Iraq-Afghanistan

McCain: Opposes scheduling a troop withdrawal from Iraq, saying latest strategy is succeeding. Promises to employ same strategy in Afghanistan, with unspecified boost in U.S. forces there. Willing to have permanent U.S. peacekeeping forces in Iraq.

Obama: Promises to complete the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops within 16 months of taking office. But hedges by saying this would require consultations with military commanders and, possibly, flexibility. Says he will use the drawdown to bolster U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan.

Financial crisis

McCain: Proposes $300 billion plan for the government to buy bad mortgages and renegotiate them at a reduced price. Proposes a one-year suspension of requirements that people age 70 1/2 begin cashing in retirement accounts. Would eliminate taxes on unemployment benefits; guarantee 100 percent of all savings for six months; lower the tax rate on retirement funds to the lowest rate, 10 percent, on the first $50,000 withdrawn; cut the tax rate on capital gains in half, down to 7.5 percent for two years.

Obama: Calls for immediate, post-election passage of new stimulus measures including a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures at some banks, $3,000 tax break to businesses for each new job created, unpenalized withdrawals of up to $10,000 from retirement accounts, cutting capital gains taxes for investment in small businesses, an extension of unemployment benefits, short-term federal loans to keep state and local governments functioning, money for infrastructure construction, and doubled loan guarantees for automakers.

Energy

McCain: Advocates increased offshore drilling, and building 45 nuclear power reactors by 2030. Seeks mandatory reductions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 60 percent from 1990 levels by 2050, using a market-based cap-and-trade system the would increase energy costs. Supports $2 billion program to develop carbon capture and other clean coal research and development. $5,000 tax credit for the purchase of zero carbon emission cars; $300 million prize for improved batteries for hybrid vehicles.

Obama: Proposes emergency cost-fighting measures such as a windfall-profits tax on largest oil companies to pay for energy rebates of up to $1,000 per couple and the release of up to 70 million barrels of oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve to boost supplies. Ten-year, $150 billion fund to encourage biofuels, wind, solar, plug-in hybrids, clean-coal technology and other "climate-friendly" alternative supplies, with financing to come from selling pollution allowances in a market-based, cap-and-trade system. Aims for mandatory reductions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. Supports increasing federal fuel economy requirements from 35 mpg to 40 mpg. Now would consider limited expansion of offshore oil and gas drilling, but opposes drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Health care

McCain: Promises $2,500 refundable tax credit for individuals, $5,000 for families, to make health insurance more affordable. No mandate for universal coverage. Would no longer shield from income taxes those payments that businesses and their workers make toward employer-sponsored health insurance. Would let people buy health plans offered by insurers located in other states.

Obama: Proposes mandatory coverage for children, no mandate for adults. Aims for universal coverage by requiring larger employers to share costs of insuring workers and by offering coverage similar to that in plan for federal employees. Proposes spending $50 billion on information technology over five years to reduce health care costs over time.

Education

McCain: Proposes more money for community college education. Advocates expansion of District of Columbia's voucher program, but not a federal voucher program as he did in 2000. Sees No Child Left Behind law as vehicle for increasing opportunities for parents to choose school.

Obama: Proposes encouraging, but not mandating, universal pre-kindergarten; teacher pay raises tied to, although not based solely on, test scores; an overhaul of No Child Left Behind law to better measure student progress, make room for subjects like music and art, and be less punitive toward failing schools; and a tax credit to pay up to $4,000 of college costs for students who perform 100 hours of community service a year.

Taxes

McCain: Proposes extending all of President Bush's tax cuts and cutting corporate tax rate to 25 percent. After initially pledging not to raise taxes, now says nothing can be ruled out in negotiating compromises to keep Social Security solvent.

Obama: Promises immediate tax cuts for households making under $250,000, and increased taxes on families making over $250,000, as well as on corporations and capital gains. Promises to create new tax breaks for lower-income families, including tripling Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers, giving larger families a higher credit, and eliminating the tax-filing requirement for older workers making under $50,000. Also calls for tax incentives for savings, child care and mortgage expenses.

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A collection of engineers, astronauts and geologists have spent the past week testing out the Small Pressurized Rover in the 11th annual Desert RATS – or Research and Technology Studies -- field tests. Two teams of one astronaut and one geologist each have been driving the rover through the Arizona desert, trying it out in two different configurations.

One configuration leaves the crew members free to get on and off the rover whenever they like, but they must wear spacesuits at all times to protect them from the lunar environment. The second configuration -- called the Small Pressurized Rover, or SPR -- adds a module on top of the rover’s chassis that the crew can sit inside as they drive the vehicle, donning spacesuits whenever they want to get out.

For the first week of tests, the rover has been driven on day-long trips to determine how each configuration performed. These have been some of the longest drives the prototype has ever made, but next week the group will step it up another notch or two, by going on a three-day drive through the desert in the SPR to determine how it performs and whether it's comfortable enough for long-duration trips.

credited to NASA (2008, October 28). NASA Tests Rover Concepts In Arizona. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 30, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/10/081026191657.htm

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A series of coordinated blasts tore through towns and cities in India's northeastern state of Assam on Thursday, killing at least 48 people and wounding more than 300, officials said.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the blasts that went off within minutes of each other, but the region is torn by dozens of militant separatist groups that have long fought the government and one another.

Five blasts hit the state capital, Gauhati, killing 25, said Subhash Das, a senior official in the state's Home Ministry. Eleven were killed in Kokrajhar district and 12 more died in the town of Barpeta. At least 300 people were injured when the 13 blasts, most caused by bombs and at least one from a hand grenade, hit the state, he said.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene of the biggest blast, which took place a few hundred yards (meters) from the secretariat, the building that houses the offices of the state's chief minister, said flames were leaping from charred cars, bodies were strewn across the road and a thick stream of black smoke was rising above the city.

Television footage showed firefighters spraying streams of water at charred, twisted cars and motorcycles that littered the blackened road.

Bystanders dragged the wounded and dead to cars that took them to hospitals, while police officers covered the burned remains of the dead with white sheets, leaving them in the street.

