A Kuwaiti court ruled on Wednesday that Kuwait-based Zain telecom can open its books for due diligence to the Emirati firm Etisalat which has offered to buy a majority stake in Zain.

Al-Fawares Holding, a leading private investor in Zain, had filed a lawsuit against opening the books, on the grounds that it had not seen an official purchase offer from Etisalat.

Roger Federer took the upper hand against Rafael Nadal on Tuesday with a two set to one win in a charity exhibition match in the Swiss city of Zurich.

After losing the first set 4-6, Federer broke back against the world number one early in the second set to take a 6-3, 6-3 lead, watched by a capacity home crowd including Formula One champion Sebastian Vettel, ski-ing champions Lindsey Vonn and Didier Cuche.

The same al-Qaida-linked group that attempted to send bombs on cargo planes earlier this year considered putting poison in food served at U.S. hotels and restaurants, U.S. media reported.

U.S. intelligence officials told CNN on Tuesday that the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) were considering poisoning food supplies with the deadly chemicals ricin and cyanide.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg -- on holiday in China where his social networking site is officially blocked -- met Wednesday with top executives from the country's popular web portal Sina.com.

Zuckerberg's meeting with Sina.com chief executive Charles Chao and vice president Peng Shaobin comes two days after the 26-year-old had lunch with the head of search engine giant Baidu to discuss the world's biggest web market.

The number of international troops killed in Afghanistan this year, already by far the deadliest in the nine-year campaign against the Taliban, has passed 700, an independent website said Tuesday.

The number of coalition forces killed fighting the Taliban in 2010 stood at 701, iCasualties.org said, days after U.S. President Barack Obama said the war strategy was "on track."

South Koreans stopped their cars, donned gas masks and ducked into underground shelters Wednesday in the country's biggest-ever evacuation drill — a government attempt to prepare traditionally indifferent citizens for possible new attacks by North Korea.

Fears of war on the divided Korean peninsula have intensified since the rivals fired artillery shells at each other last month across their tense western sea border. Four South Koreans on a front-line island were killed; the North's casualties are unknown.

Communist rebels waging a decades-long insurgency in the Philippines killed 10 soldiers as the troops were returning to camp to observe a Christmas truce, the military said Wednesday.

Tuesday's attack by the New People's Army (NPA) on the central island of Samar came 48 hours before an 18-day ceasefire was to take effect, and as the opposing sides were preparing for a resumption of peace talks in February.

At least 27 refugees, including children, died Wednesday after their wooden boat shattered in violent seas off Australia before horrified witnesses, with fears as many as 50 could have perished.

Customs officials confirmed that 42 people had survived the brutal accident but added that "tragically, initial reports are that 27 bodies have also been recovered," as the search continued into the night.

Rome was on Wednesday recovering from a night of violence that left 90 people injured and dozens arrested after Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi survived a crucial no-confidence vote.

Berlusconi scraped through by just three votes, with 314 lawmakers voting in his favor, 311 against and two abstentions in the 630-seat lower house.

Italy held its breath on Tuesday as lawmakers staged a knife-edge confidence vote on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government that could bring down the flamboyant Italian leader.

Berlusconi voiced confidence in a victorious outcome as he arrived in parliament and said he "absolutely excluded" his resignation, demanded by former allies from his centre-right coalition who rebelled against him.