World

HONG KONG — Hong Kong on Tuesday cleared part of a protest camp in the heart of the city that has been occupied by pro-democracy demonstrators for nearly two months, leaving most of the main protest site intact.

About 30 court bailiffs arrived at the 33-storey Citic Tower in Admiralty, next to government buildings, to enforce an injunction against street barricades after a request from the building's owners, witnesses said.

Authorities stood by as workers used cutters to remove barricades. Police said the building's owners had hired people to carry out the clearance.

"We will proceed on the principle of peace and non-violence," said Joshua Wong, head of Scholarism, one of two student groups leading the protests.

"We are not looking for an argument with the police. If they clear the road outside the car park we will accept that. If they clear other areas it will be very disappointing."

Some protesters packed up pillows, blankets and other belongings from inside their tents and moved to another part of the demonstration zone.

Others helped remove barricades themselves, saying they would rather keep the fence sections to use elsewhere rather than see them carted away.

"Our plan is to do nothing and just observe," said protester Gary Yeung, 25. "The pre-agreed area is fine. Anything beyond that is not. It's a peaceful protest so we won't fight back."

The area near Citic Tower, headquarters of CITIC Pacific Ltd., has been surrounded by metal barricades, disrupting commuters heading to the Central business district nearby.

Scores of colourful tents dot the area that is home to some of the world's most expensive real estate.

The former British colony of Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula that gives the city more autonomy and freedom than the mainland with the goal of universal suffrage.

The protesters are demanding open nominations in the city's next election for chief executive in 2017. Beijing has said it will allow a vote in 2017, but only between pre-screened candidates.

A similar injunction has been issued for a street in the gritty district of Mong Kok, another protest site across the harbour from Admiralty that has seen some of the most violent clashes over the past seven weeks. It was not clear when authorities would enforce that order.

HEKENDORP, Netherlands — Dutch officials were on Monday checking poultry farms for a highly infectious strain of bird flu following outbreaks of similar strains of the virus in Britain and Germany.

Public health authorities on Sunday banned the transport of poultry throughout the Netherlands after the discovery in the village of Hekendorp of a "highly pathogenic" form of avian influenza that is very dangerous to birds and can contaminate humans.

The destruction of around 150,000 hens at the egg farm in Hekendorp, near Utrecht, should be completed on Monday, said Lex Denden of the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority.

The European Commission on Monday praised the Dutch and British response to the outbreaks amid warnings that the disease could spread further.

"We can only praise the behaviour of the authorities of the two member states," said Commission spokesman Enrico Brivio.

Same strain

A duck breeding farm in northern England was closed off on Monday after an outbreak of bird flu, although officials said the risk to public health was "very low".

An estimated 6,000 ducks on the farm will be culled and a 10 kilometre restriction zone has been put around the site near Driffield in Yorkshire.

Renowned virologist and bird flu expert Ron Fouchier said that British authorities had told European authorities that their virus is the same H5N8 strain as found in Germany earlier this month and now in the Netherlands.

"The UK virus is also similar to the German one, that would mean that it's the H5N8 strain," Fouchier told AFP.

An EU source told reporters that it is "most likely the same strain in all three places", the Netherlands, Britain and Germany.

The source said "more outbreaks would not be surprising" in countries such as France, Spain and Italy as the "disease might have come from swans migrating from north to south".

Health risk to humans 

Dutch food authority spokesman Denden told AFP they were checking 16 farms in around a 10 kilometre radius from the infected farm.

He said that two farms in the immediate vicinity of the infected farm had already been given the all-clear.

Roadblocks have been set up around one kilometre from the village to prevent people not on official business from entering.

The atmosphere in the village was quiet on Monday, with police and black barriers screening off the infected farm amid fears of further outbreaks in Europe's biggest egg and poultry exporter.

Officials have identified the flu as being the H5N8 strain, previously detected only in Asia.

Several hundred thousand birds, mainly ducks, have been culled over the last two months because of a South Korean outbreak.

Some strains of avian influenza are fatal for chickens, and pose a health threat to humans, who can fall sick after handling infected poultry.

But Dutch authorities have said human infection can only occur following "intense and direct contact" with infected birds.

Virologist Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam told AFP it was a mystery how the virus had reached the Netherlands.

