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.

Woerth  - Police early Sunday ended an 11-hour protest blockade that held up a tightly-guarded rail convoy of spent nuclear fuel, freeing the train to enter Germany on its way to a waste dump.

The waste train had been waiting nearby at Lauterbourg, France.

A spokesman for German police said officers had been able to remove the last of three demonstrators who had chained themselves to the tracks by embedding their arms into a huge lump of concrete under the track.

Earlier, police had managed to drill away enough of the concrete to detach one protester's bonds at the small border town of Berg. Police said they had to be careful not to harm the protesters.

Noted filmmaker, Deepa Mehta, known for issue-based movies, will produce and direct a film from the 600-page script she will co-write with Salman Rushdie, based on the writer's prize-winning novel 'Midnight's Children'.