Washington, Oct 17 : Though GOP strategist Karl Rove highlights a continued weak point for Barack Obama by claiming that 45 percent of registered voters in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll doubt the Illinois senator’s readiness to be President, it was much the same for George W Bush in the 2000 presidential polls.

According to the Washington Post, Rove may have exaggerated the extent of public doubts about Obama’s experience compared with George W. Bush’s in 2000.

Washington, Oct 17 : A new study has determined that newborn Earth-like planets that are hot may be easier to spot because they stay that way longer than astronomers have thought.

The study has been done by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) planetary scientist Linda Elkins-Tanton.

For a few million years after their initial formation, planets like Earth may maintain a hot surface of molten rock that would glow brightly enough to make them stand out as they orbit neighboring stars.

Washington, Oct 17 : A day after 11 pacts were signed in Beijing between Pakistan and China, senior Pakistani and Western officials said that China had privately agreed to follow a “step-by-step” approach to fulfilling Pakistan’s aspiration for an expanded nuclear energy program, rather than an ambitious Indo-US-like civil nuclear deal signed recently.

“Private” discussions are believed to have been held on expanded nuclear cooperation between Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari and Chinese leaders during Zardari’s four-day visit to China beginning Tuesday.

In ten years, Pakistan plans to produce up to 8000 Megawatts of electricity using nuclear energy, said a report in cbsnews. com.

Washington, Oct 17 : Republican presidential candidate John McCain after spending the day on the campaign trail returned to New York to bury the hatchet with popular late-night show host David Letterman, since he cancelled his appearance on the show on September 24.

Washington, Oct 17 : Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have successfully restored vision in mice with retinal degeneration, using gene therapy – a development that could lead to blindness cure.

The team was able to restore useful vision to mice with degeneration of the light-sensing retinal rods and cones, a common cause of human blindness, thus building hope that the technique may someday treat retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration.

"This is a proof of principle that someday we may be able to repair blindness in people with conditions like retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration," said Richard Masland, PhD, director of the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory in the MGH Department of Neurosurgery.

Washington - Calling Senator Barack Obama the "right man for a perilous moment," the Washington Post newspaper Friday endorsed the Democratic candidate for the US presidency, adding its national weight to 39 other regional newspapers - including the Boston Globe and St Louis Post Dispatch - that have declared for the centre-left candidate.