Defending champions Egypt are teetering on the brink of elimination from the African Nations Cup going into the new year while Botswana are just one win away from a fairytale first appearance.

The struggle for 14 places at the premier national-team football competition on the continent will dominate 2011 with four rounds of qualifiers starting in March and ending seven months later.

Clearer of mind and fitter of body than for some time, Serbian glamor girl Ana Ivanovic is confident she can climb back into the top 10 in 2011.

Ranked no.1 in the world in 2008, when she won her only Grand Slam singles title at the French Open,

Japan's Nintendo has issued a health warning over the 3D function on its upcoming gaming console, recommending children aged six and under do not play with it to prevent damage to their eyes.

At a promotional event near Tokyo in January, "we will offer 2Ds alone to children aged six and younger as continuing to watch 3D images for a long time could negatively affect the development of their eyes," Nintendo said.

As Lebanon braces for the international tribunal to issue indictments in the Rafik Hariri murder, the parents of the policeman believed to have cracked the case are hoping it will also shed light on who killed their son.

Major Wissam Eid, a top communications analyst with the police intelligence bureau, was assassinated in a January 25, 2008 car bombing outside Beirut.

Zajal, an old form of improvised Arabic poetry that enjoyed its heyday in Lebanon before the 1975-1990 civil war, is making a tentative comeback with thousands of fans on Facebook and YouTube.

Traditionally an emotional oratory duel between two men, zajal once drew crowds of tens of thousands who revered its artists as poets of the highest order. It also enraptured fans who sat glued to their black-and-white television sets for the shows.

Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday warned "unprecedented" flooding would worsen after entire towns were cut off and soldiers airlifted hundreds of people from northeastern towns.

Drenching rains unleashed by a tropical cyclone have left vast tracts of the state of Queensland under water, with 1,000 evacuations and 38 regions declared natural disaster areas.

A Russian military jet crashed overnight Tuesday in the Tula region south of Moscow, killing 11 people on board, the Interfax news agency reported, citing a law enforcement source.

"According to preliminary data, there were 11 people on board the plane, they were all killed," the source told Interfax.

Two suicide bombers killed a police lieutenant colonel Wednesday when they blew themselves up inside a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police said.

"Two suicide bombers attacked the police station in the Qabr al-Binat area in (western) Mosul about 7:00 am (0400 GMT). They targeted and killed Lieutenant Colonel Shamil Ahmed Oglaq," police said.

A member of the elite al-Quds force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard has been captured in southern Afghanistan accused of cross-border weapons smuggling, international forces said Friday.

The man, described as a "key Taliban weapons facilitator", was captured Saturday in Zhari district, Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan, a volatile district targeted in recent coalition operations.

At least three soldiers and 24 militants were killed Friday in gunfights in a northwestern Pakistani tribal area after militants attacked paramilitary checkpoints, officials said.

"About 150 Taliban militants attacked five Frontier Corps checkposts in Baidnami village near the border with Afghanistan," a senior security official told AFP.