"We have no idea where it's coming from," he said, noting that the flu had "popped up, out of nowhere, in farms without any poultry trade record with Asia".

Fouchier said that the infection likely came through wild waterbirds, such as ducks, geese or swans, that had migrated from Asia and left droppings near the Dutch farm.

"We can't really talk about a major return of the virus since it's a different strain than in 2005-06," he said.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed more than 400 people, mainly in southeast Asia, since first appearing in 2003. Another strain of bird flu, H7N9, has claimed more than 170 lives since emerging in 2013.

Countrywide ban 

According to Dutch media, the H7N7 strain of avian flu severely hit the Netherlands in 2003 with health authorities destroying some 30 million birds in an effort to quash an outbreak.

There are some 95 million chickens kept on Dutch poultry farms and egg exports totalled some 10.6 billion euros ($13.2 billion) in 2011, according to the latest Dutch statistics.

BRUSSELS — The EU agreed to blacklist more Ukrainian separatists Monday but stopped short of fresh sanctions against Russia, saying there was hope of restarting dialogue with Moscow to end the worst stand-off since the Cold War.

New European Union diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said foreign ministers meeting in Brussels had raised the possibility of her visiting Moscow for talks to seek a solution to a crisis that has claimed 4,100 lives.

But fresh fighting between Russian-backed rebels and Kiev's forces underscored the challenges facing any peace efforts, as did Moscow's tit-for-tat expulsion of several European diplomats.

World leaders chastised Russian President Vladimir Putin at a glacial G-20 summit in Brisbane at the weekend over Moscow's role in the Ukraine bloodshed, causing him to fly home early.

"The main discussion today was how to re-engage in a dialogue, given that Russia is for sure part of the problem, but also part of the possible solution," Mogherini said after the Brussels meeting.

She said the EU would add more separatists to the list of 119 individuals currently facing travel bans and asset freezes. Those previously targeted range from close Putin allies and Russian oligarchs to rebel leaders.

A final decision on the new names is due at the end of November.

The EU has long been divided over sanctions, initially limiting them to individuals after Russia's annexation of Crimea in March, then broadening them to target the Russian economy after the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 in July over eastern Ukraine.

Russia has denied backing the rebels but relations with the West are at their worst since the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago.

Putin struck a defiant tone Monday, rejecting Western claims that Russia has sent troops and equipment into Ukraine to buttress the uprising, but saying "righteous" fighters would "always get weapons".

Moscow, meanwhile, said Monday it had expelled a German diplomat in retaliation for a diplomat being forced to leave Russia's consulate-general in Bonn, while several Polish diplomats were expelled for spying.

But in Brussels, Mogherini said several foreign ministers had urged her to go to Moscow for talks.

She said she would visit Kiev as soon as a new government is formed following recent elections.

"Before deciding if it's useful to go to Russia for me, first of all I would need physically and psychologically to prepare," she said with a laugh.

"But apart from that, we need... to check if the conditions are there for the meeting to be fruitful."

As the former foreign minister of Italy, which has historically had close relations with Russia, Mogherini's appointment was initially opposed by some eastern EU states who thought she would be too cosy with Moscow.

She would not say if EU leaders meeting in December were likely to add to the broader economic sanctions against Moscow, given reservations among some member states that rely on Russia for trade and gas.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin urged Brussels to go further, calling for Brussels to send a "clear message" to Moscow, with "robust" sanctions if Russia continues to destabilise Ukraine.

"We need a very clear message identifying the further steps the EU is ready and committed to take if the situation on the ground deteriorates," Klimkin told AFP in an interview after talks with Mogherini.

In the latest casualties in eastern Ukraine, seven Ukrainian soldiers and three police officers were killed in the past 24 hours, while one civilian was killed and eight wounded over the weekend, security officials said.

An AFP reporter in the city heard fresh shelling early Monday.

Meanwhile, workers spent a second day recovering wreckage from the doomed Malaysian Airlines plane, which was shot down en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over rebel-controlled territory.

The Dutch Safety Board said it "went well", with the tail section of the plane being recovered, saying that the task could be completed within five days if the weather stays stable.

