Rustenburg, Jun 12 : A hungry elephant eating tree leaves on the road delayed the United States players who were on their way to a training session on Friday.

The team continued their journey to the Royal Bafokeng Stadium after the elephant moved to the side of the road a few minutes later.

This was second interruption caused in the day for the US players, Sports24 reports.

Earlier in the afternoon, a bus carrying the players on their way to an open-air market at the entrance to the team hotel got stuck behind an elephant, spokesperson Michael Kammarman said.

The congestion occurred outside the Bakubung Bush Lodge in Rustenberg.

American players timed the trip to get back to the hotel in time for the start of the World Cup opening match between South Africa and Mexico.

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New York, Jun. 12 : Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is said to have lost confidence in the US led foreign forces' ability to reign in Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and is trying to strike a deal on his own with the insurgents to bring peace and stability in the war tattered country.

According to former Afghanistan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, who along with Interior Minister Hanif Atmar, resigned from the post after a heated meeting with Karzai last week, the President is trying to reach out to the extremists on his own to end the decades old bloody insurgency.

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Washington, June 12 : US President Barack Obama has lauded an Indian woman entrepreneur who came to America "to build your own dreams and be your own boss" and set up a successful technology services company.

This "promise of being able to build your own dreams and be your own boss led Prachee - Prachee Devadas to come to this country, become a citizen, and open up what's become a successful technology services company," he said at a White House event Friday.

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Washington, June 12 : US President Barack Obama will hold his first meeting next week with top officials from oil giant BP, the White House said Friday, as government scientists said the worst oil spill in US history could be nearly twice as bad as previously thought.

Obama will meet with BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg in Washington Wednesday. It was not clear whether BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward, who has come under harsh criticism from Obama as the face of BP's oil disaster response, would also be present.

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Washington, June 11 : Heavy overnight rains triggered flash floods in the US state of Arkansas, killing at least 12 people at a camp ground, police said Friday.

Some of the victims might have been children, and several others are believed to be trapped or remain missing in the area near the Ouachita Mountains in western Arkansas, CNN reported.

Police were still determining whether the victims were residents or campers at the Albert Pike camp ground.

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Washington, June 11 : Scientists have made an advance towards replacing silicon with graphene on nanocircuitry.

A simple and quick one-step process based on thermochemical nanolithography (TCNL) has been devised for creating nanowires, tuning the electronic properties of reduced graphene oxide on the nanoscale and thereby allowing it to switch from being an insulating material to a conducting material.

The technique works with multiple forms of graphene and is poised to become an important finding for the development of graphene electronics.

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Washington, June 11 : Iran has issued a diplomatic note to the Swiss Embassy in Tehran regarding its missing nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, who it alleges has been abducted by the U. S.

U. S. State Department spokesman P. J. Gowley told ABC News: "They allege in the note that we have him (Shahram Amiri) and they want him back, we will respond to the diplomatic note".

The topic of Amiri came up during what Crowley says was a previously scheduled meeting yesterday between the Swiss ambassador and Iran''s foreign ministry.

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Washington, June 11 : Many well-known comets such as Halley and Hale-Bopp originally formed in other solar systems, according to a Queen''s University researcher.

The study, by Queen''s University astronomy professor Martin Duncan and an international team of astronomers, appears in the online journal Science Express.

Prof Duncan said: "Anyone who has seen a long tail comet in the night sky may be looking at material from another star," says Professor

The researchers used computer simulations to show that the Sun may have captured small icy bodies from its sibling stars while it was in its birth star cluster, and this created a reservoir for observed comets.

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Washington, June 11 : Sharks have a keen sense of smell and a remarkable ability to follow their noses through the ocean, right to their next meal. Now, scientists have discovered how the sharks manage to keep themselves on course.

Researchers found that sharks can detect small delays, no more than half a second long, in the time that odors reach one nostril versus the other.

When the animals experience such a lag, they will turn toward whichever side picked up the scent first.

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Washington, Jun 11 (ANI): Pakistan is ranked fifth in the list of the world's most unstable countries, according to the US State Department's Global Peace Index (GPI).

Only Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan rank lower that Pakistan, whose position deteriorated for the second consecutive year as it slipped three places to find itself placed in the bottom five in the list of 149 countries.

Among other South Asian countries Nepal has the best record and is ranked 82nd in the list, while India finds itself in the 128th spot, The Dawn reports.