"I was shopping near the secretariat when I heard three to four loud explosions. Windowpanes in the shops shattered and we fell to the ground as the building started shaking," said H. K. Dutt, who was lightly wounded by shrapnel.

"I stood up and saw fire and smoke billowing out, then I looked down and saw blood on my shirt and realized I had been injured," Dutt said.

N.I. Hussain, Gauhati's deputy inspector general of police told the CNN-IBN news channel that police in the state were on high alert and searching for more unexploded bombs.

"Police have intensified the search for more bombs. There may be more blasts. You never know," he said.

Later, dozens of people angry over the blasts took to the streets of Gauhati, stoning vehicles and torching at least two fire engines. Police imposed a curfew on the city and shut down roads leading in and out of the area.

Dozens of militant separatist groups are active in India's northeast, an isolated region wedged between Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and Myanmar with only a thin corridor connecting it to the rest of India.

The separatists accuse the central government in New Delhi, 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) to the west, of exploiting the region's natural resources while doing little for the indigenous people — most of whom are ethnically closer to Burma and China than to the rest of India.

More than 10,000 people have died in separatist violence over the past decade in the region.

India has also blamed several previous serial attacks in India on Islamic militants from nearby Bangladesh.

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As Congolese government troops and UN peacekeepers engage in fierce fighting with rebel forces in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, BBC World affairs correspondent Mark Doyle assesses why it is such a volatile region.

Eastern DR Congo was once memorably described by the journalist Kate Thomas.

The place "looks like heaven", she wrote, "but it feels like hell".

She was right. There are towering volcanoes, rushing rivers and sparkling lakes. Heaven indeed.

And there are, above all, the hills - the green, rolling and fertile hills that stretch from the current conflict zone, right across the border into neighbouring Rwanda, which is itself called the "Land of a Thousand Hills".

That should be a clue as to why eastern DR Congo is also hell.

The geopolitics of central Africa have tied the heart of eastern DR Congo, the provinces of North and South Kivu, whether they like it or not, to Rwanda.

After the genocide of Rwandan ethnic Tutsis, in 1994, the killers - the Rwandan army and a large proportion of the entire population of ethnic Hutus - were militarily defeated and chased into DR Congo.

Some of them remain in eastern DR Congo as a militia force which, according to Rwanda's now dominant Tutsi rulers, could threaten genocide again.

But in the intervening years another force also emerged in eastern DR Congo, this time a Congolese Tutsi force, led by a self-declared general, who said he was protecting Congolese Tutsis from the Rwandan Hutu militia.

Almost all Congolese say that "General" Laurent Nkunda is a puppet of Rwanda's Tutsis.

In reality neither of these groups is really protecting their ethnic kith and kin because they are, by their pursuit of violent solutions, exposing their people to reprisals from the other group.

That is what hell feels like in eastern DR Congo.

According to the United Nations there are now about a million people displaced by the war in the single province of North Kivu alone.

Eastern DR Congo feels like a different country to the capital, Kinshasa, which is 3,200km (2,000 miles) to the west on the Atlantic seaboard.

Northern DR Congo is tied to the capital by the Congo River, that great trading artery of the country that flows down to Kinshasa.

Southern Congo is tied to Kinshasa by money - most of the profitable industrial mines are in the south and the Kinshasa politicians, of course, stay close to them.

But eastern DR Congo is just a separate series of seemingly intractable problems with Rwanda glued on.

From Kinshasa, Rwanda looks like a humiliatingly tiny and tightly run country which has successfully fought proxy and real wars with giant, unruly DR Congo.

Journalists talk in shorthand about "the world's largest United Nations peacekeeping force" working in "one of Africa's largest countries".

But in reality almost all the UN forces are concentrated in and around eastern DR Congo.

The region is the source of the tensions that have sparked all of DR Congo's wars in the past decade.

Though it looks like heaven, for those one million war-displaced people, it feels like hell.

And the UN, for all its concentration of forces, has not fixed it.

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A strong earthquake struck before dawn Wednesday in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 150 people, injuring scores more and leaving an estimated 15,000 homeless, officials said.

The death toll was expected to rise as reports arrived from remote areas of Baluchistan, the impoverished province bordering Afghanistan where the magnitude 6.4 quake struck.

The worst-hit area appeared to be Ziarat, where hundreds of mostly mud and timber houses had been destroyed in five villages, Mayor Dilawar Kakar said. Some homes were buried in a landslide triggered by the quake, he said.

"There is great destruction. Not a single house is intact," Kakar told Express News television.

Maulana Abdul Samad, the minister for forests in Baluchistan, said at least 150 people were confirmed to have died. Kakar said hundreds of people have been injured and some 15,000 were homeless.

"I would like to appeal to the whole world for help. We need food, we need medicine. People need warm clothes, blankets because it is cold here," Kakar said.

In the village of Sohi, a reporter for AP Television News saw the bodies of 17 people killed in one collapsed house and 12 from another. Distraught residents were digging a mass grave in which to bury them.

"We can't dig separate graves for each of them, as the number of deaths is high and still people are searching in the rubble" of many other homes, said Shamsullah Khan, a village elder.

Other survivors sat stunned in the open, with little more than the clothes in which they had been sleeping.

Hospitals in the nearby town of Kawas and the provincial capital Quetta were flooded with the dead and injured.

One patient in Quetta Civil Hospital, Raz Mohammed, said he was awoken by the sound of his children crying before he felt a jolt.

"I rushed toward them but the roof of my own room collapsed and the main iron support hit me," he said. "That thing broke my back and I am in severe pain but thank God my children and relatives are safe."

With some roads blocked by landslides, officials said the army was ferrying hundreds of troops and medical teams on four helicopters to villages in the quake zone and had set up a field hospital in Quetta.

Officials said they were distributing thousands of tents, blankets and food packages and sending in earth-moving equipment to help dig mass graves.

The quake struck two hours before dawn and had a magnitude of 6.4, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. It was a shallow 10 miles below the surface and was centered about 400 miles southwest of the capital, Islamabad.

Pakistan is prone to violent seismic upheavals. Wednesday's quake was the deadliest since a magnitude-7.6 quake devastated Kashmir and northern Pakistan in October 2005, killing about 80,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

Officials said the area hit on Wednesday was much less densely populated.

