Ten years ago this month, the lives of millions of men and women were changed almost overnight by the advent of a little blue pill — the first oral treatment for impotence. Viagra, developed by accident by scientists at Pfizer Laboratories, was first approved for use by the United States Food and Drug Administration on March 27 1998.
Democratic hopeful Barack Obama on Wednesday dismissed Republican White House candidate John McCain’s economic plan as an insult, which left homeowners to face a mortgage crunch alone. In his first campaign appearance since a short vacation, Obama fired a new volley at the Arizona senator in a battle that is sure to intensify.
Barack Obama’s camp has accused Hillary Clinton of trying to divert attention from her exaggerated account of a 1996 trip to Bosnia after she revived a row over her rival’s fiery pastor. With Obama set to return to the campaign trail on Wednesday after a short Easter holiday, the Democratic White House foes were braced for more bitterness.
A section of Antarctica’s massive Wilkins Ice Shelf has begun disintegrating under the effects of global warming, satellite images by the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Centre showed. The collapse of a substantial section of the ice shelf was triggered on February 28 when an iceberg measuring 41km by 2,4km broke off its south-western front.
One may wind up as the first woman to lead the United States Senate. Another is relatively young and could run again for president. The third may simply resume his role as a congressional maverick and retire in two years. These are among the options that await the losers in the three-way race for the White House.
Hillary Clinton on Monday pitched a plan to stop a mortgage crisis degenerating into a full-blown recession as new vitriol spilled over in her Democratic White House struggle with Barack Obama. Obama’s camp said Clinton would do anything to win, while her aides accused him of stooping to gutter politics.
Money can buy happiness, but only if you spend it on someone else, researchers reported this week. Spending as little as a day on someone else could significantly boost happiness, the team at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School found.
By crushing a widely used semiconductor into nanoparticles, researchers said this week they have created a compound that could lead to cleaner, more efficient refrigerators, solar power plants and other devices. The crushed material makes it possible to conduct electricity without conducting so much heat, solving a problem that has baffled engineers for 50 years.
Contract workers for the United States State Department improperly viewed Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama’s passport records three times this year in what his campaign called ”an outrageous breach” of his privacy. The incidents, which occurred on January 9, February 21 and March 14, were quickly reported to lower-level State Department officials.
Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Wednesday admitted to being ”shaken” by a controversy over racial politics ignited by his pastor’s incendiary sermons. Obama, who gave a landmark speech about race in America on Tuesday, admitted in an interview with CNN that the matter had affected him personally.
Neither man has secured his party’s nomination, but Barack Obama and John McCain have begun to lay down the battle lines for a possible confrontation in November’s presidential election. McCain, all but certain to lead the Republican ticket, is starting to plot election strategy, aides say.
United States President George Bush said on Wednesday he had no regrets about the unpopular war in Iraq despite the ”high cost in lives and treasure” and declared that the US was on track for victory. With less than 11 months left in office and his approval ratings near the lows of his presidency, Bush is trying to shore up support for the Iraq campaign.
President George Bush will acknowledge on Wednesday the Iraq war has been fought at a high cost but will insist a United States troop build-up has opened the door to a ”major strategic victory” against Islamic militants. ”The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable,” Bush will say in an upbeat assessment.
Democratic front-runner Barack Obama battled to defuse the most serious threat yet to his presidential hopes after incendiary, racially tinged sermons by his former pastor triggered an uproar. The Illinois Senator on Tuesday condemned the sermons while standing by his black spiritual mentor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
The Federal Reserve slashed United States interest rates by a hefty three-quarters of a percentage point on Tuesday, giving a lift to stock markets already jubilant over stronger-than-expected investment bank earnings. Trying to avert a deep recession and financial market meltdown, the central bank cut less than many traders had expected but left the door open to additional reductions.
The United States Supreme Court considers on Tuesday a landmark legal battle over gun rights, taking up for the first time in nearly 70 years whether Americans have the right to keep and bear arms. The court’s ruling, expected by the end of June, could have a far-reaching impact on gun control laws in the US.
Overeating disrupts entire networks of genes in the body, causing not only obesity, but diabetes and heart disease, in ways that may be possible to predict, researchers reported on Sunday. The researchers developed a new method of analysing DNA and used it to discover that obesity is not only complex, but complex in ways that had not been previously understood.
