Despite not being on the G-20 agenda the crisis in Ukraine hung heavy over the gathering of leaders from key developing and industrial countries Saturday.

With the meeting in its second and final day, President Obama talked Asia Pacific cooperation and Ukraine with the Australian and Japanese leaders. The leaders called on Russia to stop meddling in Ukraine. They expressed unity "in opposing Russia's purported annexation of Crimea and its actions to destabilize Eastern Ukraine."

They also called for "bringing to justice those responsible for the downing Malaysian flight 17" last July. Thirty-eight Australians were among the 298 people killed when the Malaysian airliner was shot down over war torn Eastern Ukraine.

Russia's Vladimir Putin is present at the summit but keeping a relatively low profile.

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Saturday met with Putin, telling him that Russia has two choices: either implement the Minsk cease fire and withdrawal agreement, or persist with destabilizing Ukraine and face the prospect of further economic sanctions.

Obama is meeting the five European Union leaders present in Brisbane to discuss Ukraine and possible new sanctions.

Putin told a German interviewer that the sanctions are harmful to the world economy and to Russia, and run counter to what the G-20 is trying to do to boost global growth.

Leaders of the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — also met on the sidelines of the Brisbane summit. A short statement issued afterwards made no mention of Ukraine.

The BRICS leaders — who have agreed to share their currency reserves and are setting up an infrastructure development bank— called on the United States to ratify long-delayed International Monetary Fund reforms which give greater voice to BRICS nations. The US, with the largest share of IMF votes, is the only country that has not yet approved the 2010 reforms.

Australian finance minister Joe Hockey says economic matters continue to be the central challenge for the G-20. "We can't rest," he said, "the world needs growth." Hockey said climate change and other issues should not overshadow what he called the real work of the summit.


USA today

Muslims discovered the Americas more than three centuries before Christopher Columbus, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.

He made the claim during a conference of Latin American Muslim leaders in Istanbul, pointing to a diary entry in which Columbus mentioned a mosque on a hill in Cuba.

Mr Erdogan also said "Muslim sailors arrived in America in 1178".

He said he was willing to build a mosque at the site Columbus identified.

The Turkish president - whose AK Party is rooted in political Islam - gave no further evidence to back up his theory, instead stating: "Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th Century."

Controversial article
Columbus is widely believed to have discovered the Americas in 1492, while trying to find a new route to India.

But in a disputed article published in 1996, historian Youssef Mroueh said Columbus' entry was proof that Muslims had reached the Americas first and that "the religion of Islam was widespread".

However many scholars believe the reference is metaphorical, describing an aspect of the mountain that resembled part of a mosque.

No Islamic structures have been found in America that pre-date Columbus.

Mr Erdogan said he thought "a mosque would go perfectly on the hill today" and that he would like to discuss building this with Cuba.

The first people to reach the Americas came from Asia. They are believed to have crossed the Behring Strait about 15,000 years ago.

The first European visitors to North America are widely thought to have been Norse explorers, about 500 years before Columbus.


BBC NEWS

A pioneering robotic spacecraft shut down on Saturday after radioing results of its first and probably last batch of scientific experiments from the surface of a comet, scientists said.

Batteries aboard the European Space Agency’s Philae comet lander drained, shutting down the washing machine-sized probe after an adventurous and largely unscripted 57-hour mission.

Carried aboard the orbiting Rosetta mothership, Philae floated to the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Thursday, but failed to deploy anchoring harpoons.

Upon contacting the comet’s unexpectedly hard surface, it bounced back up into space twice then came to rest at a still-unknown location about 1 km (0.6 mile) from its original target.

Photos and other data relayed by Philae show it finally landed against a cliff or crater wall where there was little sunlight to recharge its batteries. Racing against the clock, scientists activated a series of automated experiments, the first to be conducted from the surface of a comet.

Before dying, Philae defied the odds and radioed its science results back to Earth for analysis.

Its last task was to reposition itself so that as the comet soars toward the sun, Philae’s batteries may recharge enough for a follow-on mission. “Perhaps when we are nearer to the sun we might have enough solar illumination to wake up the lander and re-establish communication,” spacecraft operations manager Stephan Ulamec said in a statement.

Scientists are particularly interested in learning about the chemical composition of any organic molecules in samples drilled out from the comet’s body.