BRISBANE, Australia — Russian President Vladimir Putin made an early exit on Sunday from a two-day summit of world leaders where he was roundly criticised over Russia's escalating aggression in Ukraine, but brushed off suggestions that he had felt pressured.

Putin was the first leader to fly out of Brisbane on Sunday afternoon as his fellow leaders in the G-20 club of wealthy and developing nations shared a lunch and before they released the communique to cap off their annual summit.

He also departed Australia shortly before President Barack Obama and European leaders opened their talks on Ukraine, where Russia is backing separatist rebels in the east of the country after annexing Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula in March. In July, a Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down, killing all 298 people on board, while flying over a rebel-held area of eastern Ukraine.

Putin explained he left early because he wanted to be rested before returning to work. He began the half-hour news conference by praising his host, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, for providing a "nice, welcoming and good working atmosphere".

"On Monday, I must go to work. I hope to have four or five hours to sleep," Putin said shortly before leaving Brisbane. "I told this to Tony and he was very understanding so I didn't give it a second thought."

New Corp. newspapers in Australia reported Sunday that Putin was the day before considering an early departure in response to the cold shoulder from world leaders. But Abbott's office said the early afternoon exit had been scheduled.

The US, Australia and Japan issued a statement condemning Russia for its actions in Ukraine, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper reacted to an offer of a handshake from Putin by responding, "I guess I'll shake your hand, but I have only one thing to say to you: You need to get out of Ukraine."

Ukraine, once a part of the Soviet Union, has tilted towards the European Union, angering Putin who wants to keep the country within Russia's orbit.

Obama bluntly accused Putin of not living up to a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine, but offered no new plans for how the West might change his calculus.

Obama spoke shortly after huddling with European leaders including French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss the conflict and worsening security situation. On the potential for increasing sanctions against Russia, Obama said the US and European allies are always looking at more penalties but the existing sanctions are "biting plenty good".

Despite a ceasefire agreement between Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels signed in Minsk, Belarus, in September, fighting continues and key conditions haven't been met. Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of fuelling the rebellion with a constant flow of troops and weapons, accusations Moscow has denied.

Abbott has been particularly strong-worded in his criticism of Russia since Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 plane was shot down in July. Australia lost 38 citizens and residents in the MH 17 disaster.

Abbott at one point said he planned to "shirt front" — or physically confront — Putin over the disaster.

Asked at the conclusion of the summit about where things stood with the Russian leader, Abbott responded that they'd had a "very robust" discussion about the situation in Ukraine.

"I utterly deplore what seems to be happening in eastern Ukraine," Abbott said. "I demand that Russia fully cooperate with the investigation, the criminal investigation of the downing of MH17, one of the most terrible atrocities of recent times."

Putin said Ukraine was never mentioned during the official G-20 meetings, but was brought up at every meeting with other leaders he attended on the sidelines.

"Those discussions were very honest, meaningful and very helpful," Putin said.

"I spoke generally a bit about sanctions in my private meetings and there was a shared understanding that sanctions are bad for both countries and we also talked about what should be done to get out of this situation," he said.

Asked if he had felt pressured by his G-20 colleagues, Putin told reporters: "I'm very happy with the result and with the atmosphere."

GENEVA — At least four people were killed as landslides triggered by torrential rain slammed into buildings on either side of the Swiss-Italian border Sunday, a day after floods in southern France killed five people.

In the rain-drenched southern Ticino region of Switzerland, two people died and one was critically injured when a mudslide slammed into a small residential building.

On the other side of the border, a pensioner and his granddaughter were killed when another landslide engulfed a house on the Italian shores of Lake Maggiore. Three other family members survived.

Those landslides were the latest of many to recently have hit northern Italy and southern Switzerland amid incessant rainfall over recent weeks.

The Italian Liguria region has been doused with as much rain in the first 15 days of November as it normally gets in an entire year.

The tragedies also came a day after storms in southern France left five people dead, when their cars were swept away in flooding.

In one heartbreaking case, rescue workers managed late Friday to drag a father from his car, lodged on a bridge submerged by torrential rains, only to see the vehicle with his wife and two young sons still inside torn away by the raging water.

In Switzerland, the bodies of two local women, aged 34 and 38, were pulled Sunday from the rubble of the three-story apartment building in Davesco-Soragno, near Lugano, after being hit by the mudslide shortly before 2:30am (0130 GMT), police said.

