Key US nuke lab loses secret data

          Washington: The Los Alamos National Laboratory, a key U.S. centre for nuclear weapons research, has temporarily ceased all classified work after vital data was reported missing last week from a research area, Quoting lab officials, a foreign news agency reported on Friday that the lab had learned of two missing data storage disks on July 7 during an inventory check. The nature of the data, however, was not disclosed on grounds of national security.

US to write off 496 million dollar Pak debt (Go To Top)

          Islamabad: The United States has reportedly agreed to Pakistan's request to write of an external debt of 496 million dollars, the pact for which will be inked today. Informed sources here told The News that Dr. Waqar Masood Khan, Secretary Economic Affairs Division (EAD) would formally sign this agreement here along with Nancy Powell, the US Ambassador to Pakistan. Pakistan ranks third after Egypt and Israel, as largest recipient of the US bilateral assistance, if the reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are excluded. The bilateral debt was estimated to be in the region of 2.07 billion dollars at the end of 2003. Pakistan, under the Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA) with the United States, also receives millions of dollar every month, as costs of providing logistical support and services, including air bases.

Prince Charles' aircraft escapes collision (Go To Top)

          London: Prince Charles's RAF jet came within seconds of hitting a plane carrying 186 passengers. According to The Sun, the planes were just a few hundred yards apart and could have smashed into one another if their courses had not been altered at the last minute. "Both planes were lucky not to have collided. It was very hairy, to say the least," said an air traffic control insider. The British royal was on his way to Spain for a memorial service for the Madrid train bomb victims at the time of the near miss 11,500ft above Newbury, Berks. He was on HS146 of the Queen's Flight with one of his private secretaries and had just taken off from RAF Northolt in West London. The Airbus believed to be from a European-based airline was on its final way to Heathrow Airport. The Prince's pilot and the Airbus captain both reported the miss to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). "There is no set distance for a near miss but the pilots would have believed there to have been a danger," the report quoted a CAA spokesman as saying.

Stephen Hawking's new black hole theory (Go To Top)

         London: Over the past 30 years, renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has maintained that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it. But now he has admitted that he has been wrong all along, reports Ananova. In a move that may send shock waves through the scientific community, the Cambridge don has said that he has finally solved the mystery behind black holes. Black Holes are regions in space where matter is compressed to such an extent that not even light can escape from their immense gravitational pull. The space bodies have mystified scientists for decades now, and in 1976, Hawking had caused ripples by his theory of "Hawking Radiation," which suggested that in black holes, the rules of quantum physics work differently and that they radiate energy.

         According to the report, Hawking has now said that once black holes form, they effectively start to "evaporate" away, losing mass in the process, due to which they eventually break open and release the information that fell inside it. "I've been thinking about this problem for the last 30 years, and I think I now have the answer to it. A black hole only appears to form but later opens up and releases information about what fell inside. So we can be sure of the past and predict the future," the report quoted him as saying. Hawking, who authored the book 'A Brief History of Time' and is crippled by motor-neurone disease, will present his findings at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland next Wednesday.

Bangladesh beat Hong Kong by 116 runs (Go To Top)

          Colombo: Bangladesh beat Hong Kong by 116 runs in the opening match of the Asia Cup here Friday. Having set a target of 222 for Hong Kong in the opening match of the Asia Cup cricket tournament at Colombo today, Bangladesh bowled out the debutantes for 105. This is the first time Bangladesh have won a match in the championship, while Hong Kong were playing their first One-Day International. Bangladesh's Javed Omar was declared man of the match.