London - Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is in line to benefit to the tune of 20 billion pounds (31 billion dollars) from a government bail-out programme, Tuesday unveiled more write- downs and signalled that it expected to make its first annual loss ever in 2008.

The beleaguered Edinburgh-based lender said bad debt charges and write-downs totalled 206 million pounds in the third quarter of 2008, in addition to 5.9 billion pounds in the first half of the year.

British actress, Kate Winslet, 33, who has been nominated for best supporting actress and best actress for role in 'The Reader' and 'Revolutionary Road', appears on the cover staring at the camera, wearing a white coat. Talking her heart out to Vanity Fair, including baring all for its December 2008 issue, Kate reveals why she needs coffee and a ciggie in the morning, to what she thought of husband Sam Mendes when they first met, how she feels about her five Oscar nominations, to how deeply she really wants the Oscar this year.

London, Nov. 4 : Portuguese striker Cristiano Ronaldo got all hot and bothered after pals played a cruel prank about his sweaty armpits.

Team-mates filled his training room locker with cans of deodorant and aftershave when Ronaldo was pictured by the Mirror sweating through a jacket on a night out.

London, Nov. 4 : The Republicans had all the advantages with them to sweep this year’s presidential polls in the United States, but wasted it with sleaze, the editor of The Economist, John Micklethwait, claimed.

On Friday, The Economist endorsed Barack Obama. “It’s time,” runs the leader in the current edition of the magazine that still likes to be known as a “newspaper”.

“America should take a chance and make Obama the next leader of the free world,” it says.

London  - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stressed the importance of "American leadership" in the current global economic crisis but warned against a retreat into isolation and protectionism.

Speaking during his current tour of Arab Gulf states, Brown carefully avoided taking sides in Tuesday's US poll, saying he was looking forward to working with the next president, "whoever he is."

London, Nov 4 : A Muslim doctor who claimed homosexuals ‘prey on society’ was declared guilty of misconduct for undermining the Islamic medical community’s confidence, a disciplinary panel has ruled.

Dr Muhammad Siddiq, at the time president of the Islamic Medical Association, has been suspended from medical practice for 12 months after sending an “offensive and homophobic” letter to a magazine.

He wrote to a GPs’ magazine accusing homosexuals of spreading disease and said they needed to feel ‘the stick of the law’. He also branded transsexuals ‘twisted’.