Sao Paolo - The 2008 Formula One season reaches its thrilling conclusion with the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos this weekend when Lewis Hamilton of McLaren-Mercedes and Ferrari's Felipe Massa battle it out for the drivers' world championship crown.

Hamilton needs just a fifth place finish to ensure he goes into the record books as the youngest ever F1 champion while Massa requires a win or second spot, and must also rely on his rival finishing outside the top five, to become the first Brazilian since

Ayrton Senna in 1991 to take the title.

Meanwhile, in the constructors championship, Ferrari hold a healthy 11-point lead over McLaren with BMW-Sauber a further 10 pints adrift.

Dhaka - Bangladesh's Supreme Court on Thursday denied bail in a graft case to former prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, now paroled for medical treatment abroad.

A five-member Appellate Division bench headed by Chief Justice MM Ruhul Amin passed the order during a hearing into the case filed by a businessman last year.

Rome - Schools in Italy remained closed Thursday as teachers went on strike over controversial education reforms adopted by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government.

Thousands of students, parents and teachers joined protest marches organized by the country's major labour unions in several cities.

Leaders of the centre-left opposition which is supporting the strike also joined the protest marches.

Around mid-morning, a crowd began moving from Rome's Piazza Repubblica square towards the central Piazza del Popolo square where the protest was set to culminate with speeches by leaders of the main CGIL, CISL and UIl unions.

Milan - Napoli are set to show no respect for giants AC Milan when they visit them late Sunday looking to retain the top spot in a surprising Serie A season.

The leading duo of Napoli and Udinese, who boast a better goal difference, have 20 points from nine games after convincing wins against Reggina and Catania in a midweek round, with Milan trailing on 19.

Champions Inter Milan welcome bottom side Reggina Saturday, but have been the least convincing among the top teams as two consecutive scoreless draw saw them lose a top spot they grew accustomed to in the past two seasons.

London, October 30 : A team of Canadian and British researchers has found that sperm whales sing duets to cement the bonds between individuals within a social group.

Researchers from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and the University of St Andrews in the UK followed a group of nine sperm whales in the Pacific Ocean near the Galapagos Islands, and seven in the Caribbean.

The team used a series of underwater hydrophones to record the whales'' characteristic clicking sounds.

They said that on 15 of the 19 occasions, when the position of each whale could be identified, the animals were close enough to see one another, suggesting that the song was not being used to locate another whale.

Frankfurt - Shares in Volkswagen AG rose 7.8 per cent Thursday after Europe's biggest carmaker reported a rise in earnings for the first nine months of the year and confirmed the group's 2008 outlook despite the global financial crisis.

Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen said operating profit in the first nine months of the year rose 15 per cent to 4.9 billion euros (6.4 billion dollars) after third-quarter operating profit rose 1.8 per cent to almost 1.49 billion euros.