NIGERIAN security forces have stormed the hideout of kidnappers of a Turkish national in oil-rich Rivers State and killed 14 of them in a shootout.
"The hoodlums were shot dead during a gun battle with the security agents in their camp in Kaani community in Ogoni land," state police spokesman Ben Ugwuegbulam told AFP of the incident.
SONIA Gandhi, chief of India's ruling Congress party, and Premier Manmohan Singh were set to speak at a massive rally to whip up support for the scandal-tainted government ahead of 2014 elections.
Italian-born Ms Gandhi, India's political grand matriarch who led Congress to back-to-back wins in 2004 and 2009, is moving into high gear as she seeks to persuade voters to elect the party for a third straight term, analysts say.
At the rally in the Indian capital, leaders will defend the government's blitz of controversial reforms to allow wider foreign investment in the retail, insurance and aviation sectors aimed at spurring a sharply slowing economy.
"We want to tell people that these are people-friendly measures - these are for the betterment of the common man," a senior Congress party official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
The left-leaning government is deeply wary of a voter backlash in the elections due within 18 months over the reforms that have drawn strong political opposition in the still heavily poor country of 1.2 billion people.
Also due to speak along with Gandhi and Singh at the rally in the capital New Delhi will be Sonia's 42-year-old son Rahul Gandhi, expected to be the party's candidate for prime minister in the polls, the party official said.
"All three of them are scheduled to give speeches," he said.
The rally is being staged a week after 80-year-old Singh overhauled his cabinet to give it a more youthful face with the inclusion of younger ministers to appeal to the country's vast youth population.
Congress is struggling to restore its credibility as a force fit to govern in the face of a drumroll of corruption charges that have put it on the defensive almost since the last elections in 2009.
The Congress party official said the party was hoping Sunday's rally would be attended by over 100,000 people.
PRESIDENT Barack Obama is heading toward election day with an apparent lead over Republican Mitt Romney among early voters in key states.
But Mr Obama's advantage isn't as big as the one he had over John McCain four years ago, and that gives Mr Romney's campaign hope that the former Massachusetts governor can erase the gap in Tuesday's election.
About 25 million people already have voted in 34 states and the District of Columbia. No votes will be counted until election day but several battleground states are releasing the party affiliation of people who have voted early.
So far, Democratic voters outnumber Republicans in Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio. Republicans have the edge in Colorado.
A TALIBAN suicide bomber blew himself up and five others near a vehicle carrying the head of a government-allied militia in northwest Pakistan.
Senior police officer Akhtar Hayyat said several people were also wounded in the blast near a gas station in the district of Buner in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He said Fateh Khan, the head of the local anti-Taliban militia, was killed along with three guards and two passers-by.
Mr Khan was also a prominent leader of the secular Awami National Party, which rules the coalition government in the province, and which has angered the Taliban by supporting several military offensives in tribal districts and in the towns.
Shortly after the attack, Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility by telephone for the killing of Khan.
Buner is believed to be a hiding place for the Pakistani Taliban. It is located near the Swat Valley, where the insurgent group shot and wounded 15-year-old education activist Malala Yousufzai last month for criticizing its behavior when it seized the isolated region in 2008.
An offensive by the military broke the Taliban's control over the area in 2009, but attacks have continued.
REPUBLICAN Mitt Romney has millionaire backers, a huge staff and years of campaign experience but President Barack Obama has Bill Clinton.
The former president is sprinting through battleground states, delivering more speeches than Mr Obama himself and, arguably, carrying much of the president's re-election hopes on his 66-year-old shoulders.
There's nothing secret about this campaign weapon. If it's a competitive state, Mr Clinton is there - and there and there - picking apart Romney's proposals in the folksy yet detailed style he unleashed at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Many party activists left there wondering why Mr Obama can't make his own case as compellingly.
Friday was typical for Mr Clinton. He made five stops in Florida, stretching from Palm Beach in the southeast to Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast to Tallahassee in the panhandle.
Mr Romney had hoped to lock down the mega-swing state long ago. But he will return Monday because of its uncertainty.
Mr Clinton, his raspy voice hoarser than usual, mixed nostalgia with lawyerly dissections when criticising Mr Romney's tax-cut plans in Palm Bay, the day's second stop, south of Cape Canaveral.
"I don't understand how people like me could sleep at night taking another tax cut, and taking it away from you," he said to cheers from several hundred people, who clearly did not resent his post-presidential wealth.
