New York, Nov 3 : A 100 dollar wager placed on Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on October 30, 2007 when he was just another Democratic hopeful traversing Iowa - was worth 1,278 dollar on Sunday at Intrade. com, one of the most popular online bookies.

That same 100 dollar on Wall Street has plummeted some 35 percent over the same period, not to mention fall at the Dow Jones.

New York, Nov. 3 : Paula Radcliffe has become only the second woman to win the New York marathon thrice.

Radcliffe finished almost two minutes ahead of her nearest rival.

According to The Sun, the win came exactly eleven weeks after her loss at the Beijing Olympics. She could only finish 23rd there after a stress fracture hampered her preparations.

In New York, a fit and healthy Radcliffe re-established herself as the world’s best woman marathoner, clocking two hours 23.56 seconds.

Paris - The highly respected French weekly L'Express on Monday protested the Moroccan government's ban of its latest issue on the grounds that it insulted the Islamic religion.

L'Express assistant editor-in-chief Christian Makarian said he "could not understand" last Friday's decision by the Moroccan information minister to prohibit shipment of the magazine into the country.

The issue in question, dated October 30, shows images of Jesus Christ and Mohammad on the cover, accompanied by the headline "The Jesus-Mohammad Shock."

Kabul - A group of unknown gunmen abducted a French aid worker Monday in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and shot dead an Afghan driver who tried to rescue him, police said.

The Frenchman was kidnapped as he was walking to his office with a colleague, said Zemarai Bashary, an Interior Ministry spokesman.

The two men were on foot in the Kart-e-Parwan neighbourhood when three gunmen snatched the Frenchman and took him to an unknown location by car, said a senior police official who requested anonymity.

"An Afghan driver for the intelligence service who tried to stop the abduction was killed by the kidnappers," the official said.

He said that as the Afghan driver scuffled with the abductors, the other aid worker escaped.

Washington, Nov 3 : Spanish star Enrique Iglesias has laughed off ‘infidelity’ claims made by his alleged lovers, insisting that they are ‘hilarious’.

The ‘Hero’ singer says that he is baffled by the infidelity claims made by his alleged lovers- because he has never met the girls he is supposed to have slept with.

"I think it''s great that I''ve slept with girls I''ve not even met. One was a Kylie Minogue body double. Apparently we were watching telly in my hotel room,” Contactmusic quoted him as saying.

London, Nov 3 : In a new study, scientists have uncovered a new pathway in which disease-causing bacteria dodge the host’s immune system to survive and grow in the cells that were to destroy them.

Led by Peter Murray, Ph. D., at St. Jude Children''s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., and Thomas Wynn, Ph. D., the discovery may pave the way for new treatments and vaccines for tuberculosis (TB) and some other chronic bacterial and parasitic infections.