Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo spent a rare Saturday in the shadows as Argentina and Portugal slipped to defeats in friendly internationals staged more than 8,000km apart.
     Messi missed a first-half penalty as Brazil beat Argentina 2-0 in a fiercely contested "Superclasico" in front of 50,000 fans in the Chinese capital.
     Seven hours later, Ronaldo's Portugal lost 2-1 to France in Paris.
     At Beijing's Olympic Stadium, journeyman Diego Tardelli was the unlikely hero with his first two goals for Brazil.
     Atletico Mineiro striker Tardelli, 29, put Brazil ahead on 28 minutes, before Messi curled his soft penalty attempt close to goalkeeper Jefferson just before half-time.
     Tardelli was on target again in the second half as Brazil restored pride after the World Cup, when the hosts were hammered in the semis while Argentina reached the final.
     "Brazil are the best team in the world with a great tradition," beamed coach Dunga, who is rebuilding following the 7-1 ..

Star men Messi, Ronaldo in friendly shadows

PTI Automatic

Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey confirmed today Vladimir Putin will attend the G20 leaders' summit in November, despite concerns about Russia's actions in Ukraine in recent months.
	Australia's confirmation that the Russian leader would attend the high-powered summit came after Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko said he would also meet Putin next week.
	"I spoke with the Finance Minister of Russia only yesterday...And he did confirm that President Putin will be coming to the G20 leaders' summit in Brisbane," Hockey told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation this morning.
	"That has certainly been the consensus of other members of the G20 that President Putin should attend. And I think there will be some full and frank dialogue with President Putin at that meeting."
	Hockey added that it was "certainly the strong view of the president of the US, the chancellor of Germany and others that he should be attending".
	There were question marks over Putin's attendance due to the six-month 

Russia's Putin to attend G20 leaders summit: Australia

Six UN peacekeepers were injured during an attack by unknown assailants who opened fire on a patrol northeast of the capital Bangui, amid a flareup of violence after months of relative calm.
	The new UN peacekeeping MINUSCA force, in a statement late yesterday, condemned Friday's attack, which came a day after another UN peacekeeper was killed near Bangui.
	The latest attack was carried out by "armed elements who opened fire on a MINUSCA police patrol... Leaving four blue helmets injured".
	Such attacks "must cease immediately" the statement continued, calling for a "durable peace".
	"It is unacceptable that the blue helmets, who come from various places, should become the target of attack," it added, without giving the nationalities of those injured.
	A UN peacekeeper from Pakistan was killed, and nine others injured, near the capital on Thursday.
	It was the first peacekeeper death of the mission that deployed last month in the Central African Republic, taking over from African-led .

Six UN peacekeepers injured in Central Africa

US military aircraft have delivered food, water and ammunition to besieged Iraqi troops battling Islamic State militants, the Pentagon has said, as the coalition pursued its air assault in Iraq and Syria.
	The move marked the first time that coalition aircraft airdropped supplies to Iraqi government forces. Similar drops were previously part of humanitarian missions for civilians, such as Yazidis and Turkmen.
	The airdrops of vital supplies to troops in northern Iraq during the previous two days came at Baghdad's request, US Central Command said in a statement yesterday.
	"US military forces conducted multiple airdrops in Iraq in the vicinity of Baiji... To resupply Iraqi security forces operating in the area," it added.
	In total, 36 bundles containing 7,328 halal meals, 2,065 gallons of water and 16,000 pounds of ammunition were dropped.
	While Baiji remains under Baghdad's control, nearby towns "are contested as ISIL continues to conduct operations in the area," the statement said, 

US drops food, ammunition to embattled Iraqi troops

Some of the bodies found in mass graves in southern Mexico do not correspond to any of the 43 students who went missing after an attack by gang-linked police, an official has said.
	Angel Aguirre, the governor of violence-wracked Guerrero state, yesterday declined to confirm how many bodies had already been identified.
	"I can say that some of the bodies, according to the work of forensics experts, do not correspond to the youths from Ayotzinapa," the town where the youths were studying before their disappearance in Iguala.
	The students vanished after police linked to the Guerreros Unidos gang attacked buses they had seized in Iguala, located just 200 kilometres from Mexico City.
	On October 4, a mass grave was found with 28 charred bodies. And on Thursday, four more unmarked pits with an undetermined number of bodies were found.
	An official in the prosecutor's office declined to confirm the information, stressing that the investigation remains opened.
	Two Guerreros Unidos hitmen ..