After shucking his suit jacket and loosening his orange tie under a brilliant midday sun, Clinton rattled off statistics about recent slowdowns in the growth of health care costs, and benefits of Obama's health law. "That is what Mr Romney wants to repeal," he said.
"Bring it home, Bill" a woman shouted.
At every stop, Mr Clinton praises Mr Obama effusively, but he also reminds voters of his own days in office.
"I am the only living former president that ever gave you a budget surplus," he said in Palm Bay. Obama's policies, he adds, are much more in line with his than are Mr Romney's.
Mr Obama amplifies Mr Clinton's boasts, knowing they give credence to the endorsements. In one Ohio stop Friday, Mr Obama named Mr Clinton four times.
"For eight years we had a president who shared our beliefs, and his name was Bill Clinton," Mr Obama said. "His economic plan asked the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more so we could reduce our deficit and invest in the skills and ideas of our people." Mr Romney opposed that plan, Mr Obama said, and his math "was just as bad back then as it was today."
The white-haired Mr Clinton looks drawn and tired at times, and he makes a few flubs. He apologised this week for saluting Pennsylvania when he happened to be in Ohio.
Mr Clinton still runs late, even at morning events. Former Vice President Walter Mondale had to spin political yarns to kill time this week as voters waited in Minneapolis.
But the man who once headlined nine events in one day for his wife in the 2008 North Carolina primary - when Hillary Rodham Clinton was battling Mr Obama - still feeds off crowds' energy and affection.
In Green Bay, Wisconsin, Mr Clinton gave a 57-minute dissertation on why the economy is better than many think. The only reason the Obama-Romney race is close, he said, "is because Americans are impatient on things not made before yesterday, and they don't understand why the economy is not totally hunky-dory again."
Mr Clinton campaigned for Mr Obama on Thursday in Wisconsin and Ohio. Earlier in the week he was in Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota and New Hampshire.
He will join Mr Obama on Saturday for a rally in Virginia and on Sunday morning for an event in New Hampshire. Clinton also will campaign Sunday in North Carolina and Minnesota. And on Monday, the Obama camp hopes Mr Clinton will snuff out any possible Romney eruption in Pennsylvania, scheduling stops for him in Pittsburgh and Scranton, plus two in Philadelphia.
No state underscores Mr Clinton's value more than Florida, where the Republican Bush family looms large. While Mr Obama makes every possible use of his party's most recent president, Romney can hardly mention George W. Bush, who left office amid an economic collapse and an unpopular war in Iraq.
Mr Romney campaigned Thursday in Tampa, however, with Bush's brother Jeb, a former Florida governor who remains widely popular.
Much has been made of Mr Clinton's once-frosty relationship with Mr Obama. Mr Clinton, among other things, in 2008 called Mr Obama's history of opposing the Iraq war a "fairy tale."
The two men may never be chums. But Mr Clinton's endorsements now seem full-throated. It delights Democratic loyalists.
"The Republicans have nothing to match the personal appeal and persuasive power of President Clinton," said Doug Hattaway, a consultant with close ties to the Clintons. "He can energize Democrats and close the deal with moderate swing voters."
Bruce Marvin, who attended Clinton's event in Chillicothe, Ohio, said the ex-president explains Mr Obama's plans even more understandably than does the nominee.
"I think it's backing up what Obama may not have been able to get across," Mr Marvin said.
A CENTRAL England airport has started playing Tina Turner songs at high volume after discovering the distinctive sound of the powerful diva effectively deters birds from the runway.
The songs, including Simply The Best and What's Love Got To Do With It, blare from a loudspeaker mounted on a van which is driven up and down the airstrip at Gloucestershire Airport.
"Normally we use the speakers to play bird-distress calls. But when they stopped working properly we found we could use Tina Turner just as effectively," head of airport operations Darren Lewington told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
Without deterrents, it is feared aircraft could be hit by crows or gulls.
EDS: Not for use before 0001 AEDT on Saturday, November 3
CANBERRA, Nov 3 AAP - Australia's Climate Commission says superstorm Sandy was made worse by climate change.
The death toll in the United States has passed 80, bringing to more than 140 the number killed by Sandy since it swept across the Caribbean, including Haiti and Cuba.
"The evidence suggests that climate change exacerbated the severity of Hurricane Sandy," the chairman of the Climate Commission's science advisory panel, Professor Matthew England, said in a new report.