Baluchistan is home to a long-running separatist movement, but is not considered a major battleground in the fight against Taliban insurgents that plague other border regions.

Associated Press writer Mattiullah Achakzai in Quetta and APTN cameraman Abdul Rahman in Sohi contributed to this report. link

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Oil prices rose to $64 a barrel Tuesday in Asia as a rebound in regional stock markets bolstered sagging investor confidence over a global economic slowdown.

Light, sweet crude for December delivery rose 78 cents to $64.00 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midafternoon in Singapore after trading as low as $61.75. The contract fell overnight 93 cents to close at $63.22, the lowest settlement since May 29, 2007.

Key Asian stock markets rebounded sharply Tuesday, including Japan's Nikkei 225 index, up 6.4 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index, jumping 13 percent.

"It was crude reacting to the Nikkei," said Jonathan Kornafel, Asia director for market maker Hudson Capital Energy in Singapore. "It began with a turnaround in Asian markets."

Oil investors have been taking a cue from a plunge in global stock markets that suggests major economies are headed for a significant recession over the next 12 months. Oil prices have fallen 58 percent since reaching a record $147.27 on July 11.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 2.4 percent Monday after credit ratings agency Moody's Investors Service downgraded General Motors Corp.'s credit rating further into "junk" status, citing a sharp contraction of the U.S. auto market. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 3.2 percent.

"It's quite a severe slowdown that's been priced in already," Kornafel said. "If the credit market remains tight and the recession worsens, we could certainly go into the $50s and even below $50, but that would be an overshoot to the downside."

Prices have fallen despite a production quota cut of 1.5 million barrels a day by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries last week. OPEC officials have said the group, which controls about 40 percent of global crude oil production, may cut output again at a meeting in December.

"It doesn't matter what OPEC does or other supply news, people are just so focused on demand and getting their money out of trades that no longer make money," Kornafel said. "There's no real attention being paid to fundamentals in the short-term. It's still the panic."

In other Nymex trading, gasoline futures rose 2.3 cents to $1.50 a gallon and heating oil gained 4.81 cent to $1.96 a gallon. Natural gas for November delivery fell 1.0 cents to $6.11 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, December Brent crude was up 9 cents to $61.50 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

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In a rural Tennessee county where you can't buy alcohol or even find a Wal-Mart, residents of tiny Bells stopped each other to ask if anyone knew the pale-skinned young local accused of plotting to kill dozens of black people, including Barack Obama.

It was a jolt to find out on Monday that a 20-year-old who grew up among them was one of two white supremacists accused of plotting a national killing spree that would ultimately target Obama, the Democratic candidate for president.

The town surrounded by fertile cotton fields is safe and certainly not known for breeding neo-Nazis, they agreed.

"If we had any skinheads in this county I wasn't aware of it. We hardly know what they are," said Sam Lewis, who lives across the street from the mother of suspect Daniel Cowart. Cowart, he said, grew up in the comfortable, well maintained neighborhood and wasn't known as a troublemaker.

"His mother is a real sweet, nice girl, and this comes as a shock and a surprise," Lewis said.

Cowart is charged along with Paul Schlesselman, 18, of Helena-West Helena, Ark., with planning a killing spree to shoot and decapitate black people and top it all off by attacking Obama. The charges were made public Monday.

Cowart and Schlesselman are charged by federal authorities with possessing an unregistered firearm, conspiring to steal firearms from a federally licensed gun dealer and threatening a candidate for president. They were being held without bond.

Authorities describe the two as neo-Nazi skinheads, and an affidavit from a federal agent says they devised a plot to kill 88 people — beheading 14 of them. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

The killing spree was initially to target a predominantly black school, which was not identified in court documents. It was to end, authorities said, with the two suspects — dressed in white tuxedos and top hats — blasting guns from the windows of a speeding vehicle aimed at Obama.

The young men said they expected to die in the attack, the affidavit said.

Obama's campaign had no immediate comment on the alleged plot.

In Helena-West Helena, on the Mississippi River in east Arkansas' Delta, Schlesselman was described as a "troubled child" by a woman who works with his adoptive father, Mark Schlesselman.

The father works as a parts manager at Riddell Flying Service, said Marty Riddell, a co-owner of the company located in one of the nation's poorest regions, trailing even parts of Appalachia in its standard of living.

Riddell said she tried to offer Paul Schlesselman a pet lizard she couldn't care for, but was warned by his family that "he would hurt it."

"They might have done that man a favor picking that kid up," Riddell said. "He was a troubled child already."

On the other hand, a former high school classmate of Cowart's in Bells said he was quiet but friendly. But it took Lacy Doss a minute to recognize the young man in the news photo brandishing a large rifle.

"I was shocked to think I was sitting in class with this guy and now he's being charged with some crazy stuff," said Doss, 18. "He was a nice person, to me anyway. He was quiet. He really didn't talk much."

Joe Byrd, a lawyer representing Cowart, said he was reviewing the charges against his client "as well as the facts and circumstances of his arrest" and was not yet prepared to comment.

No one answered the door at Cowart's mother's house, and no lights were on inside.

Matt Hawkins, 21, the clerk at a filling station-convenience store in the center of the town of 2,300 residents about 70 miles northeast of Memphis, said customers asked each other about Cowart, looking for people who might know him.

"One friend of mine said he knew who he is, but that's about it," Hawkins said. "We're a small town. Nothing much goes on around here, no shootings or nothing."

City Attorney Jasper Taylor said Cowart most recently lived with his grandparents in a southern, rural part of the county. He moved away, possibly to Arkansas or Texas, then returned over the summer, Taylor said.

Authorities said the numbers 14 and 88 are symbols in skinhead culture, referring to a 14-word phrase attributed to an imprisoned white supremacist: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children" and to the eighth letter of the alphabet, H. Two "8"s or "H"s stand for "Heil Hitler."

Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville, Tenn., field office for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, said authorities took the threats seriously.

"Even if they were just to try it, it would be a trail of tears around the South," Cavanaugh said.

At this point, there does not appear to be any formal assassination plan, Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said.

"Whether or not they had the capability or the wherewithal to carry out an attack remains to be seen," he said.