A violent tornado blasting winds up to 200km/h wreaked havoc through downtown Atlanta, Georgia, toppling trees on to homes, blowing windows out of high-rises and injuring 30 people, city officials said Saturday. A second tornado in north-west Georgia killed two people and injured others on Saturday, officials said.
Even after the turbulence he encountered last week, Barack Obama still seems the probable Democratic nominee for one simple reason. By June 8, all 54 primaries and caucuses will be completed. And on that morning Obama will, unless something really weird happens, be ahead of Hillary Clinton in the count of pledged delegates.
Democrat Barack Obama easily beat rival Hillary Clinton in Mississippi on Tuesday, giving him new momentum in their heated presidential fight as they head to the next showdown in Pennsylvania in six weeks. Obama, who would be the first black United States president, rode a wave of heavy black support to victory and extended his lead over Clinton.
United States employers unexpectedly cut jobs in February at the steepest rate in nearly five years, a second straight month of employment losses that heightened fears the world’s largest economy has skidded into recession. ”The question appears no longer to be are we going into a recession but how long and deep it will be,” said economist Joel Naroff.
Now that he is the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain has a big decision ahead of him — who to choose as his vice-presidential running mate. A top priority for him is to pick a running mate whose presence on the ticket would reassure Americans concerned about McCain’s age.
Hillary Clinton won a critical showdown with Barack Obama in Ohio on Tuesday to breathe new life into her campaign and extend the Democratic presidential race, while John McCain clinched the Republican nomination and looked ahead to the November election.
The United States military targeted suspected ”terrorists” in a strike launched early on Monday in Dobley, Somalia, a senior US military official said. The official, who declined to be named, said: ”We launched a deliberate strike against a suspected bed-down of known terrorists.”
No image available
/ 28 February 2008
Buying a digital camera, photo printer and camera accessories can leave a hole in your wallet. So why should you have to splurge yet more on software? While the big-name commercial software packages promise to make your life with digital images easier, there are plenty of programs available for free that do almost as much — and sometimes more.
No image available
/ 27 February 2008
Eat an orange. Wear a face mask. Train elsewhere and fly in at the last possible moment to compete. These are some of the strategies suggested for Olympic athletes planning to compete in Beijing, where a thick cloud of smog often blankets one of the world’s most polluted cities.
No image available
/ 27 February 2008
Almost any proud traveller has said it upon returning home: Hey, want to see the pictures from my trip? Sure, President George Bush. Fire up the slideshow. In a rare presidential show-and-tell, Bush spent almost 30 minutes on Tuesday narrating images from his five-country journey across Africa.
No image available
/ 26 February 2008
New polls on Monday suggested Hillary Clinton’s national support was collapsing, as her aides battled angrily with surging Barack Obama’s camp before a key debate in her last-stand state, Ohio. Clinton, once the runaway Democratic frontrunner, issued a fierce attack on Obama’s foreign policy credentials.
No image available
/ 25 February 2008
Hillary Clinton is switching to an aggressive new strategy against Barack Obama to revive her campaign in advance of next week’s Texas and Ohio primaries and to restore the morale of her flagging election team. The new approach resolves weeks of internal debate inside her camp about the best way of stopping Obama.
No image available
/ 24 February 2008
The presidential forays of Ralph Nader have turned him into one of the most divisive figures in US politics. Already on Sunday reaction was swift among Democrats to the news that Nader had thrown his hat into the ring to stand in the November election in his fifth tilt at the White House.
No image available
/ 23 February 2008
Hillary Clinton on Friday denied she was contemplating defeat for her White House bid, after her wistful tribute to Barack Obama in a debate was seen by some observers as an admission of looming failure. Clinton is reeling from her Democratic rival’s 11 straight wins in nominating contests.
No image available
/ 21 February 2008
A missile from a United States navy warship hit a defunct US spy satellite 247km above the Earth in an attempt to blow apart its tank of toxic fuel, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. It was too soon to tell if the fuel tank had been shattered in the operation over the Pacific Ocean, the Pentagon said in a statement.