Comets are believed to be pristine remnants from the formation of our solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. They contain rock and ice that have preserved ancient organic molecules like a time capsule and may provide insight into how the planets and life evolved.

Philae's drill descended more than 25 cm (10 inches) on Friday, penetrating the comet’s surface.

Rosetta in August became the first spacecraft to put itself into orbit around a comet. It will accompany the comet as it travels toward the sun for at least another 13 months.


REUTERS

The World Health Organization is pressing the search for an Ebola vaccine and hopes to begin testing two experimental versions as early as January on more than 20,000 front-line health care workers and others in West Africa's hot zone — a bigger rollout than envisioned just a few months ago.

An effective vaccine would not in itself be enough to stop the outbreak — for one thing, there probably won't be enough doses to go around — but it could give important protection to the medical workers who are central to the effort. More than 200 of them have died of the disease.

The WHO, which has come under fire for bungling its initial reaction to the Ebola crisis, is helping coordinate trials of two of the most promising experimental vaccines.

The real-world testing in West Africa will go forward only if the vaccines prove safe and trigger an adequate immune-system response in volunteers during clinical trials that are either underway or planned in Europe, Africa and the U.S. The preliminary safety data is expected to become available by December.

Dr. Marie Paule Kieny, an assistant director general for the U.N. health agency, acknowledged there are many "ifs" remaining — and "still a possibility that it will fail." But she sketched out a much broader experiment than was imagined only six months ago, saying WHO hopes to dispense tens of thousands of doses in the first couple of months of the new year.

"These are quite large trials," she said Tuesday.

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib later said the agency expects 20,000 vaccinations in January and similar numbers in the months after that.

The outbreak in West Africa has killed over 4,500 people, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, since it emerged 10 months ago. Experts said the world could see 10,000 new cases a week in two months if authorities don't take stronger steps.

The vaccine push comes as Sierra Leone said Tuesday that the number of infected people in the country's western region is soaring, with more than 20 deaths a day. That region is on the opposite side of the country from where the first cases emerged.

One of the vaccines that Kieny mentioned, Okairos AG, is being developed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline from a modified chimpanzee cold virus and an Ebola protein. It is in clinical trials now in Britain and in Mali.

GlaxoSmithKline said the vaccine is being manufactured at a plant in Rome.

"We have other vaccine facilities around the world, and we are seeing what we can do to ramp up production to commercial scale," said Mary Anne Rhyne, Glaxo's U.S. director of external communications.

The second front-runner, developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and known as VSV-EBOV, has been sent to the U.S. Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland for testing on healthy volunteers. It will also be tested shortly among volunteers in Switzerland, Germany, Gabon and Kenya, Kieny said.

Doctors Without Borders, whose medics have been at the forefront in treating Ebola patients in West Africa, urged pharmaceutical companies to speed up their work.

"Vaccination of front-line health workers — who are among the most vulnerable people — and mass campaigns to vaccinate large numbers of people in affected and at-risk countries could make a huge difference in curbing this outbreak," the group's medical director, Bertrand Draguez, said in an interview on its website.

Also Tuesday, WHO's Chaib promised a thorough public audit of the agency's early missteps in responding to the Ebola crisis. But at the moment, "our focus is on the response."

AP

(AP) — President Barack Obama says "the world is not doing enough" to fight Ebola.

Obama suggested to reporters Tuesday that he plans to reach out to foreign leaders to pressure them to do more. He spoke at the end of a meeting with U.S. and allied military leaders primarily focused on the threat from Islamic State militants.

Obama says the United States will continue to do its part to fight the deadly disease. But he said, "Everybody's going to have to do more than they are doing right now."

Obama also offered thoughts and prayers to the nurse being treated for Ebola after she tended to a Liberian man visiting Dallas. Obama says he wants to make sure lessons learned from that case are applied to health centers around the U.S.

(AP) — World leaders gathered Saturday for the fourth day of the annual ministerial meeting of the U.N. General Assembly to address the state of their countries and the world. Here are highlights from some of the newsworthy speakers:

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

The president of the transitional government in conflict-torn Central African Republic said the country has great hopes the new U.N. peacekeeping mission will help restore security and promote development. Catherine Samba-Panza said the success of the U.N. force will hinge on the involvement of the country's security and defense forces at its side. Months of fighting between a mostly Muslim rebel coalition and a Christian militia have left at least 5,000 people dead. Samba-Panza said that after a July 23 cease-fire agreement it is time to bring all parties together to consider "a new republic and pact to recast the Central African state."

