Washington, March 14 : A team of archeologists has discovered the tomb of a headless man adorned with jade beneath an ancient Mexican chamber famously painted with scenes of torture.

Found under the Temple of Murals at the Maya site of Bonampak, the man was either a captive warrior who was sacrificed-perhaps one of the victims in the mural-or a relative of the city''s ruler, scientists speculate.

Whoever he was, "the place of the burial tells us that the person buried there was special," anthropologist Emiliano Gallaga Murrieta told National Geographic News.

At the time of the murals'' creation, about A. D. 790, Bonampak was a city of thousands.

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Washington, March 14 : Botanists have discovered that the giant montane pitcher plant of Borneo, which is the largest meat-eating plant in the world, prefers to eat small animal poo.

According to a report by BBC News, the researchers found that the plant has a pitcher the exact same size as a tree shrew''s body.

But it is not this big to swallow up mammals such as tree shrews or rats.

Instead, the pitcher uses tasty nectar to attract tree shrews, then ensures its pitcher is big enough to collect the feeding mammal''s droppings.

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Washington, March 14 : A new phylogenetic analysis of blind scorpions that live in the stygian depths of caves in Mexico has suggested that adaptation to caves is reversible, which is evidence that specialized adaptations are not evolutionary dead ends.

The analysis revealed that scorpions currently living closer to the surface (under stones and in leaf litter), evolved independently on more than one occasion from ancestors adapted to life further below the surface (in caves).

"Our research shows that the evolution of troglobites, or animals adapted for life in caves, is reversible," said Lorenzo Prendini, Associate Curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History.

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Washington, March 14 : The young generation of workers, sometimes called GenY, GenMe, or Millennials, have markedly different work values from previous generations, researchers have observed.

Principal investigator Jean M. Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of the book Generation Me, made a comparison between work values of GenY (born in the late 1980s) to those of GenX
(born in the 1970s) and Boomers (born in the 1950s) at the same age.

The study found GenY was much more likely to want a job that could spare lots of vacation time, and less likely to want to work overtime. They also saw work as less central to their lives and were more likely to agree that "work is just making a living."

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Washington, Mar. 13 : NATO forces reportedly tried to “cover up” a night raid conducted in Afghanistan’s Paktia province which killed two pregnant women, a teenage girl and two local officials.

In a statement after the March 12 raid titled, NATO said: “Several insurgents engaged the joint force in a firefight and were killed.”

It also claimed that the force had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room.

However, according to The Times, Nato’s claims are either wilfully false or misleading.

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Washington, Mar. 13 : White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has confirmed that President Barack Obama will delay his visit to Asia, and he won’t be accompanied by wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha.

According to Gibbs’ announcement on Twitter, Michelle, Malia and Sasha would no longer join Obama on his trip to Indonesia, where he lived as a boy for four years with his beloved late mother.

“The president will delay leaving for Indonesia and Australia -- will now leave Sunday -- the first lady and the girls will not be on the trip,” The Australian quoted Gibbs, as saying.

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Washington, Mar. 13 : A 31-year-old Colorado woman has been arrested by Irish authorities for allegedly plotting a conspiracy to murder a Swedish cartoonist who made fun of the Prophet Mohammed.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, who had a 30,000-dollars-a-year job as a medical assistant, is in the custody of the Irish police, along with six other individuals, arrested as part of an investigation into a conspiracy to commit murder, according to the Wall street Journal.

Last Easter, the mum-of-one announced to her family that she had converted to Islam.

A few months later, she began posting messages to Facebook forums whose headings included “Stop Calling Muslims Terrorists!”

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Washington, Mar 13 : A US researcher has created a conflict resolution web site for couples, after he carried out an extensive research on how couples can best resolve relationship conflicts.

Baylor University researcher Dr. Keith Sanford called the site the Couple Conflict Consultant, and it utilizes a personalized approach, instead of forcing participants into a "one-size-fits-all" approach.

"The web site helps participants discover their own personal style to conflict resolution," Sanford, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor who designed the web site, said.

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Washington, Mar 13 : Padma Lakshmi has finally given the world a look of her 3-week-old daughter Krishna.

The Top Chef host, 39, was photographed doting on her little girl while sitting on a NYC park bench on Thursday.

However, the model-cum-TV presenter has not revealed the identity of her father.

Last October, it was revealed that Lakshmi was expecting.

Her rep had said that Lakshmi's pregnancy was "a medical miracle," because she has struggled with endometriosis-a painful uterine condition that can lead to infertility.

Lakshmi had earlier said that although she loved being pregnant, she never had any strange cravings.