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Washington, June 11 : A 16-year-old California girl, who had been attempting a solo non-stop sail around the world, is feared to be lost at sea.

According to GrindTV. com, Abby Sunderland lost satellite phone contact with her parents on June 11, and the Australian Coast Guard reported she had activated both of her emergency beacons.

The website reported that one of the beacons may be attached to a survival suit or a life raft, and is designed to be used when a person is in the water or in a life raft.

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Washington, June 11 - The US Senate Thursday voted down a Republican-led effort to strip President Barack Obama of the ability to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming.

But the narrow 53-47 vote, which attracted the support of some prominent Democrats, sent a signal to Obama over how difficult it will be to get major climate and energy reforms through Congress.

The Senate resolution would have overturned a so-called "endangerment finding" by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US regulator which last year ruled that greenhouse-gases posed a danger to US public health and environment.

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Louisiana (US), June 11 : Scientists have warned that the flow rate of the oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico could actually be greater due to the cutting of the riser to position the cap pipe.

The New York Times has quoted these scientists, who are part of a governmental panel, as saying that it would be another few days to estimate the current flow rate.

So far, the panel has doubled its estimate of the amount of oil that had gushed for weeks from the out-of-control BP well even before the latest attempt to cap it.

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Washington, June 10 : Skywatchers are dazzled as a recently discovered comet is becoming brighter than initial predictions and can now be seen with the unaided eye during the next few weeks.

Australian astronomer Robert McNaught discovered Comet McNaught—officially catalogued as C/2009 R1— last September using the using the 0.5-meter Uppsala Schmidt telescope and a CCD camera.

It is the 51st comet that bears McNaught''''''''s name.

Although initially an extremely faint object, it is now visible for people with dark skies away from urban and suburban lighting.

By mid-June it may be an easy skywatching target for most people, reports Fox News.

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Washington, June 10 : A professor who tried to look at the Gulf oil spill from a different perspective found that it could have powered 38,000 cars, and 3,400 trucks, and 1,800 ships for a full year.

Prof. James J. Corbett from University of Delaware based his findings on the estimated spill rate of 19,000 barrels of oil per day. He has launched a website that reports the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in terms of lost uses of the lost fuel on a daily basis.

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Washington, June 10 : A professor who tried to look at the Gulf oil spill from a different perspective found that it could have powered 38,000 cars, and 3,400 trucks, and 1,800 ships for a full year.

Prof. James J. Corbett from University of Delaware based his findings on the estimated spill rate of 19,000 barrels of oil per day. He has launched a website that reports the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in terms of lost uses of the lost fuel on a daily basis.

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Washington, June 10 : With about 1.6 million foreign-born from India residing in the United States in 2008, they have emerged as the third-largest immigrant group in America after Mexican and Filipino immigrants. There were, however, 2.3 million members of the Indian diaspora residing in the United States in 2008, including 455,000 native-born US citizens of Indian ancestry.

Between 2007 and 2008, the number of Indian immigrants surpassed the number of Chinese and Hong Kong-born immigrants for the first time since at least 1960, according to a new report from the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington is think tank.

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Washington, June 9 : The UN sanctions adopted by the Security Council Wednesday send an "unmistakable message" that the international community will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, US President Barack Obama said.

Speaking shortly after the council voted 12-2 to impose some of the toughest sanctions on Iran so far, Obama faulted the Islamic state's leaders for failing to seriously address concerns about the country's nuclear activities.

"These are the most comprehensive sanctions that the Iranian government has faced," Obama said.

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Washington, Jun. 9 : The United States has continuously been pressing Pakistan to to act against the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which carried out he ghastly November 2008 terror attacks, a top US official has said, adding that New Delhi understands America's strategy concerning Islamabad.

"The United States consistently emphasizes... that it is very important in particular for Pakistan to take action against these groups that are targeting not only India but increasingly the United States," Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake said.

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California, June 9 : California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had to recast his ballot for the state's Senate primary because he selected two candidates instead of one.

Los Angeles polling place worker, Keta Hodgson, said that a scanning machine rejected Schwarzenegger's first ballot due to his double vote, so he was given the choice of filling out a new ballot or not having his Senate choice count. He chose to cast a fresh ballot.

Schwarzenegger's term as governor will expire in January next year.

The California Senate race is one of the most closely watched in the country as voters head to the polls in 12 states.

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