Beijing - Shares on China's two stock markets plunged by 3 per cent on Wednesday as financial firms led a third straight daily fall following last week's global market losses.

The key Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks shares traded in local and foreign currencies, ended down 65.61 points, or 3.04 per cent, at 2,092.22.

The smaller Shenzhen Component Index also lost more than 3 per cent as both markets fell for the third consecutive day of trading since a seven-day National Day holiday ended Sunday.

Beijing - China's foreign ministry on Tuesday said a US arms deal for Taiwan had "poisoned" military ties between Washington and Beijing, but it did not confirm US reports that China had cancelled some bilateral meetings.

"The United States ignored the opposition of China to sell military arms to Taiwan, which poisoned the Sino-US relationship and also harmed the sound atmosphere between the two militaries," ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.

Beijing, Oct 7 : At least nine people were killed and many injured in a powerful earthquake that jolted a county near Lhasa, the capital of southwest Tibet Autonomous Region, last evening.

The death toll is expected to be much higher as at least 147 houses reportedly collapsed in Yangyi village and others in a neighboring county.

Beijing  - An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale hit China's Tibet Autonmous Region on

Beijing - Skype, the online text message and voice service, acknowledged Friday that its Chinese partner had been archiving politically sensitive text messages.

Skype president Josh Silverman said the company was unaware that the internet chat of users in China, especially political discussions, was being stored on computer servers by Chinese mobile firm TOM Online, a unit of Hong Kong-based TOM Group Ltd.

In a statement, Silverman said the US company owned by auction giant eBay was "very concerned" about the monitoring and storage as well as a security breach that was discovered by Canadian researchers.

Beijing  - A Skype joint venture in China monitors and archives certain internet text conversations that include politically charged words, according to a report published by a group of Canadian computer security researchers Thursday.

TOM-Skype, a joint venture between TOM Online, a unit of Hong Kong-based TOM Group Ltd, and Skype, a unit of US-based eBay, was found by researchers at Ottawa-based Citizen Lab to monitor and store millions of records containing personal information of users of the Chinese service, as well as those who participated in voice calls using the service.

Skype is a software that allows users to make telephone calls, send text messages or transfer files over the internet.