Hong Kong - Weakening demand and mounting losses have led Hong Kong Airlines to suspend flights to three cities in China, a media report said Thursday.

The regional carrier will halt services to Xian, Chengdu and Chongqing when the winter schedule takes effect on Sunday, the South China Morning Post said.

Flights to Xian will be restored next summer.

Hong Kong Airlines together with rival carrier Hong Kong Express Airways are both partly owned by China's Hainan Airlines Group.

Returning to the small screen after five years, Katie Holmes will be seen in tonight’s installment of Eli Stone, a legal drama about Eli Stone, an attorney with a brain aneurysm that gives him psychic visions.  She has also reunited with show co-creator and executive producer - Greg Berlanti, having worked with him on Dawson’s Creek.

Beijing - Leaders of Asian and European Union nations arrived in China on Thursday ahead of a summit that is expected to be dominated by the global financial crisis.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso arrived in Beijing late Thursday morning, while Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Finnish President Tarja Halonen were among several leaders who held bilateral meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao earlier on Thursday.

The largest ever gathering of Asian and European leaders takes place on Friday and Saturday with 27 European and 16 Asian nations represented.

London, Oct 23 : The Pakistan unit of the Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has expressed willingness to lay down arms if the government assured it of ending the ongoing military operat

Washington, Oct 23 : A team of scientists has unearthed crystalline magnetic fossils of a previously unknown species of microorganism that lived at the boundary of the Paleocene and Eocene epochs, some 55 million years ago.

The team comprised of researchers from McGill University, along with colleagues from the California Institute of Technology, the Curie Institute in Paris, Princeton University and other institutions.

Though they are only some four microns long, these newly discovered, spear-shaped magnetite crystals (magnetofossils) – unearthed at a dig in New Jersey – are up to eight times larger than previously known magnetofossils.

Islamabad - At least eight people were killed and six injured on Thursday in a suspected US missile strike in Pakistan's restive tribal region along the border with Afghanistan, security officials and residents said.

Two missiles targeted an Islamic seminary, Sirajul Uloom, in Dandai Darpakhel village, located some 3 kilometres from Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan tribal district, at around 
2:30 am (2030 GMT).