A 44-year-old Italian man, who was living with one of the women, had been dug out and taken to hospital in a critical condition, police told reporters.

Four others in the building at the time it collapsed had escaped with only minor injuries, while the final resident had not been home.

A wall above the building had crumbled under the rain and set off the landslide, police said.

That tragedy came 10 days after a young mother and her three-year-old daughter were killed when a landslide swept away their house in the same region.

After weeks of heavy rain, southern Ticino has been hit by severe flooding, which worsened when Lake Lugano burst its banks in several places and Lake Maggiore threatened to do the same.

Digging with bare hands 

Just across Lake Maggiore, a 70-year-old man died Sunday after his house was partially buried in a "sea of mud" unleashed after the rain-doused hill behind the building gave way.

Rescue workers managed to drag his 16-year-old granddaughter from the rubble after more than four hours of digging but she died later in hospital.

Her parents and grandmother survived. The family's small, two-storey villa was the only property affected in Cerro, a hamlet on the outskirts of Laveno Mombello, a popular holiday spot.

A neighbour described how he had been awoken during the night by a huge bang "like fireworks", and seeing rescue workers and the girl's parents "digging with spades, even with their bare hands".

"It was a horrific scene," the neighbour told Italian television.

The tragedy means a total of 11 people have died in Italy in accidents related to the freak weather conditions in just over a month.

That toll was expected to rise to 12 later Sunday as rescue workers continued to search for a man whose car was swept off the road by a torrent of water near the Italian Riviera's main city, Genoa.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, speaking from the G20 summit in Australia, said the havoc wreaked by the heavy rain was the result of years of neglect of infrastructure.

"We have had 20 years of land management that needs to be scrapped," he said.

An estimated 70 coffins meanwhile were washed away after 50 metres of retaining wall in a cemetery in the Bolzaneto district of Genoa collapsed. Local residents reported skulls and other bones washing up on the banks of the Polcevera River.

BRISBANE, Australia — Western leaders warned Vladimir Putin at a G-20 summit on Saturday that he risked more economic sanctions if he failed to end Russian backing for separatist rebels in Ukraine.

Russia denied any involvement in an escalation of the separatist war in eastern Ukraine, where more than 4,000 people have been killed since April, but faced strong rebukes from leaders including US President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"I guess I'll shake your hand but I have only one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine," Harper told Putin at the summit in Brisbane, Australia, according to his spokesman Jason MacDonald.

Putin's response to the comment was not positive, MacDonald said in an e-mail, without elaborating.

A source in Putin's delegation told Reuters that the Russian president would leave the summit early, skipping a working breakfast on Sunday, because he needed to return to meetings in Moscow.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied any such plans, saying: "This is wrong. The president is taking part in all the [G-20] events."

Western nations have imposed successive rounds of sanctions on Moscow, accusing it of sending troops and tanks to back pro-Russian rebels fighting to break away from Ukraine. Russia denies the charges.

The measures, aimed at sectors like oil and banking, as well as individuals close to Putin, are squeezing Russia's economy at a time when falling oil prices are straining the budget and the rouble has plunged on financial markets.

Obama said the United States was at the forefront of "opposing Russia's aggression against Ukraine, which is a threat to the world, as we saw in the appalling shoot-down of MH17" — a reference to the downing of a Malaysian airliner over rebel-held territory on July 17, with the loss of 298 lives.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the European Union was considering further financial sanctions against Russian individuals because of the crisis in Ukraine.

"The present situation is not satisfying," she told reporters. "At present the listing of further persons is on the agenda."

Putin's isolation was evident with his placing on the outer edge for the formal G-20 leaders' photograph. While Obama and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping were met by Australia's governor general and attorney general when they arrived in Brisbane, Putin was greeted by the assistant defence minister.

Despite being under intense pressure, Putin was all smiles, shaking hands with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The host had threatened to "shirt front", or physically confront, Putin over the downing of MH17, in which 28 Australians died.

A Kremlin spokesman said the Ukraine crisis was the only topic discussed at a one-on-one meeting between Putin and British Prime Minister David Cameron, but he added both expressed interest in "ending confrontation" and rebuilding relations. Putin also met French President Francois Hollande, and both agreed to protect their ties from the effects of sanctions, the spokesman said.

