Stock market trading around the world Tuesday was uneven as investors appeared uncertain where to turn next in the ongoing international financial turmoil and new trouble spots emerging.

Sydney, Oct 7: British Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has reportedly supported comments by the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, that the war against the Taliban was “invincible”.

The Brigadier had earlier said that a military victory over the Taliban was “neither feasible nor supportable”.

The Brigadier, who will this month hand over control of British forces in Afghanistan after a six-month tour of duty in which 32 of his troops have been killed and 170 injured, said there would be “no peace” unless a political accommodation was reached with the Taliban.

Barcelona  - The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on Monday made public a red list of threatened species, compiled by 1,700 experts, which is regarded as the global standard for conservation monitoring.

Some of the animals on the list include:

Reptiles: La Palma giant lizard (Gallotia auaritae), Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer)

Groupers: squaretail coral grouper (Plectropomus areolatus)

African freshwater crabs: purple marsh crab (Afrithelphusa monodosa)

Amphibians: Holdridge's toad (Incilius holdridgei)

Indian Tarantulas: Rameshwaram parachute spider (Poecilotheria hanumavilasumica)

London, Oct 6 : The Government of UK is considering a 12 billion pounds plan to monitor the e-mail, telephone and Internet browsing records of every person in the country, in a bid to boost the fight against terrorism.

According to a report in the Telegraph, the huge eavesdropping programme would involve the creation of a mammoth central computer database to store hundreds of billions of individual pieces of communications traffic.

MI5, which is the UK’s counter-intelligence and security agency, currently has to apply to the Home Secretary for warrants to intercept specific email and website traffic.

But, under the new plan, Internet and mobile phone networks could be monitored live by GCHQ, the Government listening post.

New Delhi, Oct. 6 : India might do well if it engaged with Russia with a sense of equi-distance between the US and Russia, an expert on security affairs has said.

Dr. Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Security Studies (ISS), said India and the US need to also leverage the mutual suspicion between Russia and China, and adds that there are several commonalities between Russia, US and India – terrorism, WMD proliferation and a stable Asian security order.

Washington, Oct 6 : They may seem to be aloof from the whole world, but American kids are aware that there has never been a female, African-American, or Hispanic President in the United States, according to a study from The University of Texas at Austin.

The study by Rebecca Bigler, professor of psychology, and a team of researchers at the university and the University of Kansas, also cited that many of the children attributed the lack of representation to discrimination.