The investigation is continuing and more charges are possible, Cavanaugh said. He said there's no evidence — so far — that others were willing to assist Cowart and Schlesselman with the plot.

In Helena-West Helena, police Chief Fred Fielder said he had never heard of Schlesselman. No telephone number for Schlesselman in Helena-West Helena could be found.

However, the reported threat of attacking a school filled with black students worried Fielder. Helena-West Helena, with a population of 12,200, is 66 percent black. "Predominantly black school, take your pick," he said.

Riddell said Mark Schlesselman left work twice Sunday to speak with law enforcement, only to return and say, "I've got a problem."

"He wouldn't condone anything like that," Riddell said. "He did look very, very upset today. He didn't speak about it to anybody at work."

Mark Schlesselman did not return a call left for him at the flying service.

Associated Press writers Erik Schelzig in Nashville, Tenn., Jon Gambrell in Little Rock, Ark., and Eileen Sullivan and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington contributed to this report.

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Soon after he touched down Friday, American space tourist Richard Garriott got a pat on the head and an admiring question from his astronaut father. "How come you look so fresh and ready to go?" 77-year-old Owen Garriott asked his son, who was sitting in an armchair on the steppes of Kazakhstan after being pulled from the gumdrop-shaped Soyuz capsule.

"Because I'm fresh and ready to go — again," Richard declared. "What a great ride that was."

Richard Garriott, a 47-year-old computer games designer who created the Ultima game series, paid US$30 million for trip to the International Space Station. When he lifted off Oct. 12, he became the first American to follow his father into space.

Friday's landing went perfectly — a relief to space officials. In the last two Soyuz landings, the craft went into "ballistic descent" — free fall — subjecting the occupants to high G-forces and sending one of the capsules far off target.

The smooth re-entry may ease concerns about plans to discontinue the U.S. space shuttle program in 2010. That will leave Russian Soyuz craft as the only way to ferry people to and from the station, which is scheduled to host crews of six instead of three starting next spring.

"I'm looking forward to some fresh food and to calling my loved ones," Garriott said in televised comments. "I've got my father here, but I've got other family back home I want to get ahold of."

Garriott, who lives in Austin, Texas, was seen off by his girlfriend and his older brother, among others, when he lifted off for the station in another Soyuz craft. He was accompanied on the return flight by Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergei Volkov, who spent six months on the space station.

Volkov, helped to a chair next to Garriott and also wrapped in a blanket, looked a little wearier than the American, after 199 days in space. The son of a decorated cosmonaut who was in orbit when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Volkov beat out Garriott as the first human being to follow a parent into space.

Kononenko was the last out of the capsule and could not be seen in the TV footage.

The head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, Anatoly Perminov, said on state-run Vesti-24 television that Kononenko had a tougher time than his crewmates during the descent but "feels good now." The longer one stays in space, the harder it is to adjust to gravity.

Garriott conducted experiments while he was on the station — including some whose sponsors helped pay for a trip Garriott said cost him a large chunk of his wealth. He also took pictures of the Earth's surface to measure environmental changes since his father snapped photos from the U.S. station Skylab 35 years ago.

"This is obviously a pinnacle experience," Garriott said.

And he praised the Russian equipment. "This Soyuz TMA-12 operated wonderfully." he said.

The craft's crew module separated without a hitch before it entered the atmosphere, and a series of parachutes gradually slowed its speed from 230 meters (755 feet) per second to about 1.5 meters (5 feet) per second, according to an announcer on NASA TV.

On a Soyuz returning in May, the malfunction of an explosive bolt delayed the separation of the re-entry capsule from the rest of the ship. It forced the crew — including a U.S. astronaut and South Korea's first space traveler — to endure a rough ride as the gyrating capsule descended facing the wrong way.

It took nearly half an hour for search helicopters to locate the capsule, which landed 20 minutes late and 260 miles (420 kilometers) off target.

Last October, a computer glitch sent Malaysia's first astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts on a steeper-than-normal path during their return to Earth.

Russian space officials said changes had been made to equipment and computer programming to prevent another ballistic descent.

"I can't recall a more ideal landing," Perminov said.

U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Lonchakov, who traveled to the station with Garriott and joined U.S. astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, are scheduled to stay six months and work on renovations to expand its capacity. The shuttle Endeavor is due to bring equipment needed for the project in a few weeks.

There are also worries the global financial crisis could disrupt plans for the station in the coming years.

The head of Russia's state-controlled RKK Energiya company, which builds the Soyuz, said Friday that construction of ships for the next few missions was on schedule, but further plans could be jeopardized by the credit crunch. Vitaly Lopota said the banks had been slow to provide loans to the company, and he urged the government to quickly earmark funds.

Perminov downplayed the issue, saying the government would make sure a lack of money does not derail planned missions.

"We will solve the problem," he said.

Associated Press Writer Vladimir Isachenkov contributed to this report.

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Samsung Electronics Co. is equipping Blu-ray DVD players so they can retrieve movies and TV shows from Netflix Inc.'s Internet streaming service, accelerating Netflix's push to develop more delivery methods beyond the mail.

The deal, to be announced Thursday, could set the stage for Netflix to embed software connecting to its streaming service directly into television sets made by Samsung.

In a statement, Netflix and Samsung said they are planning to plant the streaming capability in a variety of home entertainment products. Reed Hastings, Netflix's chief executive officer, declined to elaborate on the other possibilities in an interview.

This won't be the first time that Netflix has piped its online content through Blu-ray DVD players — devices built to show movies in high-definition quality that outshines traditional DVD players.

LG Electronics began selling a $350 Blu-ray player with Netflix streaming earlier this month.

Netflix currently has nearly 8.7 million subscribers, most of whom still go online to request DVD rentals that are mailed to them a day or two later. But the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company has been trying to provide more instant gratification with a 21-month-old service that beams movies and TV shows over high-speed Internet connections in less than a minute.

After a slow start, the "Watch Instantly" service has been become more popular as Netflix expanded the selection to include more recent titles and forged various partnerships that have made it easier to watch on a big-screen TV instead of being tethered to a personal computer.

