Porto capitalised on a string of defensive mistakes to beat Bayern Munich 3-1 in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final last night.

Ger McCarthy looks at five players set to take Europe by storm.

Roma opened their Champions League Group E campaign in style with a 5-1 mauling of Russian side CSKA Moscow at the Stadio Olimpico.

Algeria 1 Russia 1

South Korea 2 Algeria 4

South Korea 2 Algeria 4

UN-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi has suggested February 10 as the return date for continuing the peace talks between Syria’s warring sides.

The United Nations mediator brokering peace talks on Syria’s civil war says the two sides have reached a deal to allow women and children to leave a city under government siege for more than a year.

The Syrian regime has agreed to allow women and children to leave besieged rebel-held areas of the central city of Homs, UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said at peace talks in Geneva.

The first face-to-face meeting between Syria’s government and the opposition hoping to overthrow president Bashar Assad started and ended after barely 30 minutes today.

The UN-Arab League envoy to Syria has ended a visit to Damascus, calling on both the government and the opposition to attend a peace conference in Geneva later this month.

Negotiations between the United States and Russia on securing Syria’s chemical weapons have reached a critical turning point after two days of intense diplomacy.

Syrian government troops trying to relieve a besieged military base in the country’s north-west ambushed a rebel checkpoint today, killing at least 12 opposition fighters, activists said.

The UN envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi has said Syria's war has reached "unprecedented levels of horror".

The Syrian military has bombarded the outskirts of Damascus and other areas around the country, according to activists.

The president of the United Nations Security Council said important developments were under way in efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the 21-month war in Syria and there could be another US-Russia meeting with international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi next week.

The United Nations envoy for the Syria crisis has warned that further deterioration of conditions in the country could send a stream of refugees into neighbouring countries.

The international envoy seeking a solution to Syria’s 21-month-old conflict said yesterday that political change was needed to end the violence which has killed 44,000 people, and called for a transitional government to rule until elections.

Russia is seeking to revive last summer’s peace plan for Syria in talks with a senior Syrian diplomat and an international envoy, according to Moscow’s foreign ministry.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad yesterday sent a senior diplomat to Moscow yesterday to discuss proposals by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to end the conflict convulsing his country, Syrian and Lebanese sources said.

The international envoy tasked with pushing to end Syria’s civil war has said the situation is still “worrying” after discussing the crisis with president Bashar Assad.

The United Nations envoy tasked with brokering an end to Syria’s civil war is due to meet president Bashar Assad today.

Syria’s civil war spilled over into neighbouring Lebanon once again yesterday, with gun battles in the northern city of Tripoli between supporters and opponents of president Bashar al-Assad’s regime that left four dead.

The UN-Arab League envoy to Syria is meeting with the Chinese foreign minister to solicit support from Beijing in international efforts to ending Syria’s civil war.

A Syrian warplane flattened a three-storey building, suspected rebels detonated a deadly car bomb and both sides traded gunfire in hotspots across the country, leaving a United Nations-backed holiday truce in tatters on its second day.

It is being hailed as a miracle in a conflict that has seen endless misery.

Two deadly car bombs and sporadic fighting marred a shaky holiday truce today in Syria, although thousands of protesters used the brief respite in the civil war to pour into the streets and demand president Bashar Assad’s removal.

The Syrian army promised to observe a four-day ceasefire for a Muslim holiday starting today, while rebels claimed to have taken control of new areas in the key battleground of Aleppo.

The leader of the main Syrian opposition group said today that the chances of a truce proposed by the UN for a Muslim holiday this week are slim, partly because the plan is too vague.

A car bomb killed 13 people in central Damascus yesterday as President Bashar al-Assad told an international mediator seeking a truce in Syria’s civil war that the key to any political solution was to stop arming rebels.

An explosion has hit the Old City of Damascus, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens of other civilians, Syrian activists said.

New UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said that the death toll in Syria is "staggering" and the destruction "catastrophic".

Government warplanes bombed a town in northern Syria today, killing at least 18 people, activists said, while the new UN envoy to the country acknowledged that brokering an end to the nation’s civil war will be a “very, very difficult” task.

The UN’s new envoy to Syria said today that president Bashar Assad’s regime should realise that the need for change is both “urgent” and “necessary” and that it must meet the “legitimate” demands of the Syrian people.

The appointment of a new United Nations envoy to Syria is being welcomed around the world.

After two decades as a diplomatic troubleshooter in hotspots from Afghanistan to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi firmly believes that every conflict can be solved.

Government troops fought back rebels near the airport of battle-scarred Aleppo, Syria’s state media said today, in the first official acknowledgement that combat had neared a strategic gateway to the country’s largest city.

Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and long-time UN diplomat, has agreed to replace former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as peace envoy to Syria, the United Nations has announced.

The Security Council has agreed to end the UN military observer mission in Syria in the face of an escalating civil war.

An Afghan court has sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death after judges said an internet paper he printed and distributed violated the tenets of Islam.

Recent fighting in Darfur has killed more than 60 people as armed factions battle over territory ahead of a planned disarmament, African and UN officials have said.

UN special representative to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, today apologised for calling US chief administrator Paul Bremer a "dictator".

The US and Saudi-educated head of Iraq’s Governing Council was named as president of the interim government today, after the Americans’ preferred candidate turned down the post.

Differences between the Iraqi Governing Council and US authorities over who should be the country’s new president stalled a final agreement on the make-up of an interim government to take power on June 30.