Washington - The US Senate overwhelmingly approved an agreement on Wednesday allowing the United States to sell civilian nuclear technology and material to India, green-lighting the landmark accord for President George W Bush's signature.

The Senate voted 86-13 on the nuclear sharing agreement, reversing more than 30 years of US policy in exchange for international inspections of India's civilian nuclear energy programme. The House of Representatives passed the measure in a 298-117 vote on Saturday.

Buenos Aires - Argentina's government and farmer leaders exchanged harsh words Wednesday, following the rural organizations' call to another strike from Friday amidst one of the country's worst droughts in 100 years.

The four farmers' unions said late Tuesday that they would stop delivering cereal crops for export and cattle for domestic and foreign consumption for six days starting Friday.

Farming is one of the engines of the Argentine economy, and its leaders managed to block earlier this year a government bill to increase tariffs on the export of soybean and sunflower seeds through a series of strikes.

Washington, October 1 : News media often fails to project potential sources of bias while reporting medical studies, according to a new study.

Dr. Michael Hochman, a researchers at the Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, has found that news articles often fail to report pharmaceutical company funding, and frequently refer to medications by their brand names, both potential sources of bias.

"An increasingly recognized source of commercial bias in medical research is the funding of studies by companies with a financial interest in the results," write the study authors.

Washington, Oct 1: CIA Director Michael Hayden has said the threat from al Qaeda is real and the group’s growing strength along the tribal areas along the Pakistan- Afghan border could be the single greatest threat to US national security

“Al Qaeda represents the most clear, most present danger, to the United States, certainly,” he said.

Vienna- The price for crude oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exp

Cairo - Five Italian tourists kidnapped on a desert safari in Egypt arrived home early Tuesday after being freed soldiers, news reports said.

The tourists, part of a group of 19 kidnapped in Egypt's Western Desert by masked men on September 19, landed in Turin at 1.45 am (2345 GMT), Italian media said.

The three men and two women aged between 48 and 72 left Cairo by military plane after a medical checkup.