The European Union demanded Moscow withdraw troops and weapons from Ukraine and put pressure on rebels there to accept a ceasefire, after the latest fighting wrecked a truce agreed in September.

EU foreign ministers will meet on Monday to assess the situation in Ukraine and whether further steps including additional sanctions are needed against Russia, said European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. Obama plans to meet European leaders to discuss the matter on Sunday, he added.

Outside the summit, Ukrainian Australians staged an anti-Putin protest, wearing headbands reading "Putin, Killer".

Draped with the flags of the nations that lost citizens when flight MH17 was shot down, the demonstrators lay on a large Ukrainian flag, in what they said was a protest at the "murderous acts" Russia's president was responsible for.

ROME — Italian authorities said Saturday that more than 900 people had been rescued at sea in 24 hours, in a blow to hopes that the approach of winter would stem the flow of migrants attempting perilous crossings of the Mediterranean.

Most of the rescued were picked up from boats in the channel between Libya and Sicily, a narrow but treacherous strait in which thousands have drowned in recent years trying to reach Europe.

A total of 477 migrants were delivered to Porto Empedocle on Sicily's southern coast by Panamanian tanker the Gaz Concord. A further 354 were due to be brought ashore by an Italian navy patrol boat at nearby Pozzallo later in the day.

The coastguard also intercepted a yacht with 80 would-be migrants on board off the Port of Crotone on the southeastern "heel" of the Italian mainland.

The overcrowded leisure vessel had spent six days sailing from Turkey, was travelling under a fake Italian ensign and had children on board, four of whom were hospitalised after disembarking.

Police arrested the skipper on suspicion of people smuggling.

The interception of the yacht follows the November 3 sinking in the Black Sea of an overcrowded leisure cruiser that had left Turkey bound for Romania.

At least 24 of the 43 people on board that 13-person boat died. According to refugee bodies, more than 3,300 people have died this year in bids to reach Europe's southern shores.

EU row 

The Gaz Concord picked up its human cargo on Friday after being alerted that a ship was in distress by the Italian coastguard from its operations centre in Rome.

The migrants, mostly from Syria or sub-Saharan Africa, included 20 children and were all said to be in good health.

The coastguard said that 230 migrants had been rescued from two other vessels on Friday by Greek oil tanker the Byzantion. It was not immediately clear if they were part of, or in addition to, the group due to be deposited in Sicily by the navy.

The landings came two weeks after Italy ended its Mare Nostrum search-and-rescue operation after its European Union partners refused to help fund it.

Mare Nostrum was responsible for bringing some 150,000 migrants to shore in its year of operation.

Critics said it encouraged migrants to risk everything to get to Europe and made the job of people smugglers easier.

Tales abound of traffickers steering ships into mid-ocean before abandoning them, leaving the passengers with mobile or satellite phones and the contact number of the Italian coastguard, but it is unclear how widespread this practice is.

Italy says Mare Nostrum, launched after two October 2013 sinkings off the island of Lampedusa left more than 400 dead, was costing it nine million euros ($11 million) a month.

It has been replaced by an EU-run operation known as Triton whose mandate is limited to patrolling waters within 30 nautical miles of the bloc's coastline.

Organisations including Amnesty International and the UN refugee agency UNHCR have warned this will lead to more deaths.

They dispute the argument that rescue operations increase the "pull factor" drawing migrants to Europe, arguing that the growing numbers and rising proportions of children, women and disabled people, reflect a surge in refugee numbers due to conflicts like Syria/Iraq.

Rights bodies have urged EU governments to respond with a coordinated plan to absorb far more refugees than they have so far.

But there is little appetite for this with anti-immigration parties on the rise across much of Europe.

In Italy, the latest sea rescues followed days of attacks on a refugee holding centre in Rome by mobs of local residents who maintain that their rundown suburb does not benefit from the public largesse supposedly reserved for immigrants.

Some of the asylum-seekers under siege arrived in Italy on Mare Nostrum boats after long overland journeys from countries including Afghanistan, Eritrea and Pakistan.

City authorities were forced to temporarily evacuate minors from the centre earlier last week for their own safety.

