London, Nov 4 : A Muslim doctor who claimed homosexuals ‘prey on society’ was declared guilty of misconduct for undermining the Islamic medical community’s confidence, a disciplinary panel has ruled.

Dr Muhammad Siddiq, at the time president of the Islamic Medical Association, has been suspended from medical practice for 12 months after sending an “offensive and homophobic” letter to a magazine.

He wrote to a GPs’ magazine accusing homosexuals of spreading disease and said they needed to feel ‘the stick of the law’. He also branded transsexuals ‘twisted’.

Stockholm  - A Syrian-Lebanese singer was due to appear at a remand custody

Berlin  - Germany's economy will pick up in 2010 after a rough patch next year, Chancellor Angela Merkel predicted on Tuesday as she spoke to an audience of German business leaders.

"We'll face bad news in 2009, but we are going to do something so that 2010 will be better," said Merkel, who faces a general election next September. Merkel's cabinet was set to approve on Wednesday an anti-recession federal spending package.

She told the national employers' association she expected Germany's export-led economic growth to ultimately recover.

Vatican City - Top Roman Catholic and Muslim clerics and scholars began Tuesday historic talks in Rome aimed at defusing tensions between Christianity and Islam.

The talks are part of an initiative by moderate Muslim individuals and groups that began in the wake of the violent protests in the Islamic against the publication in a Danish newspaper in 2005 of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.

Washington - Voting started at 6 am (1100 GMT) in several states Tuesday in historic US elections to elect the country's 44th president.

Officials braced for an unprecedented turnout and massive lines at polling places as voters delivered their verdict on Democrat Barack Obama, 47, and his Republican rival John McCain, 72, after the longest and most expensive campaign in US history.