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Washington, Mar. 13 : The job approval rating of US President Barack Obama has hit a record low (46 percent) amid rising doubts over his ability to push health care reforms - the centrepiece of his domestic policies - through Congress.

According to a new Gallup survey, Obama''s approval rating fell to a record 46 per cent, which was 69 percent in the early days of his presidency.

His popularity among Democrat supporters fell due to doubts about his ability to pass health care reforms, while independents and Republicans consider it to be an expensive government venture, The Telegraph reports.

Obama was supposed to leave for Guam, Indonesia and Australia this week. Obama had spent four years as a boy in Indonesia, which was supposed to be the highlight of the trip.

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Washington, March 13 : President Barack Obama will visit India later this year though he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would have a chance to discuss some bilateral issues at next month's Global Nuclear Security Summit here.

"No, mostly Prime Minister Singh's visit in April will really be for the Global Nuclear Security Summit. That will be the primary purpose of the visit" in April, Robert O. Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs told Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

"I'm sure that he and the President will have a chance to discuss some of our bilateral issues."

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Washington, March 13 - Reiterating that Washington remains "very much committed" to the nuclear deal with India, a US official sees "good progress" on crucial talks on reprocessing and hopes an accord would emerge well before the August deadline.

"So, we're now in the process of implementing that agreement," Robert O. Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, told Asahi Shimbun noting the "Obama administration has reaffirmed its support for that agreement."

"We have very important talks on reprocessing under way. Those are, I think, making good progress, and the deadline for completing those is August of this year, and we expect to be done well before then," Blake said.

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Washington, March 13 - US officials are probing the case of a suspected terrorist held in Yemen after evidence revealed he had worked at several nuclear plants in the US, Xinhua reported.

Sharif Mobley, a US citizen, was nabbed in an anti-terror operation in Yemen this month, Yemeni authorities said. He is suspected of having ties with the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Friday confirmed to media that Mobley had worked for contractors hired by five nuclear plants in Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania between 2002 and 2008. He was mostly involved in maintenance work.

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Washington, March 13 - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Friday to express "strong objections" to plans to build housing units in occupied East Jerusalem.

The dispute opened up a rare diplomatic rift between the US and Israel, as the announcement for the new construction came while Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel and as Washington had brokered indirect talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

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Los Angeles, March 13 - Hundreds of starving sea lions are washing ashore along the California coast as El Nino weather conditions warm the Pacific Ocean and drive away their usual prey, according to media reports Friday.

The report in the Orange County Register follows accounts earlier in the year of hundreds of sick and starving pelicans along the west coast, an occurrence that was also attributed to El Nino.

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Washington, March 12 : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be presented the Appeal of Conscience Foundation 2010 World Statesman Award in September in New York.

The announcement of the award was made by former Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte at a reception hosted at the residence of Indian Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar here Thursday. Shankar said the Prime Minister has graciously accepted the award.

Past recipients of the prestigious award include British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (2009), French President Nicolas Sarkozy (2008), German Chancellor Angela Merkel (2007) and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
(2006).

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Washington, March 12 : Former Reserve Bank of India deputy governor Rakesh Mohan has been appointed professor in the Practice of International Economics and Finance in the Yale School of Management from July 1.

The eminent economist will also serve as Senior Fellow in the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University, Richard C. Levin, president of the New Haven, the Connecticut-based Ivy League university, announced.

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Washington, Mar. 12 : US President Barack Obama has decided to distribute his Nobel Peace Prize money, 1.4 million dollars, among a variety of charities, including Bill Clinton's Haiti earthquake relief fund.

Many of his prize money would go to help minority students, with the Posse Foundation, the United Negro College Fund, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and the American Indian College Fund, each receiving 125,000 dollars.

"These organizations do extraordinary work in the United States and abroad helping students, veterans and countless others in need. I'm proud to support their work," Politico quoted Obama, as saying in a statement.

The complete list of charities follows.

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Washington, March 12 : The US has praised the Indian government for its human rights record, but expressed concern over reported extra-judicial killings of people in custody, disappearances, and torture and rape by police and other security forces.

"The (Indian) government generally respected the rights of its citizens and made progress in reducing incidents of communal violence," said the Congressionally mandated Annual Report on Human Rights for 2009 covering 194 countries.

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Washington, March 12 - Leading South Asia experts say the US should be prepared to take action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), blamed for the Mumbai terror attacks, if Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act against the terror outfit that remains its spearhead against India.

"Doing so may be increasingly necessary not simply to prevent a future Indo-Pakistani crisis, but more importantly to protect the United States, its citizens, its interests, and its allies," Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told a Congressional panel Thursday.

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