Washington - The words "saving money" and "photo printing" are not often used in the same sentence. That's because photo printers seem to exist to make us poorer.

Ink is expensive. Paper is expensive. Even the electricity to run the printers is expensive. But you don't have to print your own money to get back some of what you might normally spend on printing.

Being smarter about printing and taking some cost-cutting measures can make your photo printer an ally rather than a dreaded drain on the budget.

--- Say no to expensive consumables

Leipzig, Germany  - Gazprom of Russia confirmed on Wednesday its interest in expanding its stake in Germany's third-largest gas importing company, Verbundnetz Gas (VNG).

Alexej Miller, chief executive of Gazprom, spoke in Leipzig during celebrations of the 50th anniversary of VNG's foundation as a major state-owned enterprise in communist East Germany. VNG's current business and municipal shareholders have been feuding for weeks.

Berlin - A senior German official responded calmly Wednesday to the Pentagon's cancellation of a tendering competition for US Air Force tankers.

An aerial refuelling Airbus jet made by the European aerospace and defence group EADS had initially been chosen by the Pentagon, but the tender was re-opened. That review is now being frozen until next year.

Peter Hintze, a junior economy minister who is also the German government's coordinator on aerospace policy, said: "The US government's decision is evidently because of the US presidential election."

Geneva, Sep 10 : Scientists have fired the first beam of protons around a 27.36-kilometre tunnel on Wednesday in science''s next great step to understand the makeup of the universe.

The Large Hadron Collider built since 2003 at a cost of 3.8 billion dollars provides scientists with much greater power than ever before to smash the components of atoms in a bid to see how they are made.

"The beam is the size of a human hair," Paola Catapano, a spokeswoman for the host European Organisation for Nuclear Research said after the protons were fired into the accelerator below the Swiss-French border.

Washington, September 10 : Ever wondered why predatory wasps hunt free-flying bees, rather than foraging bees directly from the honeybee nest?

Well, researchers at the University of Graz, Austria, and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK, say that it is all because the shimmering—a remarkable capacity of rapid communication in giant honeybees—acts as a defensive mechanism and repels predatory hornets.

The researchers describe shimmering as a phenomenon wherein thousands of honeybees flip their abdomens upwards within a split-second to produce a Mexican Wave-like pattern across their nests.

Geneva, September 10 : The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN was successfully steered today morning around the full 27 kilometers of the world''s most powerful particle accelerator, which is located on the border of France and Switzerland.

"It''s a fantastic moment," said LHC project leader Lyn Evans. "We can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe," he added.

The LHC is the world''s largest and the highest-energy particle accelerator.