INDIA

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he's serious about holding peace talks with Pakistan but also criticized the neighboring country, insisting it must create an "appropriate atmosphere" for the dialogue. In his first U.N. address since taking power in May, Modi said that dialogue needs to take place "without the shadow of terrorism." Modi invited Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration, but India in August withdrew from planned talks between their foreign secretaries as Pakistan wanted to consult first with separatists in the disputed region of Kashmir. In his U.N. address Friday, Nawaz criticized India's withdrawal from the talks, saying the world saw it as a "missed opportunity." India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir since independence in 1947. India accuses Pakistan of assisting militants that fight against Indian security forces.

LIBYA

Libya pleaded with the international community to help it stand up to Islamist-allied militias that have taken control of government buildings, saying the U.N. must impose sanctions or risk a terrorist expansion throughout North Africa. Ageila Saleh Eissa, president of the House of Representatives, spoke after weeks of fighting among rival militias in Libya forced nearly a quarter-million people to flee their homes. "The international community has either to stand with the elected, legitimate authorities and (impose sanctions) or say very clearly that the Libyans have to face terrorism alone," Eissa said. Libya has been witnessing the worst violence since the 2011 overthrow of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The latest violence has left Libya with two governments and two parliaments.

NORTH KOREA

North Korea said it is willing to cooperate with the U.N. and other international organizations on human rights, but is bristling at what it views as politicization of the issue by its arch enemy, the United States. In February, a U.N. commission of inquiry concluded that there was evidence of crimes against humanity by North Korea's authoritarian government. Washington this week called on Pyongyang to shut its "evil system" of prison camps. Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong did not directly address the findings of the commission, which Pyongyang has refused to cooperate with. Ri accused the U.S. of "abusing" the human rights issue for political purposes. He said North Korea is willing to cooperate on the issue with countries that aren't hostile to it.

RUSSIA

The Russian foreign minister issued a blistering attack on the West and NATO, accusing them of being unable to change their Cold War "genetic code" and saying the United States must abandon its claims to "eternal uniqueness." Sergey Lavrov said the crisis in Ukraine was the result of a coup d'etat in that country supported by the United States and the European Union. He made no mention of Western allegations that Russia has sent troops and heavy weapons into eastern Ukraine in support of pro-Russian rebels who have taken over a number of cities. Lavrov also says the Russian annexation of Crimea earlier this year was, in fact, the choice of the largely Russian-speaking population there.

SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said the war against extremists in the Middle East needs years and must not stop before eliminating all terrorist organizations. Saud al-Faisal, whose country is one of five Arab countries taking part alongside the United States in airstrikes targeting the Islamic State group in Syria, called for decisive policies and decisions to fight terrorism. Al-Faisal did not speak, but his speech was distributed to the media. The minister also said any solution to Syria's three-year-old conflict must exclude Syrian President Bashar Assad, accusing him of pushing his people toward extremism with his brutal crackdown.

SOUTH SUDAN

The president of South Sudan said his government is "unwaveringly committed" to ending the conflict with his former vice-president that has killed thousands. Salva Kiir urged the international community to pressure rebels led by political rival Riek Machar to sign what he called "a crucially important document" that forms the basis for resolving the crisis peacefully and inclusively. He said he has already signed the protocol agreement along with regional leaders. South Sudan has been wracked by violence since December. Government troops continue to fight the rebels despite a cease-fire agreement in January which was reaffirmed in May. Kiir said his government has "unreservedly honored" the peace agreements and accused the rebels of violating them "too many times."

THAILAND

Thailand defended the political takeover by its military and said it won't "go against the tide of democracy." Deputy Prime Minister Tanasak Patimapragorn said democracy is about more than just holding elections. He said political parties had been unwilling to compromise and the country risked bloodshed unless the military intervened. The May 22 coup overthrew an elected government after months of political protests. Last month, the junta's hand-picked legislature named the military chief as prime minister. The military has squelched open debate on the nation's fate. Tanasak said Thailand needs "time and space" to bring about reconciliation and undertake political reforms. Critics say the moves are designed to purge the influence of the ousted ruling party and benefit an elite minority.