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San Francisco  - Global mobile phone sales are set to slide for the first time since 2001 as a result of the global economic crisis, market research firm IDC Corp forecast Thursday.

The report predicted that total mobile phone sales will fall 1.9 per cent in 2009 after several years of double-digit annual growth fuelled largely by demand in now spluttering emerging markets. According to IDC, the expected growth in 2008 is 7.8 per cent.

The company said it did not expect the downturn to continue past 2009, with the market in 2010 showing signs of revival as the economic recovery takes effect.

Hamburg - Two-time winners Sevilla and fellow Spanish side Racing Santander both crashed out of the UEFA Cup, while England's Tottenham Hotspur were among teams to advance to the last 32 Thursday

Sevilla, winners of the competition in 2006 and 2007, slipped to a 1-0 Group C defeat at Sampdoria who earn a place in the knockout stage.

Germany's VfB Stuttgart clinched the third spot in the group by downing group winners Standard Liege 3-0 to bag one of the six remaining places at stake on the night.

Cairo - Five Egyptian students joined the millions of young people energized by the election of US president-elect Barack Obama, sending him a message telling him: "You are our only hope because you made us believe that change is possible."

The five female sixth-grade students went to US Ambassador Margaret Scobey in Cairo to present her with their congratulatory message to Obama.

Tbilisi/Moscow - Four months after the war it lost to Russia, the Georgian Parliament Thursday charged that the government as well as the military had made serious mistakes in the South Ossetian conflict.

In a report released late in the evening in the Georgian capital, the special commission also blamed Russia as the party which pushed the level of conflict to open warfare, according to media reports in Tbilisi.

The report also charged that the Georgian government, despite having good intelligence, was badly prepared for the war over the renegade areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It said the war was waged without agreement within the cabinet.

San Francisco  - Is the US going to switch its dependence on foreign oil for a dependence on foreign battery makers? That's the question posed Thursday by a consortium of US firms who announced their intention to ask the incoming administration of president-elect Barack Obama for a billion-dollar boost.

The National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture plans to build a plant in the US to research and manufacture advanced lithium ion batteries for hybrid and electric cars that are currently made almost exclusively in Asia.