of eight-year-old Martin who was killed in the Boston Marathon bombings, said he was trying hard to cope with the tragedy in which his wife and daughter also suffered injuries.

As he grieved the death of his son, Richard said he was also trying to help his wife and daughter recover from injuries they suffered with 174 others in the terrorist attack Monday.

"My dear son Martin has died from injuries sustained in the attack on Boston. My wife and daughter are both recovering from serious injuries," said Richard in a statement cited by the Boston Globe.