Some bodies in Mexico graves are not students: governor

At least 10 people died and dozens were missing after an overcrowded wooden boat sunk off the south coast of Guinea, reports said today.
	Rescue workers retrieved a 10th corpse from the sea, according to journalists at the scene, as Prime Minister Said Fofana went to the site of the disaster.
	A local security source had earlier said that nine people were dead and around 30 others unaccounted for after the boat collided with another vessel soon after leaving port yesterday.
	"It slammed straight into a mining ship... And sank," the source said.
	The mining ship belonged to the Forecariah Guinea Mining company, a joint venture set up by Australia's Bellzone and the China International Fund (CIF) to mine iron ore, he added.
	The boat had 69 passengers aboard when it left the port of Farmoriah for a weekly market further along the coast of the west African country, according to the national navigation agency.
	"It capsized at sea not far from (the market town of) Benty, leaving nine dead 

Ten dead, dozens missing after boat sinks off Guinea

AFP photographer Mohammed Al-Shaikh and the BBC's Lyse Doucet were among the winners at the annual Bayeux-Calvados awards for war correspondents announced today in Bayeux, northwestern France.
	Three of the seven prizes went to coverage of the conflict in Syria, where a devastating civil war has raged for the past three and a half years.
	The international jury, chaired by US veteran foreign correspondent Jon Randal, awarded the first prize in the photo category to AFP's Al-Shaikh for a series of striking images covering violent demonstrations in Bahrain, which began in 2011.
	In the written press category, The Times' Anthony Loyd -- who was beaten and shot at by rebels in Syria -- won top honors for his work highlighting the dangers of reporting from the country.
	Doucet, a veteran BBC News correspondent, took the television category for her reports from Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, which became a symbol of suffering in Syria.
	The long-format television award ...

AFP, BBC, Times win top war correspondents prizes

Fugitive US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum by Moscow after revealing the extent of US government surveillance, has been joined by his American girlfriend in Russia, a documentary reveals.
	The nearly two-hour film "Citizenfour" by Laura Poitras paints an intimate portrait of Snowden holed up in a Hong Kong hotel as he blows the whistle on National Security Agency dealings and then plots his escape.
	The film says Snowden's long-time partner Lindsay Mills joined him in Moscow in July. A short segment shows her preparing dinner with Snowden in a wood-paneled kitchen, but the couple's conversation is not recorded and she is not interviewed.
	Earlier in the documentary, Snowden is shown breaking the news to his longtime partner from Hong Kong that he would not be back anytime soon after agents turn up at their home in Hawaii.
	"It's a tough situation," he says, close to tears on the bed in his hotel room of telling Mills that he "may not be coming back."
	"She 

Snowden's girlfriend living with him in Russia: film

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said today that he will meet Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin next week to discuss the six-month conflict between Kiev and pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
	"I will have a meeting with the President of Russia Vladimir Putin in Milan," where a Europe-Asia Meeting summit will be held October 16-17, Poroshenko said while on a visit to eastern city Kharkiv.
	The talks will also include German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, and British Prime Minister David Cameron along with the "leaders of the European Union," Poroshenko said.
	"You know, I don't expect that these will be easy negotiations," he added. "I'm used to it, I have large experience with complicated diplomatic talks. But I'm an optimist."
	Putin and Poroshenko last met in late August for talks that led to a truce accord between Kiev and the pro-Russian rebels in eastern regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, where Ukraine says Moscow is stirring a bloody ...

Ukraine's Poroshenko says will meet Putin in Italy next week

Friendly fire on a military ambulance, a suicide attack at a market and a booby trap killed at least 14 people in a fresh day of violence north of Baghdad today.
	Four soldiers were killed near Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, when Shiite militiamen allied to the government sprayed gunfire on their ambulance, police said.
	"The four soldiers were riding in an army ambulance when members of the popular brigades shot their vehicle on the main road near Mansuriyah, killing all of them," a police colonel said.
	"They opened fire because they thought (the soldiers) were Islamic State fighters using the ambulance as a trick to attack their position," the officer said.
	A doctor at Baquba general hospital confirmed the toll.
	The jihadist group holds huge quantities of vehicles, weapons and uniforms looted from the army, making it difficult for pro-government forces to tell them apart from their own camp.
	In Meshahda, just over 30 kilometres north of the capital, a bomber set off his suicide ..

