Stockholm - Main Swedish banking groups Nordea, Swedbank and SEB on Thursday reported third-quarter results suggesting they had weathered the first phases of the financial turmoil.

Shares for all three groups were mid-morning in positive territory on the Stockholm bourse where the OMXS index was flat. The fourth major group Handelsbanken, which reported Wednesday, was also up.

Banking group Swedbank said its third-quarter operating profit was 3.1 billion kronor (395 million dollars), down 15 per cent year-on-year, while total income in the quarter was 8.2 billion kronor or 13 per cent lower than in second-quarter 2008.

Geometric Limited, a leading provider of Engineering Services and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions and technologies, has entered into a reseller agreement with Autoline Design Software Limited (Autoline), a wholly owned subsidiary of Autoline Industries Limited.

Under this deal, AUTOLINE will distribute Geometric's desktop products like eDrawings Publishers, DFMPro and GeomCaliper.

Bratislava - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II was to arrive in Slovakia Thursday for her first visit to the ex-communist country that went independent 15 years ago and became an economic success story.

The queen and her husband, Prince Philip, were coming off a trip to Slovenia, a smaller country to the south that once was part of Yugoslavia.

In Slovakia, the queen was to meet Thursday with President Ivan Gasparovic, Prime Minister Robert Fico and Sir Nicholas Winton, 99, a Briton who saved hundreds of mostly Czechoslovak Jewish children from Nazi concentration camps on the eve of World War II.

It's really good news for people of Mangalore city. They will be getting 24 hour water supply facility in the coming days.

The project will be started on a pilot basis in selected wards of the Mangalore City Corporation (MCC). Later all the 60 wards of the corporation will be included under the project said Minister for Urban Development S. Suresh Kumar.

At present this 24/7 water supply is available in Gulbarga, Belgaum and Hubli city corporations. Eight wards in each of those corporations were provided 24/7 water supply on a pilot basis.

Frankfurt - European shares struggled to hold on to gains Thursday after a slump in Wall Street and a mixed performance of bourses across Asia.

Amid renewed concerns about the outlook for the global economy and corporate profits, Europe's blue-chip Stoxx 50 began the trading day edging up 0.7 per cent to 2,286 points.

Reflecting the nervous investment climate shares in London gained 0.90 per cent in early trading. Paris' CAC 40 index posted a 0.37-per-cent increase. However, Frankfurt lost 0.51 per cent in early trading.

The oil price managed to pull back from recent losses, rising by 0.2 per cent to 66.87 70 dollars a barrel. In July energy prices were heading towards 150 dollars a barrel.

London, Oct 23 : Thousands of tiny gold pins which lay hidden in a desk drawer for 40 years have been described as one of Britain’s most important archeological finds.

According to a report in the Telegraph, the artifacts were part of a dagger buried with a warrior chief, near Stonehenge, nearly 4,000 years ago.

The pinhead-sized studs form an intricate pattern on the handle of the dagger, but archeologists failed to realise their significance when they excavated the burial mound in Wiltshire - known as Bush Barrow- in 1808.