Hong Kong  - Three Chinese astronauts hailed as national heroes after performing the country's first space walk are to visit Hong Kong and Macau, a news report said Thursday.

Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng, the three astronauts, often called taikonauts, whose space walk in September generated patriotic fervour, are to tour the territories in early December, the South China Morning Post reported.

Islamabad - Gunmen on Thursday ambushed a car carrying an Iranian diplomat in north-western Pakistan and kidnapped the official after killing his guard, police and media reports said.

The diplomat was seized when he was travelling to the Iranian consulate in Peshawar, the capital of the troubled North West Frontier Province.

A police officer said the kidnappers intercepted the vehicle in the upscale Hayatabad neighbourhood and shot dead a police guard before whisking the official and his driver away.

Networked high-definition screens from Cisco Systems would be installed in the new Yankee Stadium in New York, which would be capable of showing live game play and later switch to giving exit directions and traffic information.

Ram Gopal Verma is all set to storm the theatre very soon with a big cast line up for his next venture, 'Rann'.After a few ups like ‘Sarkar and Sarkar Raj’ and a few downs like 'Aag', 'Darling' and 'Phoonk’ the ace director has bollywoods biggest stars Amitabh Bachchan... Paresh Rawal... Riteish Deshmukh... Mohnish Behl... Manisha Koirala... Rajat Kapoor... Sudeep... Gul Panag... Raima Sen and Rajpal Yadav by his side.

However the list is not over yet with rumors of Abhishek Bachchan, Himesh Reshammiya and even Mallika Sherwat being part of the gang.

The Oxford University has announced the opening of its controversial Biomedical Science building. The construction was stopped in July 2004 after animal rights protests aimed at contract workers on the site, but was resumed in November 2005 after the university obtained a court order limiting demonstrations to one day a week.

The First Mice for research, which will play a key part in biomedical research, have been delivered at the facility.

The latest news reports suggest that Eric Schmidt, Google Inc. chief executive officer won’t take a technology post in President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet. In a TV interview conducted on Friday, Schmidt declined such a post.

During the campaign for the presidency, Obama said, “I would create a cabinet post similar to a chief technology officer to advice on tech issues.” Some watchers claimed to have seen Schmidt, a strong supporter of Obama, most likely with the motive to be tapped for that post.