A Silicon Valley startup, Roku Inc., has been selling a $100 device that streams Netflix's service to TVs for the past five months and Microsoft Corp.'s popular video game console, the Xbox 360, will become compatible within a few weeks.

Samsung's connection to the Netflix service will work through two Blu-ray models, the BD-P2500 and BD-P2550, that have already been on the market. Consumers who already own those Samsung models will need a free software upgrade to make the players compatible with Netflix's streaming service. Future models, carrying a suggested price of $400, will have the Netflix feature built in.

Fetching the movies and TV shows from a streaming library of more than 12,000 titles requires a minimum subscription of $8.99 per month that also includes DVD rentals delivered through the mail.

Netflix is aiming to make access to its streaming service a standard feature in all Blu-ray players, much like Dolby sound has become a staple in consumer electronics products, Hastings said.

Although they are still in relatively few households, Blu-ray players are expected to become more prevalent as prices fall and more consumers upgrade their TV sets to take full advantage of the February transition from analog to digital transmission.

With the sagging economy causing consumers re-examine their spending habits, Netflix can use every edge it can get. Subscriber growth has been running behind last year's pace in the past two months, a trend Hastings expects to last through at least the rest of the year.

Netflix is hoping to soften the blow charging an additional $1 per more month to about 500,000 subscribers who rent Blu-ray DVDs. The surcharge is effective Nov. 5.

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A wood-devouring beetle has gained a foothold in New England, and authorities plan to cut down large numbers of infested trees and grind them up to stop the pest from spreading to the region's celebrated forests and ravaging the timber, tourism and maple-syrup industries.

The infestation of Asian longhorned beetles in the Worcester area marks the fourth time the pests have been found in trees in the U.S. and the closest they have ever come to the great New England woods that erupt in dazzling, tourist-pleasing colors in the fall.

"This insect scares us to death because if it ever got loose in the forests of New England, it would be just about impossible to contain and it'd change the landscape dramatically," said Tom McCrum, coordinator of the Massachusetts Maple Syrup Association.

Calling it a national emergency, federal authorities have committed themselves to spending tens of millions of dollars to fight the invasion. They have sent in smokejumpers, tree climbers and other experts to identify infested trees.

The affected area now covers 62 square miles around Worcester and four neighboring towns, and at least 1,800 trees have been tagged for destruction.

The outbreak was detected this summer, after Donna Massie spotted beetles on a tree in her backyard in Worcester. She caught one, searched online to identify it, then called agriculture authorities. Now her tree is riddled with dime-size holes.

"It looks like someone opened fire with a machine gun," Massie, 53, said of the signature exit holes gnawed away by the bullet-shaped black beetle with white freckles, long antennae and a voracious appetite for hardwood.

The beetles first appeared in the U.S. in 1996 in Brooklyn, probably arriving in the wood of a shipping crate from China, and have since shown up in New York's Central Park and parts of New Jersey and Illinois. Authorities believe that the Massachusetts infestation is unrelated but that the beetles probably arrived the same way.

Eradication efforts in New York, New Jersey and Illinois have cost $268 million over the past 11 years. Thousands of trees have been cut down.

The beetles have no natural predators in North America, and regular insecticides are useless once the eggs hatch in hardwoods such as birch, poplar, willow, sycamore, maple and elm.

The beetles lay their eggs in small depressions they chew in tree bark. The larvae and pupae consume the tree from the inside, leaving a trail of tunnels. They eventually chew their way out as adults. The tunneling slowly kills the tree.

"The movement of firewood is probably, in my mind, the biggest threat in this area because so many people burn wood, so many people move wood without thinking, `Oh, I could be transporting a pest,'" said Tom Denholm, who has set up a federal program to fight the insects in New Jersey and was sent to Massachusetts to help with efforts here. "We can move the beetle a lot faster moving firewood than the beetle moving on its own."

Earlier this month, Rhode Island officials found a larva in firewood taken from Worcester to Cranston.

The beetle strikes fear in tourism and maple-syrup officials.

New England accounted for more than half the maple syrup made in the U.S. last year, with Vermont out-producing all other states in the region with a half-million gallons. Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association spokeswoman Catherine Stevens said the beetle could be devastating to the industry if it were to spread.

Leaf peeping, likewise, is big business in New England as thousands of visitors arrive in the fall to see forests riotous with reds, oranges and yellows. The beetle's favorite food happens to be the red and sugar maples that produce the most vivid colors.

Experts in Massachusetts say they cannot cut down the trees until the frost kills the adult beetles. The trees will be ground up, a process that generates enough heat to kill any eggs or larvae. The wood chips can then be used as mulch or burned for energy.

Federal officials plan to replace the cut-down trees with a variety of species not susceptible to the beetle.

That is little consolation to Worcester residents who fear they will see property values plummet in neighborhoods cherished for their tree-lined streets and lush backyards, City Manager Michael O'Brien said.

"It's going to take 30 to 40 years to get all those same characteristics back," he said.

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The Coast Guard says a fish processing boat with 11 crew members on board is missing off Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

The military says all that searchers had found by noon Wednesday were two empty survival suits and a partially deflated life raft. There were no signs of the boat or crew members.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Levi Reed says the agency received a distress signal early Wednesday from the 93-foot boat.

Reed says the home port of the boat is not immediately known. It was headed toward an island in the Aleutian chain with a load of cod.

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The severed heads of four men have been delivered by a courier service to a police station in northern Mexico, according to the local authorities.

The heads, all of men believed aged between 25-35, arrived last week in an icebox marked as containing vaccines.

Police thought the package was meant for a local hospital - they only opened it on Monday, revealing the four heads.

Police are investigating if the heads belong to any of the 10 local people who were kidnapped last week by gunmen.

The gruesome delivery was made in the town of Ascension, not far from Ciudad Juarez, close to the US border.

Ciudad Juarez has a reputation as one of Mexico's most violent cities, with more than a quarter of the country's 3,800 drugs-related murders reported to have taken place there since the start of the year.

The authorities have discounted reports that one of the heads may have been of a police commander who was kidnapped on 18 May this year.

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Computer criminals could soon be eavesdropping on what you type by analysing the electromagnetic signals produced by every key press.

