Washington, October 12 : A student-teacher research team at Cornell University has developed a website that allows netizens to manipulate information about a fictional presidential candidate running in the 2008 election — Senator Julian Polonius Foley Marcos DeWiki III — by editing, adding, or subtracting text. 

Washington, October 12 : Slabs made of polished granite do not emit such amounts of radiation as to be termed “silent killers”, says an American expert.

Mike Brennan, a radiation health physicist with the Washington State Department of Health in Olympia, says that even a Geiger counter cannot detect radiation from a slab of granite from more than a few inches away.

"So in terms of direct radiation, you would have to spend a long time, at least hours per day, laying on the granite countertop, in order to receive very much exposure from it," Earth quoted him, as saying.

He even dismisses suggestions that granite worktops were likely to emit lots of radioactive radon gas, the leading cause of lung cancer among non-smokers.

Washington, October 12 : San Francisco-based firm Posit Science has developed a set of five video games, together called InSight, to improve the mental acuity of older drivers.

Insurance provider Allstate sent the games to 100,000 drivers aged 50 to 75 in Pennsylvania last week, hoping that the pilot program will turn older drivers into safer drivers.

"We expect to see that the group using the software will have a lower frequency of crashes verses the group that didn''t use the software," Discovery News quoted Tom Warden of Allstate as saying.

Washington, Oct 12 : India has indicated it would not object to the United States offering a civilian nuclear deal to Pakistan, although Washington has said that it cannot offer a similar agreement to Islamabad.

“We believe every country has the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” said External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee when asked at a news conference about Pakistan’s demand for an India-like nuclear deal with the US.

London, Oct 12 : The head of the British Army has created military history by taking a bold step towards attracting homosexual recruits.

In a speech to members of the Army-sponsored Fourth Joint Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual Matters in London, General Sir Richard Dannatt, the chief of the general staff, said that homosexuals were welcome to serve in the Army.

Washington, Oct 12 : The United States has struck North Korea from a terror blacklist after saying that Pyongyang agreed to steps to verify its nuclear disarmament and pledged to resume disabling its atomic plants.

The deal announced by the State Department on Saturday aimed at reviving the historic six-party disarmament negotiations threatened with collapse just months before US President George W. Bush leaves office on January 20.

Angered at the US refusal to remove it from the blacklist, North Korea in the last few weeks moved toward restarting its nuclear reactor and other operations at Yongbyon, The News reported.