Montreal - The ongoing global financial crisis tops the agenda of talks between Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and European Union leaders, as they meet Friday to launch a process that might eventually lead to an "economic partnership" between Canada and the EU.

The meeting in Quebec City between Harper, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, was initially supposed to focus on a possible free trade deal between Canada and the EU.

Washington, Oct 16: A team of researchers in Canada have made a bold stride in the struggle to detect dark matter, by documenting the discovery of a significant difference between the acoustic signals induced by neutrons and alpha particles in a detector based on superheated liquids.

Since neutron induced signals are very similar to dark matter induced signals, this new discovery, by the PICASSO collaboration, could lead to improved background suppression in dark matter searches with this type of detector.

So far, alpha particles have been an obstacle to the detection of dark matter''s weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) in PICASSO.

Montreal - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, buoyed by gains in Tuesday's parliamentary elections, promptly announced an ambitious plan to tackle the financial crisis that has ravaged the neighbouring United States and now threatens Canada.

Harper, among the first world leaders to face voters since the ongoing economic panic started last month, said Wednesday that he intends to make the financial crisis a priority this week during talks with European Union leaders.

Montreal - Final results were announced Wednesday in Canada's parliamentary vote, showing Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper back in power, but failing to reach a majority in Canada's 308-seat parliament.

Harper's Conservative Party were elected in 143 ridings, 19 seats since the 2006 election, in Canada's first-past-the-post system, in which a single winner is elected in each constituency.

The opposition Liberals gained 76 seats, followed by the Bloc Quebecois with 50 ridings and the New Democratic Party with 37. Two independent candidates were also elected.

The Conservatives got 37.6 per cent of the vote, followed by 26.2 per cent for the Liberals, 18.2 per cent for the New Democrats and 10 per cent for the Bloc.

Montreal – Prime Minister Stephen Harper came within a stone's throw of a majority government Tuesday as Canadians re-elected a minority Conservative government.

Early returns showed Conservatives elected or leading in 143 ridings, which would be a gain of 16 seats. The opposition Liberals were elected or leading in 75 ridings.

The separatist Bloc Quebecois, which runs candidates only in the French-speaking province of Quebec, was leading in 49 ridings, and the socialist New Democratic Party was leading in 38 ridings.

Montreal - Canadian voters headed to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new Parliament in the third nationwide vote in just four years.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative Party was favoured to remain in power with a minority government, with one poll showing them leading with 34 per cent of the vote to 29 per cent for the opposition Liberals.

Harper had called for elections in hopes of securing a stable majority government, but support for the party has slipped in the intervening weeks.