By analysing the signals produced by keystrokes, Swiss researchers have reproduced what a target typed.

The security researchers have developed four attacks that work on a wide variety of computer keyboards.

The results led the researchers to declare keyboards were "not safe to transmit sensitive information".

Better attacks

The attacks were dreamed up by doctoral students Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini from the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL).

The EPFL students tested 11 different keyboard models that connected to a computer via either a USB or a PS/2 socket. The attacks they developed also worked with keyboards embedded in laptops.

Every keyboard tested was vulnerable to at least one of the four attacks the researchers used. One attack was shown to work over a distance of 20 metres.

In their work the researchers used a radio antenna to "fully or partially recover keystrokes" by spotting the electromagnetic radiation emitted when keys were pressed.

In a web posting they added: "no doubt that our attacks can be significantly improved, since we used relatively unexpensive equipments [sic]."

In videos showing their early work the researchers are seen connecting keyboards to a laptop running on battery power. They avoided using a desktop computer or an LCD display to minimise the chance of picking up signals from other sources.

Details of the attacks are scant but the work is expected to be reported in a peer-reviewed journal soon.

The research builds on earlier work done by University of Cambridge computer scientist Markus Kuhn who looked at ways to use electromagnetic emanations to eavesdrop and steal useful information.

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Chinese basketball officials have denied local media reports that NBA All-Star Yao Ming is set to retire from international basketball.

The 7ft-6in (2.286m) Houston Rockets center has always insisted on representing his country as well as playing in the NBA, a year-round schedule which critics say makes him vulnerable to the injuries that have hampered his career.

The 28-year-old said before August's Olympics that Beijing would be his last Games and a report in a Shanghai newspaper on Tuesday said he no longer felt able to commit his time to the national team.

"We do not know anything about this. He has never told us of his intention of retiring. Never," Hu Jiashi, deputy director of the Chinese Basketball Association, told the China Daily newspaper. Yao's China agent said the report was irresponsible.

"I have never heard of Yao planning to retire," he told the paper. "Yao proved he was fully devoted to the national team in the Olympics even if he just returned from injury."

The six-times All-Star, China's most popular and wealthiest sportsman, had to battle back from a stress fracture in his left foot to lead his country to eighth place at the Olympics.

After the tournament, Yao sidestepped questions about returning for a fourth Olympics in London in 2012, when he would be approaching his 32nd birthday.

"Four years ago, I thought 2008 would not be far away, but I had three major operations over that time," he said.

China's next major tournament will be the 2010 world championships in Turkey.

(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney; Editing by John O'Brien)

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Actress Tina Fey says she glues her ears down for her popular television impressions of Sarah Palin, but it took her a while to accept she was almost a perfect double for the Republican vice presidential candidate.

"When I first saw her, I didn't think we looked alike at all," Fey told TV Guide in an interview released on Tuesday.

"Then during the (Republican Party) convention, I started to think, 'OK, maybe a little.' ... We glue my ears down. That's one of the tricks," Fey said.

Fey's lampooning of Palin in a series of sketches on "Saturday Night Live" have more than doubled ratings for the long-running late-night comedy show and have been seen by millions more in online replays.

The Alaska governor entered the U.S. national political stage when Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked her as his running mate in August.

Palin appeared as herself on the satirical show on Saturday in a series of skits that played off her striking physical resemblance to Fey.

"Saturday Night Live" executive producer Lorne Michaels said Palin's aides asked for her to appear immediately after seeing Fey's first impersonation of her about a month ago.

Michaels told Entertainment Weekly that Palin had a powerful connection with people and could end up on television if the Republicans lost the November 4 election.

"I think she could have her own show," Michaels said. "I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful.

Fey, 38, the Emmy Award-winning star of the TV comedy "30 Rock" and the movie "Baby Mama," told TV Guide she did not feel she had totally nailed Palin.

"I expected people to be like, 'Ahhh, we thought it'd be better than that,'" she said, adding, "I stand by the pieces as both fair and quite gentle."

Interviewed while watching the October 2 debate between Palin and Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, Fey said: "I'll tell you, that lady is five times better looking than I am. She's 44? She's got none of that droopy s ... She's keeping it tight!"

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has opened up a 10-point lead over Republican opponent John McCain two weeks before the November 4 U.S. election, according to Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released on Tuesday.

The poll found 52 percent of voters favor Obama compared with 42 percent for McCain, up from a 6-point Obama edge two weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The 10-point lead is the largest in the Journal/NBC poll to date and represents a steady climb for Obama since early September, when the political conventions concluded with the candidates in a statistical tie, the newspaper reported.

The poll also found that the popularity of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has fallen. Voters are less likely to see the Republican vice presidential nominee in a positive light, and much more likely to report negative feelings, the Wall Street Journal said.

Forty-seven percent view Palin negatively, compared with 38 percent who see her in a positive light.

Fifty-five percent of voters say Palin is not qualified to be president, up from 50 percent two weeks ago.

The poll of 1,159 registered voters was conducted from Friday to Monday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

(Writing by Joanne Allen; editing by Chris Wilson)

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Asian stocks slumped to their lowest since December 2004 on Wednesday as poor U.S. corporate results and falling commodity prices fanned worries of a protracted global economic slowdown.

The U.S. dollar surged to a two-year high against a basket of currencies on expectations that central banks around the world will react to slowing growth in their economies by catching up to this year's deep interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

European stock index futures pointed to drops of up to 2.6 percent in early trade, darkening the outlook for global equity markets.

The cost of protection against defaults in Asian debt spiked to records after Argentina moved to take over its private pension system, and as fears over debt defaults rocked confidence in emerging markets.

Some Asian companies have been caught off guard by how much credit markets have tightened, which constrains their access to capital, as well as the pace at which global demand has dropped.

"As the credit crunch has worsened, wholesale business inventories have risen, causing an alarming rise in inventories in Asia and emerging markets at a time when seasonally these are usually being drawn down," said Sean Darby, chief Asia strategist with Nomura in Hong Kong.

"We would expect earnings to be further revised down within Asia and global emerging markets," he said in a note.

