New Delhi  - Architect of the 1995 Dayton agreement ending the war in Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke is familiar with situations that seem nearly hopeless. Newly appointed as special US envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the 67-year-old diplomat told the annual Munich Security Conference several days ago that the situation in the region was more difficult than any he had seen.

Los Angeles  - A law firm has released details of what was supposed to be a confidential 65-million-dollar payoff by Facebook to plaintiffs who claimed the social networking site was based on their ideas.

The payment was made by Facebook last year to smaller rival ConnectU, which had accused Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, a fellow Harvard University graduate, of stealing their ideas to create his site. The ConnectU founders claimed to have hired Zuckerberg while all were students at Harvard University to create a college dating site.

Washington  - US lawmakers were close to a compromise deal Wednesday on a record economic recovery package, which could allow the plan to pass both houses of Congress before the end of the week.

The Senate and House of Representatives have approved competing versions of the stimulus bill - both totalling more than 800 billion dollars - that include a mixture of tax cuts and government spending projects to pull the US out of its worst recession in decades.

Washington  - An earthquake with a ma

The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) has approved the marketing of Ranbaxy Laboratories' migraine drug, Imitrex (Sumatriptan), a low cost version of migraine drug GlaxoSmithKine, in the US market.

A spokesman of Rabnbaxy said, "We have received the US Food and Drug Administration's (USFDA) approval for 100 mg Sumatriptan."

The regulator provides 180-day marketing exclusivity for its marketing in 100 mg dosage which was earlier rejected by it on December 2008.

London  - British officials have been given the green light by US authorities to visit a detainee at Guantanamo Bay in order to prepare his return to Britain, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Wednesday.

Britain has previously said that it would accept Binyam Mohamed, a 30-year-old Ethiopian, who was resident in Britain before his arrest in 2002 and transfer to Guantanamo two years later.

Miliband made his announcement after a meeting in London Wednesday with Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley, the detainee's US military lawyer.