Beijing, Oct 22: China has reportedly hailed the opening up of bilateral trade between India and Pakistan through two road routes after 60 years, saying that the two countries would work harder to promote bilateral relations.

“China is a neighbour and friend of both Pakistan and India,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang during a press briefing in Beijing here last evening.

On the occasion, Gang also said that Beijing would continue to co-operate with Pakistan in its endeavour in the civilian nuclear energy field. “I have repeated on many occasions that we have sound co-operation and relations with Pakistan. We would like to continue this co-operation on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.”

London, Oct 22 : The global Internet auction site eBay has announced that from January 2009, it will ban the sale of ivory from all its 39 websites worldwide.

According to a report in New Scientist, the move was prompted by a report exposing the scale of potentially illegal Internet trade in wildlife products, especially ivory.

Although eBay introduced a ban in June 2007 on sales of ivory between countries, transactions involving ivory have continued, according to ‘Killing with Keystrokes’, a report by the Fund for Animal Welfare.

A very astonishing piece of information has been put forward by the latest report of WWF that climate change is taking place at a much faster speed than thought by the scientific organizations. It is quite likely that if in case this is not treated on a global scale, then it will definitely have adverse effects on mankind.

Islamabad, Oct 22: Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari urged civil and political leaders to confront the war on terror, saying that the military and security agencies “could not be left alone to fight the war”.

“This is total war and should be fought in totality, and on multiple fronts,” he told participants of a top-level meeting on the FATA and NWFP security situation at the President’s House.

Washington, Oct 22: The Earth is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of both plants and animals, which has spurred a study by biologists at UC (University of California) Santa Barbara, to determine which species must be saved.

“The current extinction event is due to human activity, paving the planet, creating pollution, many of the things that we are doing today,” said co-author Bradley J. Cardinale, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology (EEMB) at UC Santa Barbara.

“The Earth might well lose half of its species in our lifetime. We want to know which ones deserve the highest priority for conservation,” he added.

Spice Mobiles has launched its latest slim and stylish musical handset, named Spice S-580 in the Indian market.

The unique feature of this candy bar phone is the Dazzle Ring-tone, which lets users to listen a fresh ring tone every time they receive a call. Using this feature, the handset shuffles and selects a ring tone from the list of 10 user-selected ring tones for every new call.