Losses in Asian shares accelerated in the afternoon, with Japan ending down 6.8 percent, and South Korea slumping 5.1 percent.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group's shares, which recently invested in Morgan Stanley dropped 8.8 percent after the Nikkei business daily said Japan's top lender will sharply cut its half-year net profit estimate.

The MSCI index of Asia-Pacific stocks outside Japan declined 5.1 percent, at one point touching its lowest since December 2004.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index dropped 2.9 percent, with CITIC Pacific hit for a second day after warning of nearly $2 billion in potential losses from unauthorized currency trading. CITIC Pacific shares fell a further 6 percent after losing half of their market value on Tuesday.

Earnings estimates for Asia-Pacific companies excluding Japan in 2009 have already fallen for four consecutive months, according to Thomson Reuters data. In the last month to October 16, forecasts fell 3.44 percent, the biggest monthly decline since November 2001.

Companies in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan were all expected to post falling earnings this year, but were still seen having double-digit growth in 2009, according to global estimates tracker IBES.

EMERGING MARKET SELLOFF

The cost of protection against a default in Asin debt surged amid concerns about the deteriorating health of emerging markets. Pakistan, for example, is feared to be in critical condition due to dwindling foreign exchange reserves.

That has raised fears about policy responses in emerging markets, especially following news on Tuesday that Argentina will take over its $30 billion private pension system in order to guarantee payments to retirees.

A key measure of risk aversion, the iTRAXX investment-grade index widened by about 40 basis points (bps) to 380. The equivalent high yield index jumped some 100 bps to as high as 1,200, both marking new records, according to a Hong Kong-based trader.

The worsening mood comes despite massive cash injections, bank bailouts and interest rate cuts by central banks and governments.

On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve unveiled Washington's latest step to end the crisis, saying it could lend up to $600 billion to buy certificates of deposit and commercial paper from money market funds.

The weaker outlook for the global economy is hitting commodities as well. U.S. crude oil futures slid $3 to $69.17 a barrel, on mounting worries that expected output cuts by producer group OPEC will not be enough to offset weakening global demand.

FRANTIC FOREX TRADE

The euro fell 1.7 percent to $1.2831 after dropping as low as $1.2740 on trading platform EBS, a fresh 20-month low. Sterling was down 2.5 percent at $1.6255, after sliding as low as $1.6201, its lowest since September 2003.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback's value against a basket of six currencies, was up 1.5 percent to 85.658, after rising to 85.921, the highest since November 2006.

Trade was frantic, with bid/ask trading spreads much farther apart than usual, indicating very illiquid trade.

Investors reacted to the sliding equity prices by moving into the safety of government debt, with Japanese government bond futures up a full point.

December 10-year JGB futures rose by a full point to 136.65 and the 10-year JGB yield fell 4.5 basis points to 1.540 percent.

(Editing by Kim Coghill)

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India launched its first mission to the moon Wednesday, rocketing a satellite up into the pale dawn sky in a two-year mission to redraw maps of the lunar surface.

Clapping and cheering scientists tracked the ascent on computer screens after they lost sight of Chandrayaan-1 from the Sriharikota space center in southern India. Chandrayaan means "Moon Craft" in ancient Sanskrit.

Indian Space Research Organization chairman G. Madhavan Nair said the mission is to "unravel the mystery of the moon."

"We have started our journey to the moon and the first leg has gone perfectly well," he said.

Chief among the mission's goals is mapping not only the surface of the moon, but what lies beneath. If successful, India will join what's shaping up as a 21st century space race with Chinese and Japanese crafts already in orbit around the moon.

To date only the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China have sent missions to the moon.

As India's economy has boomed in recent years, it has sought to convert its newfound wealth — built on the nation's high-tech sector — into political and military clout. It is hoping that the moon mission — coming just months after finalizing a deal with the United States that recognizes India as a nuclear power — will further enhance its status.

Until now, India's space launches have mainly carried weather warning satellites and communication systems, said former NASA associate administrator Scott Pace, director of space policy at the George Washington University.

"You're seeing India lifting its sights," Pace said.

While much of the technology involved in reaching the moon has not changed since the Soviet Union and the U.S. did it more than four decades ago, analysts say new mapping equipment allows the exploration of new areas, including below the surface.

India plans to use the 3,080-pound lunar probe to create a high-resolution map of the lunar surface and the minerals below. Two of the mapping instruments are a joint project with NASA.

In the last year, Asian nations have taken the lead in moon exploration. In October 2007, Japan sent up the Kaguya spacecraft. A month later, China's Chang'e-1 entered lunar orbit.

Those missions took high-resolution pictures of the moon, but are not as comprehensive as Chandrayaan-1 will be or NASA's half-a-billion-dollar Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter scheduled to be launched next year, Pace said. The most comprehensive maps of the moon were made about 40 years ago during the Apollo era, he said.

"We don't really have really good modern maps of the moon with modern instrument," Pace said. "The quality of the Martian maps, I would make a general argument, is superior to what we have of the moon."

NASA has put probes on Mars' frigid polar region, but not on the rugged poles of the moon. Yet the moon's south pole is where NASA is considering setting up an eventual human-staffed lunar outpost, Pace said.

The moon's south pole is "certainly more rugged than where Neil Armstrong landed. It's more interesting. It's more dangerous," Pace said. "We need better maps."

Beijing in 2003 became the first Asian country to put its own astronauts into space. It followed that last month with its first spacewalk.

More ominously, last year China also blasted an old satellite into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile, the first such test ever conducted by any nation, including the United States and Russia.

The Indian mission is not all about rivalry and prestige. Analysts say India stands to reap valuable rewards from the technology it develops and, according to Pace, it already shows increased confidence in difficult engineering and quality control.

The $80 million mission will test systems for a future moon landing, with plans to land a rover on the moon in 2011 and eventually a manned space program, though this has not been authorized yet.

And the Indian space agency was already dreaming of more.

"Space is the frontier for mankind in the future. If we want to go beyond the moon, we have to go there first," said Indian space agency spokesman S. Satish.

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India readied its first lunar mission on Wednesday, seeking to convert its new wealth into political and military clout and join an elite group of nations with the scientific know-how to reach space.

