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.

London, Oct 30 : English actor Sir Michael Caine has been chosen to co-present this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Concert with actress Scarlett Johansson, the organisers have revealed.

Caine, 75, had previously appeared with Johansson on screen in 2006 film The Prestige.

“Caine has appeared in over 100 films and been honoured with numerous awards,” the BBC quoted the concert''s organisers as saying in a statement.

The event, which will honour this year''s Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martti Ahtisaari, will take place in Oslo, Norway on December 11 with Diana Ross headlining it.

Kabul  - A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-filled vest inside a ministry in the centre of Kabul Thursday, killing five people and wounding six while four police officers were killed in a roadside blast in southern Afghanistan, officials said.

Security guards at the Ministry of Information and Culture opened fire on the bomber but he managed to enter the building and blow himself up, said a ministry official, who did not want to be named.

Witness Mahmoud Jan said he heard sounds of small-arms fire after the blast.

Brussels - The European Commission on Thursday approved plans by Sweden and Portugal to protect financial institutions from the global credit crunch.

Sweden's plan involves the state providing up to 1,500 billion Swedish kronor (201 billion dollars) in debt guarantees to banks and other lenders.

Portugal's plan envisages similar state guarantees worth 20 billion euros (26 billion dollars).

Both schemes were approved by the European Union executive after they were found to be in line with the bloc's rules on state aid.

But while Sweden's was cleared within just three days of it being notified to the commission, the Portuguese plan had to be negotiated with officials in Brussels over a two-week period.