New York, Oct. 18 : Data on polling trends suggest that the 2008 US presidential elections will be a tight race, and continue to be open to interpretation.

According to Fox News, one group of voters in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll put John McCain within two points of rival Barack Obama, while an AP-Yahoo poll out Friday shows McCain''s negatives on the rise.

Washington, Oct 18 : A new study suggests that men’s brain’s ability to respond to external stimuli reaches its zenith at age 39, and starts declining thereafter.

During the study, the scientists asked 72 men between 23 to 80 years to tap their index fingers as fast as they could for 10 seconds and measured the amount of myelin — a fatty sheath of insulation that coats nerve axons and allows for signalling bursts in our brains.

The loss of the myelin sheath insulating the nerves is the hallmark of some neurodegenerative autoimmune diseases.

The study showed that the tapping speed and the amount of myelin was at its peak at the age of 39 and started declining "with an accelerating trajectory" thereafter.

Washington, Oct 18 : Taking a strong exception to the recent US Army chief General W Casey’s visit to the base camp at the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir, Pakistan has said that Washington had always maintained that Kashmir is a “disputed area”, and that this visit “negated the traditional stand of US over Kashmir”.

Pakistan ambassador to US Hussain Haqqani said this while taking a serious notice of the Casey’s visit to Siachen.

Haqqani also a letter to the Pakistan Foreign Affairs office and Pentagon expression his country’s disappointment.

Washington, October 18 : The world’s first known dog was a large, toothy canine that subsisted on a diet of horse, musk ox and reindeer 31,700 years ago, according to a new study.

The remains of the prehistoric dog were excavated at Goyet Cave in Belgium.

This discovery can push back the date for the earliest dog by 17,700 years, as the second oldest known dog, found in Russia, dates to 14,000 years ago.

The researchers say that if Paleolithic dogs still existed as a breed, they would surely win best in show for strength and biting ability.

"The most remarkable difference between these dogs and recent dog breeds is the size of the teeth," Discovery News quoted lead author Mietje Germonpre as saying.

London, Oct 18 : Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a political movement for the re-establishment of Khilafat, banned in Pakistan but politically very active in Britain, has asked Islamabad to sever all its relations with the US and Britain, and also stop supporting Washington’s war against “the people of Afghanistan and Pakistanis living in the tribal belt”.

Its spokesmen said that the west and the US wanted to destroy Pakistan.

They said the US at the moment was “not in a position to retaliate” considering its current economic woes and its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and its saber rattling against Iran.

Washington, Oct 18 : Nearly two weeks after criticizing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for “palling around with terrorists”, Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin has said that he was acting in the interests of the US, and that he “loved America”.

“I know Obama loves America,” Palin said in an interview with cbsnews. com on her flight from Cincinnati to Indianapolis.