In the last year Asian nations have taken the lead in exploring the moon: Japan and China both sent up spacecraft last year, and India's Chandrayaan-1 will join them in orbit around the moon for a two-year mission designed to map the lunar surface. Chandrayaan means "Moon Craft" in ancient Sanskrit.

The moon mission comes just months after it finalized a deal with the United States that recognizes India as a nuclear power.

"It is a remarkable technological achievement for the country," said S. Satish, a spokesman for the Indian Space Research Organization, which plans to launch the 3,080-pound satellite from the Sriharikota space center in southern India.

To date only the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China have sent missions to the moon. The United States is the only nation to have landed a man on the lunar surface, doing so for the first time in 1969.

In 2003, China became the first Asian country to put its own astronauts into space. It followed that last month with its first spacewalk.

More ominously, last year China also blasted an old satellite into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile, the first such test ever conducted by any nation, including the United States and Russia.

The head of India's space agency believes it can quickly catch China, its rival for Asian leadership.

"Compared to China, we are better off in many areas," Indian Space Research Organization chairman G. Madhavan Nair said in an interview with India's Outlook magazine this week, citing India's advanced communication satellites and launch abilities.

India lags only because it has chosen not to focus on the more expensive manned space missions, he said. "But given the funds and necessary approvals we can easily catch up with our neighbor in this area."

The mission is not all about rivalry and prestige. Analysts say India stands to reap valuable rewards from the technology it develops.

"Each nation is doing its own thing to drive its research technology for the well-being of that nation," said Charles Vick, a space analyst for the Washington think tank GlobalSecurity.org.

"Traditionally, for every dollar put into space research, we get that much more back," he said.

India is also collaborating closely with other countries on the mission.

Of the 11 instruments carried by the satellite, five are Indian, three are from the European Space Agency, two from the U.S. and one from Bulgaria.

Among the goals of the $80 million mission are mapping the moon, scanning for mineral deposits under the surface and testing systems for a future moon landing, according to the Indian space agency.

NASA is sending up a Mini Synthetic Aperture Radar that can search for ice — an important resource for any human settlements — under the lunar poles.

India plans to follow up this mission with landing a rover on the moon in 2011 and eventually a manned space program, though this has not been authorized yet.

Vick, the space analyst, said an Indian landing was inevitable.

"Where the unmanned goes, man will ultimately follow," he said.

And the Indian space agency was already dreaming of more.

"Space is the frontier for mankind in the future. If we want to go beyond the moon, we have to go there first," said Satish.

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Twenty million jobs will disappear by the end of next year as a result of the impact of the financial crisis on the global economy, a United Nations agency said on Monday.

Construction, real estate, financial services, and the auto sector are most likely to be hit, according to the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) estimate, which is based on International Monetary Fund projections for the world economy.

The toll on jobs could be even higher if IMF economic projections are cut, said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia.

"We have to talk about the financial crisis in terms of what happens to people and what happens to jobs and enterprises," he told reporters.

Somavia said the ILO, which brings together governments, employers and workers, wanted to steer discussions about the resolving the crisis toward job creation and other steps to promote the "real economy."

"It would be tragic to respond to a sub-prime crisis with sub-prime policies," he said.

The ILO does not yet have a regional breakdown of projected job losses, which Somavia said would take global unemployment to 210 million in late 2009 from 190 million last year, the first time it has topped 200 million.

But countries with large domestic markets that do not depend heavily on exports would be able to weather the crisis better, he said, citing as an example China, where exports make up only 11 percent of the economy.

It was alarming that global unemployment had stayed at the same levels despite the strong economic growth seen between 2002 and 2007, said Somavia, who files to New York this week for talks with the heads of all U.N. agencies, chaired by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

He said resources should be pumped into the economy to stave off or mitigate recession, concentrating on employment-intensive sectors including small enterprises. The financial sector should also be steered back to its fundamental function of lending to entrepreneurs, according to the Chilean lawyer and diplomat.

Somavia said the financial sector's share in the profits of U.S. companies had risen to 41 percent last year from 5 percent in 1980. As a result, banks preferred to invest in financial transactions rather than lending to other productive sectors.

"So this system began to siphon off resources from the real economy process," he said.

And listed non-financial companies came under pressure to match the returns of the financial sector, forcing them to cut costs -- often by freezing salaries or laying off staff -- rather than making long-term investments.

"From one point of this view this is called productivity increases. From a more profound point of view it means a worker becomes a commodity," he said.

(Editing by Keith Weir)

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A new science and technology university in Saudi Arabia will house one of the world's largest supercomputers and it is helping lure top researchers to the conservative desert state.

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is due to open next year on the Red Sea coast near Jeddah, the most liberal city in a country where religious conservatives have extensive control over society.

Inside the campus, male and female students will be able to mingle freely, contrary to strict gender segregation enforced in most of the country. The university is part of a series of reforms by King Abdullah aiming to open the country up.

"The supercomputer is the cornerstone of this knowledge-based economy that we are seeking," said Majid Al-Ghaslan, in charge of the acquisition, design and development of the "Shaheen" supercomputer.

Named after the peregrine falcon, which reaches speeds of up to 340 kilometers per hour, Shaheen is expected to reach 222 teraflops, a measure equaling a trillion floating point operations per second, Ghaslan said. This will make it sixth most powerful computer in the world.

Shaheen will be able to simulate the Red Sea environment and model oil fields in three dimensions.

Although Saudi Arabia has immense financial resources as the world's biggest oil exporter, the parameters of school and university education are governed by religious strictures and many subjects are even off-limits for women to study.

The new university will offer research in biosciences and bioengineering, material sciences and engineering, applied mathematics and computational sciences.

With a $10 billion donation to its endowment from King Abdullah, it is able to lure experts from around the globe with the promise of almost unlimited funding for research work.

"KAUST is a remarkable addition to the world's resources in high-end computing," said David Keyes, Chair of the Mathematical and Computer Sciences and Engineering Division, who is moving from Columbia University in the United States.

"The machine that is being purchased here is one of the main attractions to me," he said.

The supercomputer will be used by KAUST and its partners including Cornell University, the University of Oxford, Stanford University, and Texas A&M University.

(Editing by Andrew Hammond and Dominic Evans)

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