Langley (Virginia, US), Feb. 3: Outgoing Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Michael Hayden has said that the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba will be among the top ten security challenges for the agency in 2009.

Iran, North Korea and Al Qaeda are the others that he and his successor Leon Panetta will have to deal with, Hayden added.

Virginia (US), Dec. 6 : A Virginia businessman, Earl Stafford, has reserved a million dollars worth of rooms at Washington''s JW Marriott Hotel and plans to give the rooms away to the underprivileged during Inauguration week.

Stafford, who is black, said the swearing-in of America''s first black president makes the occasion that much more special, but added that he pursued his plans without knowing who would be elected.

He plans to offer the rooms, at no charge and has had hundreds of responses so far.

"Our telephones are off the hook. Our e-mails are going crazy," Fox News quoted him, as saying.

RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 1 -- Police in Richmond, Va., say employees of a KB Toys store inside a shopping mall arrived for work to find a 300-pound safe had been stolen.

RICHMOND, Va.,  Nov. 27 -- Virginia says it plans to refuse crab license renewals for 800 fishermen who did not catch any crabs between 2004 and 2007.

The watermen would be unable to renew their licenses from 2009 through at least 2012, The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reports. The Virginia Marine Resources Commission approved the freeze late Tuesday.

The state wants to prevent a rapid return of fishing for blue crabs in Chesapeake Bay if the species makes a comeback. Frozen licenses could only be renewed if crab numbers have been at sustainable levels for at least three years after 2009.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.,  Nov. 27 -- A collision between U.S. Navy jets over the Persian Gulf was caused by pilot error, including one pilot's misreporting his position, Navy investigators say.

The Navy did not identify the flyers involved and said all are still flying,     The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reported. The planes were lost in the January crash, but the crew all ejected safely.

The collision occurred shortly after the planes left the carrier Harry S. Truman for an 8-hour mission. The pilot of a single-engine F/A-18E, who had been temporarily assigned as the other plane's wingman, misread his position and gave wrong information to the other pilot.

Virginia, Nov 7 : South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), an NGO which advocates for civil rights and immigrant rights issues facing the community in the United States, played a big role in educating the immigrant community in America about their political rights, that led to galvanizing it to vote in the recently concluded US presidential poll.

Approximately 2.7 million South Asians live in the United States, which comprises individuals with ancestry from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Maldives