DONETSK, Ukraine — International pressure on Russia was mounting Thursday over claims it is sending fresh military hardware into eastern Ukraine which could fuel a return to all-out conflict.

After NATO accused Russia of deploying tanks, troops and military hardware to the region, Ukraine said four of its soldiers had been killed in the past 24 hours and 18 wounded.

There was fresh shelling in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk Thursday afternoon after a quiet morning with only occasional exchanges of fire, an AFP reporter said.

Rebels said three people were injured in shelling in Donetsk Wednesday.

A senior Ukrainian security official speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity claimed there were now thousands of Russian troops in the country.

"According to our estimations, there are 8,000 Russian soldiers, maybe more, on our territory at the moment," he said.

The skirmishes on the ground played out against a backdrop of rising Western concern over claims that Russia is dispatching reinforcements to the east of the former Soviet state.

NATO's commander in Europe, US General Philip Breedlove, said Wednesday that "columns of Russian equipment, primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defence systems and Russian combat troops" were entering Ukraine.

Later, Assistant Secretary General Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that it was "deeply concerned" by a possible return to full-scale fighting.

The US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, charged that Russia "talks peace but it keeps fuelling war" as Washington warned that the West could ramp up punishing sanctions against Moscow.

But Russia's deputy ambassador to the UN, Alexander Pankin, described NATO claims of a Russian military buildup in east Ukraine as a "foray into propaganda".

Pro-Russian separatists in east Ukraine have been fighting Ukrainian forces since April in a war which has claimed more than 4,000 lives and driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Moscow has repeatedly denied involvement but openly gives political backing to the self-declared separatist statelets in the east.

A fragile ceasefire has been in place for two months and has stopped much frontline fighting although shelling at strategic flashpoints continues.

Observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have reported a number of unmarked military convoys heading towards rebel strongholds in recent days.

The OSCE says its monitors saw a van marked "Cargo 200" — Russian military code for military personnel killed in action — crossing from Russia into Ukraine and back again on Tuesday.

The West is watching anxiously to see how the situation in eastern Ukraine will develop as the former Soviet state's harsh winter kicks in.

Toyberg-Frandzen outlined three scenarios — a "return to full-scale fighting"; a continuation of the current situation "for months" with low-level battles punctuated by periods of increased hostility; or a "frozen" conflict which could draw out the current situation for decades.

The senior Ukrainian security official predicted that pro-Russian forces may try to take control of the entire regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, of which separatists currently only control a part.

They could then try create a corridor to Crimea, which Russia annexed in March, he added.

The Ukraine crisis has sent relations between Russia and the West plummeting to their lowest point since the Cold War.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to face fresh pressure over Ukraine at a G20 summit in Brisbane from Saturday.

And Putin's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is set to hold talks on Ukraine with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday.

Australia monitors Russian ships 

Australia said Thursday it was tracking four Russian navy ships including a "heavily armed" cruiser and destroyer, in international waters off its north coast ahead of the high-level meeting.

There is public anger in Australia over the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July, killing 298 people including 38 Australian citizens and residents.

Ukraine, supported by Western nations, accuses Russia of supplying pro-Kremlin separatists with the missile that shot down the airliner but Moscow and the rebels blame Ukrainian forces.

Putin met Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott and discussed Ukraine at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Beijing Tuesday.

Abbott had previously threatened to "shirtfront" the Russian president — an Australian Rules football term in which a player charges an opponent — over the MH17 disaster.

The Australian premier said Thursday that Russia's naval deployment highlighted its "assertiveness" but was "not unusual" ahead of a major conference.

BAMAKO/MONROVIA — Mali announced tougher health checks at border crossings after registering its second Ebola outbreak, while Liberia on Thursday signalled progress in neutralising the virus by saying it would not renew a state of emergency.

The world's worst ever epidemic of the haemorrhagic fever has infected more than 14,000 people and killed at least 5,160 since it erupted in March in West Africa, a region dogged by poverty and poor health care. It has ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and spurred a global watch for its spread.

In Mali, which shares an 800km border with Guinea, a nurse died of Ebola on Tuesday, and on Thursday a doctor at the same clinic was also revealed to be infected. More than 90 people had already been quarantined in the capital Bamako after the nurse's death, just as a group exposed to Mali's first case completed their required 21 days of isolation.