14 killed as violence rages north of Baghdad

A feisty Roger Federer overcame Novak Djokovic in a gripping Shanghai Masters semi-final Saturday, ending the Serb's incredible winning streak in China and his hopes of clinching a third successive title.
	A brilliant attacking display from the 17-times Grand Slam winner, who served with aggression and spent much of his time at the net, unsettled the world number one for a 6-4, 6-4 win.
	Djokovic, the reigning champion in Shanghai who clinched his fifth China Open title last week, was gunning for his 29th consecutive win on Chinese soil in his first match with Federer since their epic Wimbledon final.
	Both players were looking to unnerve each other early on, with Djokovic attempting riskier groundstrokes to counter Federer confronting him at the net.
	Every point was greeted with exuberant cheers in Shanghai's packed Qizhong Tennis Center, and the stadium erupted when Federer broke serve on his second break-point in the fifth game.
     Djokovic saved the first break-point by finding 

Federer outguns Djokovic in Shanghai

World championship leader Lewis Hamilton continued to dominate with a sizzling lap on Saturday to secure pole position for the inaugural Russian Grand Prix in Sochi.
     The 29-year-old Briton, winner of the last three Grands Prix, was fastest with a late lap at the new Sochi Autodrom to finish two-tenths of a second clear of his Mercedes team-mate and title rival Nico Rosberg.
	The German, 10 points behind Hamilton in the championship with four races remaining, pushed hard to catch him, but was almost overhauled by Finn Valtteri Bottas in the final seconds, the Williams driver only missing out on a front row start when he slid off circuit at the penultimate corner.
	It was Hamilton's seventh pole this year and the 38th of his career and, for the Mercedes team another front row lockout, their ninth of the season ahead of Sunday's race in which they can clinch the constructors' crown, ending Red Bull's four year reign as team champions.
	"Pole is a great place to start and the team ...

Hamilton takes pole at Rosberg's expense

Bahrain's Shiite-led opposition today announced that it would boycott parliamentary elections planned for November in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.
	Five opposition groups, including the Shiite movement Al-Wefaq, said in a statement that the election "cements absolute rule in Bahrain".
	The polls will be the first since a Shiite-led uprising rocked the Gulf state in 2011.

Bahrain opposition to boycott November election

Ten Chinese and 17 local hostages have been released in Cameroon, where they were kidnapped earlier this year in raids blamed on the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram, Cameroon's president said today.
	"The 27 hostages abducted on May 16 in Waza and July 27 in Kolofata were released to the Cameroonian authorities this night," President Paul Biya said in a statement on national radio.
	The 10 Chinese citizens and other hostages, who also included the wife of Cameroon's deputy prime minister, were all "safe and sound," he said.
	The Chinese were brought to Yaounde airport by military plane, an AFP correspondent said. As was the case in past kidnappings of foreigners blamed on Boko Haram, no details were given on how the hostages were freed.
	In June, authorities said six people had been arrested over the kidnappings of the Chinese. They were seized in May from a construction camp in Waza near the border with Nigeria in an attack that left one Cameroonian soldier dead.
	The July ...

27 Chinese and local hostages released in Cameroon: Govt

Shelling in eastern Ukraine's rebel-held eastern regions killed five people over the past 24 hours, local authorities said today, in the latest deadly violations of a ceasefire.
	"As a result of military actions in Donetsk on October 10, three civilians died and four more were injured and hospitalised," said the mayor's office in Donetsk, the largest eastern city.
	All but completely controlled by the pro-Russian separatists, Donetsk has come under increased crossfire in recent days as rebels and the Ukrainian army battle over its airport.
	Another victim was an elderly man killed by a shell that hit his house near the town of Popasne in the Lugansk region, the pro-Kiev governor of the region, Gennadiy Moskal, said on his website.
	The Ukrainian army said today that its positions had been attacked overnight in Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
	One border guard was killed about 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Donetsk when a convoy of border guards was fired upon, military spokesman ...

Five people killed in eastern Ukraine clashes: authorities

Russia's most prominent human rights group Memorial today called a government legal assault on their organisation an "insult."
	Senior members of Memorial, which investigates everything from the Stalin-era Gulag to government death squads in Chechnya, said a justice ministry case against the organisation's coordinating body could seriously disrupt their work.
	The Supreme Court is set to hear the case on November 13 in which the government seeks to liquidate Memorial's umbrella organisation, overseeing dozens of human rights and research groups nationwide.
	"The very existence of the case is an insult against people who have for the past 20 years been doing the work that the state should have done," Yan Rachinsky, a senior Memorial member, told AFP.
	If prosecutors succeed, then many individual groups working under the Memorial name would "have to re-register," Rachinksy said.
	That would essentially throw separate branches around the country into legal limbo, even if the most famous .

