At 20 years, al-Qaeda is losing its war, but its influence will live on.

According to the Washington Post, the group is more famous and feared than ever. But its grand project -- to transform the Muslim world into a militant Islamist caliphate -- has been, by any measure, a resounding failure.

In large part, that's because Osama bin Laden's strategy for arriving at this Promised Land is a fantasy. Al-Qaeda's leader prides himself on being a big-think strategist, but for all his brains, leadership skills and charisma, he has fastened on an overall strategy that is self-defeating.

Washington, Aug. 18: Washington has toughened its stance towards Russia as it sought to limit the damage to its prestige over the crisis in Georgia.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that Russia's reputation is now "in tatters", even as Russia continues to search for a fresh pretext to extend its occupation of Georgian territory.

Rice, who is heading to Brussels today for an emergency NATO summit, called on Russian President Medvedev to ensure that he carries out his latest promise to withdraw troops.

Washington, August 18: Countries like India, China and Vietnam use wastewater for agriculture, which apart from its negative impacts, has its share of positive implications as well, and has recently received attention worldwide.

This has been indicated in a new 53-city survey conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Sri Lanka, which indicates that most of the developing countries studied (80 percent) are using untreated or partially treated wastewater for agriculture.

In over 70 percent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams.

Washington, August 18: An international team of researchers has used chemicals found in plants to replicate a key process in photosynthesis, paving the way to a new approach that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The breakthrough, led by Monash University in Australia, could revolutionize the renewable energy industry by making hydrogen – touted as the clean, green fuel of the future – cheaper and easier to produce on a commercial scale.

Washington, August 18: Scientists in the U. S. have found an association between bipolar disorder and variation in two genes involved in the balance of sodium and calcium in brain cells.

"A neuron's excitability – whether it will fire – hinges on this delicate equilibrium," Nature magazine quoted Dr. Pamela Sklar of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who led the research, as saying.

Washington, August 18: Carnegie Mellon University researchers say that they have developed hyaluronic hydrogels that can provide scaffolding for growth of bone cells.

The researcher trio behind this creation — Newell Washburn, Krzysztof Matyjaszewski and Jeffrey Hollinger — says that their hydrogels have already shown promising results in encouraging the growth of preosteoblast cells, cells that aid the growth and development of bone.