London, Nov 8 : Barack Obama would have found it impossible to become Prime Minister in Britain because of institutional racism within the British political system, the equality watchdog chief has claimed

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, believes that the public would embrace a Black leader, but the system would prevent him from getting to the top.

With shares of Yahoo Inc. plunging on Friday, Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft Corp. said at a business lunch in Sydney that Microsoft is no longer interested in “revisiting a possible acquisition” of the struggling Yahoo. Still, he did suggest a partnership in the search engine market is possible.

Ballmer’s latest remarks follow Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s statement earlier this week that he remained “very open minded” about a full or partial merger with Microsoft.

In the still-to-be-decided race for a US Senate seat in Minnesota, an Associated Press analysis of votes indicates that most ballots lacking a Senate vote were cast in counties won by Democrat Barack Obama.

The 25,000-vote difference in presidential and Senate race tallies could be due to different reasons - either some of the voters might have intentionally bypassed the Senate race, or others might have mismarked their ballot, or optical scanning machines might have misread them.

As such, a recount of the votes will begin November 19, and will use manual inspection to detect such ballots.

Washington, Nov 8 : A team of scientists has spotted strange Earth-like snowy avalanches near the north pole of Mars, while combing through images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s high resolution camera, HiRISE.

According to a report in Discovery News, Patrick Russell of the University of Berne in Switzerland led the team of researchers.

“We were looking at frosted sand dunes, and caught the avalanches in action,” Russell said of the images, which show large clouds of dust and snow near the base of a
500 meter-high cliff.

During the Martian winter, carbon dioxide frost and snow builds up in the north.

At his first news conference in Chicago, since his victory over Senator John McCain on Tuesday, President-elect Barack Obama said that the economic hardships many Americans are suffering are an “urgent reminder” that swift action is needed to stabilize the financial industry.

Surrounded by a large group of economic advisers, Obama pledged to confront the country’s economic crisis “head on” the moment he is sworn in on January 20. He asked his transition team to work on ideas to help the auto industry in particular.

Speaking to reporters from several news organizations, including the Anchorage Daily News, the Sarah Palin defended herself from a slew of criticisms that have been aimed at her from unnamed McCain aides.

The Alaska governor, having resumed work at her office in Anchorage on Friday, called her critics “jerks”, and said it was “immature” and “cowardly” for McCain staffers to be making sly allegations about her.