Taipei  - Taiwan is seeking to sign a trade pact with China which is similar to a free trade agreement (FTA), a newspaper said on Sunday.

The Commercial Times, quoting an unnamed official, said that Taiwan plans to follow the model of Hong Kong and sign a pact to promote trade with China.

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT, Taiwan's ruling party) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will discuss it during the KMT-CCP forum to be held in Hong Kong in December.

Hong Kong, after reverting to Chinese rule in 1997 following 150 years of British colonization, signed the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with China in June 2003, helping to open up a huge market for Hong Kong goods and services.

Balaji Telefilms' biggest soap opera 'Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi' comes to an end Thursday night, after eight years of love, passion, schemes and tears. It bids adieu after losing a court battle to Star Plus.

The show, which first went on air in 2000 and its characters became household names, has crossed the 1500 episode mark. Till its fifth year, the serial was at the top of the charts.

Moscow  - At least 20 sailors and civilians were killed on board a Russian nuclear submarine in an accident apparently caused by a defect in the fire suppression system, a military spokesman said early Sunday.

The accident occurred in a submarine belonging to Russia's Pacific fleet with 208 people on board, Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said, according to the Interfax agency.

The official said the submarine was not damaged in the accident and no radioactivity was released. There was also no measured rise in radioactivity.

President Dmitri Medvedev was informed about the accident.

At the time of the accident, there were 208 people including 81 sailors on board. The dead included sailors and shipyard workers.

Washington  - A Canadian broadcast reporter held for nearly a month by kidnappers in Afghanistan was released on Saturday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed.

The film 'EMI' produced by Suniel Shetty and directed by Saurabh Kadra, folds reality with necessary filmi masala. It is about common folks from middle class families, falling into the EMI - easy monthly installments - trap either willingly or under duress.

Though the film looks promising in the beginning, the story is not able to sustain the momentum. The storyline goes thus - a few families, who have taken loans beyond their means, find themselves in trouble as a loan recovery agency follows up with them.

New York  - Two more regional US banks - in California and Texas - have collapsed amidst the worst finance crisis since the Great Depression, bringing to 19 the total number of US banks that have gone under in this year alone.

More collapses are expected among the nation's 8,400 banks. The US mortgage crisis, which has seen more than 3 million homes foreclosed since the crisis began in late 2006, has crimped shut credit flow worldwide and prompted unprecedented global government interventions in the private sector.

The latest two victims were the Houston-based Franklin Bank and the smaller Los Angeles-based Security Pacific Bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said.