Russian rights group calls state legal attack 'insult'

Britain was today holding a nationwide exercise to test its preparedness for an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus.
	The eight-hour exercise was to feature actors pretending to have Ebola plus doctors, nurses and the ambulance service treating them at undisclosed locations around the country.
	It will be followed by a "simulated" meeting of the government's emergency committee Cobra, the Department of Health said in a statement.
	"The public can be assured that we have been planning our response to an Ebola case in the UK for many months now since the outbreak started in west Africa," a spokesman for the Department of Health said.
	"It is vital that we test these plans in as realistic a situation as possible - with real people in real time."
	The Ebola epidemic has killed over 4,000 people this year, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), with Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone the worst hit.
	Britain has only treated one case of Ebola on its shores.
	William Pooley, a nurse .

Britain holds Ebola outbreak test

Thai authorities today arrested 53 Rohingya migrants and two suspected Thai traffickers en route to neighbouring Malaysia, an official said.
	The migrants were found on a rubber plantation in Takua Pa district in the southern coastal province of Phang Nga, district chief Manit Phianthong told AFP.
	"We got a tip-off from an informant that a trafficking gang would be transporting Rohingya people to Malaysia," he said, adding that the migrants came from Myanmar's western Rakhine state and Bangladesh.
	Thousands of Rohingya - a Muslim minority group not recognised as citizens in Myanmar - have fled deadly communal unrest in Rakhine since 2012, mostly heading for Malaysia.
	The migrants arrested today were ferried onto the Thai mainland from a small island in the Andaman Sea, Manit said, adding that one of the arrested traffickers confessed he was part of a bigger gang.
	"We are still looking for the real masterminds," said the official.
	Twelve Rohingya migrants are thought to have ...

Thailand arrests 53 Rohingya migrants: official

Powerful Typhoon Vongfong churned towards Japan today, injuring at least a dozen people as it pounded the southern Okinawan islands with ferocious winds and driving rain.
	The monster storm was about 200 kilometres southeast of Naha City in Japan's southernmost area of Okinawa at 0300 GMT, according to the nation's meteorological agency.
	The Joint Typhoon Warning Center has downgraded the storm from a super typhoon, but Japanese officials said it remained "large and very strong" and warned of gusts, high waves, torrential rain and landslides.
	Packing gusts of up to 234 kilometres per hour, the typhoon was moving north very slowly, at 10 kilometres (six miles) per hour.
	Vongfong is expected to reach near Japan's southern main island of Kyushu by early Monday after brushing off Okinawa.
	It may then slam into the archipelago, the meteorological agency said.
	Okinawa has already been experiencing gusts and heavy rain, which caused a blackout in more than 17,000 households.
	At least ..

Powerful typhoon churns towards Japan

Discount retailer Kmart said a data breach of its systems had compromised some customers' debit and credit card numbers, in the latest cybersecurity attack against a major US store.
	No personal information, debit PIN numbers, email addresses or social security numbers, however, had been gleaned during the episode, which began in early September and was detected on Thursday.
	"Our Kmart store payment data systems were infected with a form of malware that was undetectable by current anti-virus systems," department store operator Sears Holdings, which owns retailers Kmart and Sears, said in a statement.
	There was no evidence that online customers at kmart.Com had been affected, and the company gave no indication as to how many cards were compromised.
	Kmart "immediately launched a full investigation working with a leading IT security firm" and was working closely with federal law enforcement authorities and partner banks, the statement said.
	The company added that it had "deployed ...

Kmart is latest victim of US retail data breach

Islamic State jihadists have captured the headquarters of Kurdish fighters defending the Syrian border town of Kobane, with a UN envoy warning thousands would likely be massacred if it falls to them.
	Outgunned Kurdish militia were struggling to prevent the jihadists closing off the last escape route for civilians still in the area, prompting an appeal yesterday for urgent military assistance.
	US-led warplanes have intensified air strikes against IS, which has been attacking Kobane for three weeks, but the Pentagon has said that there are limits to what can be done without troops on the ground.
	Washington also warned that the military campaign could lead to reprisal attacks "against US, Western and coalition partner interests throughout the world".
	The jihadists' advance has brought the front line to just 1.3 kilometres from the Turkish border but Ankara has so far refrained from any action against the jihadists.
	Four straight nights of protests among Turkey's large Kurdish ...

AFP

AFP

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