Beijing - The largest-ever gathering of Asian and European leaders opened on Friday to discuss how to respond to the global financial crisis and combat climate change.

Talks on the financial crisis are expected to be "very intense" between leaders of the 27 European Union member states and 16 Asian nations at the seventh biannual Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Beijing, Serge Abou, the EU's ambassador to China, told reporters earlier.

EU officials said separate "clusters" of discussions were planned on banking and financial systems, and that the EU nations hoped the meeting would promote trade talks between the two continents.

London, October 24: British scientists have developed a revolutionary “universal test” that can enable prospective parents to screen embryos to detect almost any genetic disease in unborn children.

The 1,500-pound “genetic MoT” may be available as early as next year.

The test will allow couples at risk of passing on gene defects to conceive healthy children using IVF treatment.

Its developers at the Bridge Centre in London claim that their test just takes some weeks from start to finish, and is suitable for couples at risk of almost any condition.

Rome, Oct 24: Rejecting CIA Director Michael Hayden’s assessment that Al Qaeda was a top nuclear concern, a leading US expert has said that the international terrorist organization only had intention and not the capability to develop a nuclear arsenal.

Hayden had earlier said that al-Qaeda was “the CIA’s top nuclear concern.”

“The CIA director based his assessment on intentions rather than capabilities,” Jenkins, author of a new book Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?, said US expert Brian Jenkins, a senior adviser at the US think-tank “Rand Corporation”

Jenkins compared the threat posed by Al-Qaeda to the situation in Washington-branded “rogue states,” Iran and North Korea.

In a unique way to rally support for Barack Obama, the actor-turned-director Ron Howard reprises his role on “The Andy Griffith Show,” in a video posted Thursday on Funnyordie.com.

The Web video features iconic North Carolina actor Andy Griffith praising Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Griffith, a resident of Manteo, N.C., has made numerous ads for Democratic candidates, but the video is his first endorsement in a national race, and the only one he has done in character as Mayberry’s Sheriff Taylor.

Hanoi - The world's biggest rice importing and exporting nations met in Vietnam on Friday and approved a plan targeting problems triggered during this year's rice price crisis.

Ministers of agriculture from the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi to endorse a seven-point action plan developed earlier this year when prices of rice shot up to a record high of 1,000 dollars a ton last April, triggering a world food crisis.

A complaint has been filed with the Federal Election Commission, by a watchdog group, against Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the Republican National Committee, Larson and other political operatives associated with the RNC, alleging that the Republican Party improperly spent $150,000 on clothing for Palin and her family.

According to the campaigns finance report for September, Jeff Larson, a Minnesota-based Republican consultant, made most or all of the purchases at high-end chain stores in Minneapolis.