Moscow  - A controversial judge in the trial of three men charged with murdering investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya will stay on Wednesday after the Moscow Military Court rejected prosecutors demands to dismiss him for bias.

Court spokesman Alexander Minchanovsky called the accusations against Judge Evgeny Zubov "baseless" and said the trial would resume Wednesday.

Proceedings have had a confused start in trial of slain reporter Politkovskaya, gunned down in a contract killing in front of her Moscow flat in 2006.

Paris  - Giro d'Italia and Vuelta champion Alberto Contador of Spain won the prestigious Golden Bike award for the second straight year on Wednesday.

Contador received 72 votes as he beat Olympic time trial champion Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland (47) and Tour de France champion Carlos Sastre of Spain (36) in the poll among the cycling media conducted by France's Velo Magazine.

Contador, 25, won the Tour in 2007 and completed his collection of major race wins this year at the Giro and Tour of Spain. He was unable to go for a second Tour de France title because his Astana team was not invited in 2008 over its doping-tainted past.

New York, Nov. 26 : A Somalian terror outfit going by the name of Shabaab al Mujahideen, is reported to have close ties to Al Qaeda.
The Shabaab''s ultimate goal is to throw the West "into hell.”

The terror organization''s main focus, according to the non-profit research group Nine Eleven Finding Answers (NEFA) Foundation, which granted FOX News exclusive access to its detailed reports on the activities of terrorists, is its elaborate network of terror camps that is attracting fundamentalists from around the world.

Seoul - The South Korean government has not ruled out the possibility

Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy is drawing up a plan to relaunch the country's economy that will cost about 20 billion euros (25.9 billion dollars), the online edition of the daily Le Monde reported on Wednesday.

Finance Minister Christine Lagarde told Europe 1 radio that Sarkozy was thinking of a plan that would require funding worth about 1 per cent of France's GDP.

"That would mean about 19 billion euros," she said. "I know the president has in mind 1 per cent (of GDP), perhaps a little more."

London, Nov 26 : Author Rachel Johnson, sister of London Mayor Boris Johnson, has bagged this year''s Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

Johnson received the award in the ceremony, held at London''s In and Out club, for an excerpt from her satirical novel Shire Hell.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike won the lifetime achievement award at the ceremony, laid on by Literary Review Magazine.

The ceremony celebrates crude, tasteless or ridiculous sexual passages in modern literature.