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L'Aquila, Italy  - The sprawling police training school on the outskirts of L'Aquila that is set to host the upcoming Group of Eight (G8) summit is built to withstand almost any earthquake that might strike the Italian city, experts say.

Just in case, helicopters will be on standby to lift US President Barack Obama and other world leaders to safety in the event of tremors similar to that which killed almost 300 people and left some 60,000 homeless in April.

But for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, shocks of a different kind could yet mar his role as summit host.

Berlin, July 2 : Astronomers have unveiled the largest map of cold cosmic dust, which are peppered in the inner regions of the Milky Way galaxy, and are the potential birthplaces of new stars.

Made using observations from the APEX telescope in Chile, this will prove an invaluable map for observations made with the forthcoming ALMA telescope, as well as the recently launched ESA Herschel space telescope.

This new guide for astronomers, known as the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL) shows the Milky Way in submillimeter-wavelength light.

Brussels  - There could not have been a better choice of venue for this year's Group of Eight (G8) summit - the earthquake- stricken medieval city of L'Aquila, in central Italy.

Starting on July 8, the leaders of the world's most powerful nations are to hold three days of talks on two seismic shifts that are changing the world we live in: the financial shockwaves that knocked the global economy into the deepest abyss since World War II, and the increasingly urgent need to save the planet from global warming.

Other conundrums include stalled world trade talks and the plight of millions of Africans living in abject poverty.

Islamabad, July 2 : Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has said that the military offensive against the Taliban would continue until all the extremists are rooted out from the country.

"The fight against militancy and terrorism will end with the complete elimination of militants," Zardari said during a meeting with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Kayani here.

London, July 2 : An international study led by researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles and nearly 50 institutions worldwide has identified new genes that confirm that the immune system may play a role in the development of Schizophrenia.

The researchers say that they have also identified genetic anomalies that disrupt the cellular pathways involved in brain development, memory and cognition, all markers of schizophrenia.

London, July 2 : An international team of astronomers has discovered a new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun.

Astronomers made the finding in a distant galaxy approximately 290 million light years from Earth.

Until now, identified black holes have been either super-massive in the centre of galaxies, or about the size of a typical star (between three and 20 Solar masses).

The new discovery is the first solid evidence of a new class of medium-sized black holes.

A black hole is a remnant of a collapsed star with such a powerful gravitational field that it absorbs all the light that passes near it and reflects nothing.