Washington, Sep 24: The results of this year’s US presidential election could have a tremendous impact on Iran, as many in Tehran are hoping for a change, and are pinning their hopes on Democratic nominee Barack Obama, who favours negotiations with Iran without preconditions

Escalating international pressure over Iran’s nuclear program is giving Tehran a very hard time, and officials there are struggling to curtail the impact of sanctions on the Iranian economy, the Washington Times reports.

Washington, September 24 : Data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission, has shown that the sun has reduced its output of solar wind to the lowest levels in 50 years.

The sun’s solar wind plasma is a stream of charged particles ejected from the sun’s upper atmosphere.

The solar wind interacts with every planet in our solar system. It also defines the border between our solar system and interstellar space.

This border, called the heliopause, is a bubble-shaped boundary surrounding our solar system where the solar wind’s strength is no longer great enough to push back the wind of other stars.

Columbia (Missouri US), Sept. 24 : An internationally recognized scholar of presidential debates believes that the McCain-Obama presidential debates coming up this week and next month, will be as significant as the debates that took place between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the run-up to the 1960 presidential elections.

With many polls showing Obama and McCain in a dead heat, many are predicting that the first presidential debate on September 26 could be a turning point in the election.

Washington, Sept. 24 : Elected conservatives, answerable to their constituencies back home and looking at less than two months before the general election, are saying they no longer believe the Bush administration.

"It''s a sad fact, but Americans can no longer trust the economic information they are getting from this administration," said Senator Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican.

The direct target of conservative wrath is President Bush''s Treasury Secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., whose plan to bail out Wall Street is being negotiated with Democrats who are turning the plan into a Christmas tree of added forms of relief - including home mortgages on the verge of default, car loans and no one knows what else as the chaos grows.

Washington, Sept 24: A new study by researchers at the University of Ottawa has revealed that honey is very effective in killing bacteria in all its forms, especially the drug-resistant biofilms that make treating chronic rhinosinusitis difficult.

In the study, researchers found that in eleven isolates of three separate biofilms (Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and methicicillin-resistant and -suseptible Staphylococcus aureus), honey was significantly more effective in killing both planktonic and biofilm-grown forms of the bacteria, compared with the rate of bactericide by antibiotics commonly used against the bacteria.

New York, Sept 24: US President George Bush has said that his country was ready to extend help to Pakistan to protect its sovereignty, and that Washington looked forward to “deepening our relationship” with its long term anti-terror ally.

Bush said while jointly appearing along with his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari before the two attended the UN General Assembly session.

“Your words have been very strong about Pakistan’s sovereign right and sovereign duty to protect your country, and the United States wants to help,” the Daily Times quoted him as saying in New York.