Berlin  ­ A major development project designed to reshape a part of east Berlin along the banks of the River Spree moves a tiny step closer to completion this week.

The site cuts through three of Berlin's twelve districts and crosses the border which formerly divided the city into East and West. Projects already realized under the Mediaspree label include futuristic office high rises as well as redeveloped industrial sites.

But the drastic change the project has caused to the city's landscape has also aroused fierce protest.

One objection is to a large multi-purpose arena accommodating up to 17 000 visitors, which opens on Wednesday after two years of construction.

Tehran  - The legal commission of the Iranian parliament has limited the rights of men to polygamy but the new bill has still to be approved by the country's legislative power, ISNA news agency reported Monday.

The spokesman of the parliamentary legal commission said that the new law would only allow men to marry a second wife after getting the approval of the first wife.

Amin-Hossein Rahimi added that exceptions would only be made if the first wife left the marriage or was sentenced to a long prison term.

Under the previous law, a man could marry a second wife without the approval of his first wife.

Washington, Sept 8 : Shopoholics are likely to spend more while using a credit or gift card than cash buys, says a new study by Indian origin researchers.

After conducting four studies, researchers Dr. Priya Raghubir of the Stern School of Business at New York University and Dr. Joydeep Srivastava of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park, have come to the conclusion that cash discourages spending, and credit or gift cards encourage it.

During the study, the researchers focussed on two factors in purchasing behaviour: when consumers part with their money (cash versus credit) and the form of payment
(cash, cash-like scrip, gift certificate or credit card).

Hong Kong - Pro-democracy candidates won 24 seats in Hong Kong's legislative council election, defying predictions they would be swept aside by China-friendly parties, results showed Monday.

The opposition candidates secured just one less seat than they did in the previous 2004 elections, maintaining their veto power on constitutional change in the 60-seat legislature.

Washington - Residents of the Caribbean Turks and Caicos islands began surveying damage on Sunday following the devastating impact of Hurricane Ike, as the "extremely dangerous" category 4 storm continued on its path toward the Bahamas and Florida Keys.

At 8 a.m. (1300 GMT) Ike had winds of over 215 kilometres per hour, just east of Grand Inagua in the Bahamas.

Residents of Turks and Caicos islands said on Sunday that the worst there had passed, but the damage looked "pretty huge."

Speaking to US news channel CNN, Audley Astwood, a reporter at a radio station on Grand Turk island said that "it looks very dismal outside."

The latest report presented by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights exposes the grim picture that the children are not able to draw any benefits from the projects targeted for their development. The report maintains that the schemes and programmes designed for providing nutritional support and free education to the children in the state of Manipur, who are either HIV infected or affected, are not functioning.

In a public hearing, the challenges and the issues, faced by the children infected and affected by HIV AIDS in Manipur, were discussed at length. The parents and guardians of the HIV infected and affected children from the State informed the team that the schemes and the programmes are not benefitting their needy children.