Washington, Oct 25 : State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about “Joe the Plumber”.

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became part of the national political lexicon on October 15 when Republican presidential candidate John McCain mentioned him frequently during his final debate with his rival Democrat Barack Obama.

Washington, Oct 25 : A research into excavated pagan Viking burials has provided new revelations into the way the early Norse led their lives and their attitude towards mortality.

According to a report by Media Newswire, the research was led by Professor Neil Price, Chair of Archaeology, University of Aberdeen, who explored thousands of excavated graves known from the Viking world, which revealed that no two of these burial monuments were the same.

The research also showed that Viking funerals involved complex elements of mortuary theatre – ritual plays which were literally performed at the graveside. 

New York, Oct 25 : After Sarah Palin came under scrutiny for her wardrobe expenses, new details have emerged, which show that U. S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain''s campaign paid 3 makeup artists a total of 52,000 dollars over 6 weeks.

According to records filed with the Federal Election Commission, the McCain campaign paid Amy Strozzi, Palin’s travelling makeup artist, 22,800 dollars for the first two weeks of October. Strozzi received 13,200 dollars for her work in September.

New York, Oct 25: Tran Trong Duyet, a former Vietnamese prison director who held Republican presidential candidate John McCain in Hanoi as a prisoner of war (PoW) after his plane was shot down 41 years ago, has contradicted the latter’s claim that he was tortured in jail for four years.

Duyet said that McCain’s torture version was only to bag a few more votes in the US presidential poll.

Washington, Oct 25 : A new study by researchers at the University of California-Davis has suggested that making vegetable juice a daily habit could be a small step that can lead to big changes in meeting daily vegetable recommendations.

For the study, the researchers looked at three groups of healthy men and women. All three groups received dietary counselling on ways to get more vegetables, but only two of the groups were instructed to consume at least one serving of vegetable juice, in the form of V8 100 percent vegetable juice each day.

Of those two groups, one drank one 8-ounce glass of vegetable juice every day and the other drank two 8-ounce glasses of vegetable juice every day as part of a balanced eating plan.

Los Angeles - New Jersey Nets coach Lawrence Frank continues to learn valuable lessons to take into the regular season.

Vince Carter scored 20 points, and the Nets nearly blew a 21-point fourth-quarter lead before holding off the New York Knicks, 111-110, on Friday night in the preseason finale for both teams.

"There are a lot of good things that happened tonight, a lot of good play to get the lead," said Frank, whose club opens the regular season at Washington on Wednesday.

"It's good lessons because you're on the road, (the) team's obviously going to make a run back and it's learning how to play through mistakes and not letting mistakes multiply, not letting momentum take over the game."