London, Oct 31 : An archaeologist in Israel has said that five lines of ancient script on a shard of pottery could be the oldest example of Hebrew writing ever discovered.

According to a report by BBC News, a teenage volunteer found the shard during a dig about 20km (12 miles) south-west of Jerusalem.

Experts at Hebrew University said that dating showed it was written 3,000 years ago - about 1,000 years earlier than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Other scientists cautioned that further study was needed to understand it.

London, Oct 31 : Rare first edition of Playboy magazine, which featured Marilyn Monroe on the cover, has fetched 2,000 pounds at an auction in London.

London - Britain and Germany will work together to prevent the spread of the current global financial crisis by seeking a reform of international institutions and encouraging banks to start lending again, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor Angela Merkel said in London Thursday.

Both leaders agreed to "strengthen" the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) with a new facility on which countries threatened by the global crisis - especially the emerging economies - could draw.

London - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was "delighted" to have been received by Queen Elizabeth II during a flying visit to London Thursday.

Merkel said she had told the British monarch during their private meeting in Buckingham Palace that Germany had "every interest in seeing the UK as a close partner and friend."

She had also made clear that she was "delighted that the UK was part and parcel of the EU," Merkel told journalists after the audience.

London - An Australian man of German extraction wanted in Germany on charges of denying the mass killing of Jews in the Holocaust has been freed on bail by a court in London following extradition proceedings.

Westminster Magistrate's Court confirmed Thursday that a judge had thrown out an extradition bid from Germany for 64-year-old Gerald Frederick Toben, arrested at London's Heathrow airport on October 1 on the basis of a European Union (EU) arrest warrant.

London, Oct 30 : An international poll has come out with varied results on one of the most debatable questions among scientists— when human life "begins" biologically?

The results come prior to a controversial constitutional amendment next week in Colorado, which will confer legal rights on embryos at the point of fertilisation.

Out of the 650 votes polled in, only 22.7pct of voters selected fertilisation as the point when human life begins.

But, detection of foetal heartbeat scored the highest, with 23.5 pct vote in its favour, and at the third position was implantation of the embryo in the womb lining with 15pct.