Monte Carlo - The IAAF, the governing body of world athletics, has imposed two-year doping bans on eight Russian athletes for testing positive for the banned blood-booster EPO.

It emerged Thursday that the athletes include Vladimir Kanaikin, the 20-kilometre walk world record holder, and Alexei Voyevodin,
50km walk bronze medalist at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Last month, seven Russian athletes were suspended for two years by the Russian Athletics Federation (ARAF) for tampering with doping samples.

The athletes named included Yelena Soboleva, who earlier this year set a world indoor record in the women's 1,500 metres and two-time world 1,500 champion Tatyana Tomashova.

Moscow, Nov 6 : Kim Jong Il, top leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), attended a concert of the country’s most prominent performing groups, the official daily paper Rodong Sinmun has said.

The state run KCNA news agency and the Rodong Shinmoon, newspaper of the Central Committee of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) reported on Thursday, without mentioning a date or venue of the concert.

Washington - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's announcement Wednesday of plans to deploy missiles in its Baltic Sea enclave to counter the US basing of a missile-defence system in Eastern Europe is "disappointing," the US State Department said.

"The steps that the Russian government announced today are disappointing," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

McCormack repeated US assertions that the 10 interceptor missiles planned for deployment to Poland and the radar system to the Czech Republic does not threaten Moscow's vast strategic nuclear arsenal. The shield is designed to protect against Iran's growing ballistic missile capability, he said.

Moscow - President Dmitry Medvedev nominally said Wednesday he hoped for improved ties with the new US president, but also that Russia would fight US missile defence plans by deploying missiles in its European enclave of Kaliningrad.

In his first state-of-the-nation speech since taking office in May, Medvedev did not mention president-elect Barack Obama by name and lashed out at the United States' seeming to challenge its policy on all fronts.

Berlin - A Russian forward deployment of short-range Iskander missiles is "the wrong signal," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in Berlin Wednesday.

Moscow said earlier in the day the weapons would be moved to its Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad, close to Poland.

Speaking after meeting with Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller, Steinmeier rejected what he called the "new mentality of blocs."

Warsaw - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Wednesday dismissed a Russian threat to deploy missiles near the Polish border to counter a planned US missile defence system.

"I wouldn't attach too much weight to these types of declarations," the Polish Press Agency quotes Tusk as saying.

Hours earlier, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said Moscow would deploy short-range missiles in its Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad.