Hong Kong - The territory will have to pay about 2 billion Hong Kong dollars (256 million US dollars) more for the water it imports from China as a result of inflation and an appreciating Chinese currency, a media report said Thursday.

Beijing - German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in China on Thursday for talks that were expected to focus on the global financial crisis.

Merkel was scheduled to meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao later in the day before the two leaders join some 40 other heads of state at the biannual Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) on Friday and Saturday.

German officials said the fact that Merkel was one of the few foreign leaders making a formal state visit to China for the ASEM summit showed the importance of ties between the two nations.

She is scheduled to meet President Hu Jintao on Friday.

Two rights groups appealed to Merkel to raise the situation of China's Tibetan and Uighur minorities during her meetings in Beijing.

Pasadena, California - In the last hours of her life last week, Wanda Dunn, 53, took the time to settle her affairs, taking two small plants to a neighbour as well as some cheap clothes that she asked him to give to charity.

Then she returned to the home she had lived in since childhood, set it on fire and shot herself in the head with a handgun.

Dunn's desperate actions came the day before she was to have been evicted from the stucco house first bought by her grandparents decades ago.

Amsterdam - People are getting goose pimples in front of Amsterdam's Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) these days. "Below us lie victims of the world's first financial crisis," says tour operator Raoul Serree.

This is the site of the "Ellendige Kerkhof," the old graveyard of the "miserables," which included people who had died by execution - or by their own hand.

For 17th-century Holland's Tulip Mania, seen as the earliest historical precedent of the current financial crisis, drove a lot of people to suicide.

Beijing, Oct 23 : Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is scheduled to meet his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani here on Friday on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit.

The two leaders will meet to review the progress being made to promote bilateral understanding and co-operation to resolve disputes including Kashmir, the Daily Times quoted a senior Pakistani official as telling a foreign news agency.

The two leaders will likely meet at the Great Hall of the People in the afternoon, after the summit’s opening session.

Manila - Philippine shares dropped by 4.63 per cent on Thursday as scared investors sold their stocks amid unabated decline in the Wall Street.