"The president of the republic has asked the prime minister to look urgently at the entire system put in place to fight Ebola and to strengthen health controls at the different frontier posts," a government statement said.

But officials said there were no plans to close the border, even though the nurse had been infected by a man who arrived from Guinea.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta urged the World Health Organisation (WHO) and health services in Mali and neighbouring states to set up a permanent information exchange to improve awareness about public health and hygiene.

In a sign that some progress was being made against the disease, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said she would not seek to extend a state of emergency imposed in August over Ebola, which has hit her country harder than any other.

The emergency, which allowed authorities to curb movement in the areas worst affected, officially expired earlier this month. Sirleaf said a night curfew would remain in effect, however.

The WHO says there are indications that the incidence of new Ebola cases is declining in Guinea and Liberia.

On Wednesday, it said the total Ebola death toll in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had reached 5,147 out of 14,068 cases as of November 9, with 13 more deaths and 30 cases recorded in Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Spain and the United States.

Clinic in lockdown

Some 421 new infections were reported in Sierra Leone in the week to November 9, especially in the west and north, and the virus is still spreading intensely in Freetown, the capital, as well as in Guinea's southwest near the Liberian border, the WHO said.

The 25-year-old nurse's death in Mali, after treating a man from Guinea whose symptoms were not initially recognised, forced a lockdown in the clinic where she had worked.

The Pasteur Clinic, one of Bamako's leading medical facilities and the default health centre for expatriates, was being guarded by UN peacekeepers with armoured personnel carriers and by Malian security forces, witnesses said.

Mali's first case of Ebola was a 2-year-old girl who had been infected in Guinea and died last month.

Just as the people who had been in contact with her finished their 21 days of quarantine, Mali must now trace those who had contact with the nurse and the three others infected with her.

Last September, the International Monetary Fund provided $130 million to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in September to help them cope with the economic impact of Ebola. On Thursday, it said it would discuss debt relief for the three countries with Group of 20 leaders meeting in Australia this week.

In Washington, the Obama administration tried to assure a sceptical Senate that its efforts to combat Ebola were bearing fruit and urged lawmakers to approve $6.2 billion in new emergency funds for that purpose.

Tens of thousands of nurses across the United States staged protest rallies and strikes on Wednesday over what they say is insufficient protection for health workers dealing with patients possibly stricken with Ebola.

The global medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres said on Thursday that clinical trials of three potential Ebola treatments would begin in December at MSF medical centres in Guinea and Liberia.

BERLIN/FRANKFURT — The European Space Agency (ESA) landed a probe on a comet on Wednesday, a first in space exploration and the climax of a decade-long mission to get samples from what are the remnants of the birth of Earth's solar system.

The box-shaped 100kg lander, named Philae, touched down on schedule at about 1600 GMT after a seven-hour descent from spacecraft Rosetta around half a billion kilometres from Earth.

Scientists hope that samples from the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will help show how planets and life are created as the rock and ice that make up the comet preserve organic molecules like a time-capsule.

Comets come from the formation of Earth's 4.6-billion-year-old solar system. Scientists believe they may have brought much of the water in Earth's oceans.

"We are ready to make science fiction a science fact," ESA director of human spaceflight and operations, Thomas Reiter, said at the European Space Operations Centre in Germany before the landing.

Rosetta reached the comet, a roughly 3-by-5km rock discovered in 1969, in August after a journey of 6.4 billion kilometre that took 10 years, five months and four days — a mission that cost close to 1.4 billion euros ($1.8 billion).

Rosetta is the first spacecraft to orbit a comet rather than just flying past to take pictures.

Wednesday's launch went ahead despite a problem with the thruster that meant the probe had to rely mainly on its harpoons to stop it bouncing back from the comet's surface.

The three-legged lander had to be released at exactly the right time and speed because it cannot be controlled on its descent. On its way down, Philae gathered data and images, which were relayed back to Earth.

Engineers designed the lander not knowing what type of terrain they would find on the comet's surface. Rosetta has been taking pictures of the comet and collecting samples from its atmosphere as it approaches the sun, showing it is not as smooth as initially hoped, making landing more tricky.