"The shifts in climate towards higher temperatures and more moisture in the air are becoming the new normal, which is influencing the nature and intensity of weather patterns around the world."
Prof England said storm surges had a particularly devastating impact on areas of the US coast and a warmer world, with higher sea levels, would make such surges worse.
Before reaching land, Sandy was feeding off exceptionally warm surface waters in the Atlantic Ocean.
The temperature of the surface waters from which Sandy was drawing energy was three to five degrees warmer than average, the commission reported.
Also, the base sea level had risen by about 20cm over the past century.
"A rise of 20cm may seem modest, but even small rises like this lead to a large increase in the probability of damaging floods," the commission reported.
"The primary reason for rising sea levels around the world is climate change, which warms and thus expands the oceans and adds more water to the ocean by melting glaciers and ice caps."
The commission brings together internationally renowned climate scientists with policy and business leaders.
US energy giant ExxonMobil has reported a smaller-than-expected dip in profit for the third quarter on falling production and sales.
Net income for the July-September quarter dropped 7.0 per cent from a year earlier to $US9.6 billion ($A9.3 billion), Exxon Mobil Corporation said.
Earnings of $US2.09 per share were down 2.0 per cent from the 2011 third quarter, solidly topping Wall Street forecasts of $US1.96.
Revenue fell 7.7 per cent to $US115.7 billion as oil equivalent production declined 7.5 per cent in the quarter, the Irving, Texas-based company said.
ExxonMobil increased capital and exploration spending by 7.0 per cent to $US9.2 billion, the bulk of it outside the United States.
The quarter included a $US5.1 billion share buyback.
"Third-quarter results reflect our ongoing commitment to help deliver the energy needed to underpin economic recovery and growth while maintaining our strong focus on safety and environmental performance," said chairman Rex Tillerson.
THE federal government is to provide a funding boost to catapult more women to board positions on superannuation funds.
Superannuation Minister Bill Shorten is to announce on Friday that $150,000 will be directed towards the Super Springboard Program to improve the gender ratio.
Mr Shorten said the scholarship program would accelerate the acquisition of superannuation specific knowledge and board related skills and provide mentoring support.
"I am an absolute believer in the march of women through Australia's workforce, our institutions and our boardrooms. Our country can only get better the more women participate at its highest levels, be it in politics, business, sports, our universities, our military," Mr Shorten is to say on Friday.
The program will be run by the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) in conjunction with Women in Super.
Women are now 21.8 per cent of members of superannuation trustee boards, according to the 2012 Women on Boards Boardroom Diversity Index.
This is in contrast to 13.9 per cent of director positions on Australia's ASX 200 companies.
The AIST has set a target to have 40 per cent of board positions held by women by 2017.
"A number of funds have already joined this '40 per cent club', including AGEST Super, HESTA, Australian Catholic Super and Retirement Fund, the NT Government Public Authorities' Superannuation, Super SA, Tasplan, Telstra Super, Health Industry Plan and IAG and NRMA Superannuation Plan," Mr Shorten said.
"I encourage more funds to make a pledge to join the 40 per cent club."
POLITICIANS take note: Australian voters think improved hospitals and health care should be the federal government's number one priority.
They also think the government should pay for it.
Health care was clearly placed by Australians ahead of other key policy areas, including keeping the national economy strong, employment and infrastructure, new consumer research released on Friday by Research Australia says.
Ninety-one per cent of 1000 people surveyed said improving hospitals and the health care system was the number one priority of federal government action.
They also ranked more funding for health and medical research, and for preventative health care, in the top ten priorities at 9th and 10th respectively.
These ranked ahead of crime and apprenticeships, border control, immigration policies and the war on terrorism.
Fifty-seven per cent of the people surveyed placed the primary responsibility for funding health and medical research on the federal government.
Elizabeth Foley, chief executive of Research Australia, says it is important the federal government fosters health and medical research, as well as hospitals and health care.
"By fostering research ... governments can help deliver on both," she said.
Research Australia's analysis of the study concluded that Australians have a good overall awareness of the role of the federal government and donations in funding health and medical research.
But they were less clear on the role of state and territory governments and private investment.
While 52 per cent think that at least some funding comes from donations and grants from individuals, community groups and trusts, only three per cent believe that individuals and groups have the primary responsibility for funding.
