News Update Place

TOKYO: Dozens of policemen with nets took two hours trying to catch a rogue monkey that played an excited game of chase through rush hour crowds in a Tokyo train station this morning.

The animal was first noticed at 9.40am hopping around near the electronic ticket gates in the Shibuya Station in the middle of the Japanese capital.

It darted downstairs towards the entrance to another train line before scaling a pillar and flitting between the ticket machines with officials in hot pursuit.

Bored with the game, it climbed onto an information board and dozed for a couple of hours while commuters and railway staff looked on.

A little later railway staff and police cleared the area to being their attempt to catch the runaway monkey.

Having surrounded the information board with green netting, they hoped to pounce on the animal as soon as it leapt from its perch.

But when it finally jumped down, it slipped through the police cordon, darted into the crowd and disappeared - apparently out of the station.

Updated at : Tuesday, January 08, 2008   JERUSALEM: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Tehran in an interview published on Tuesday that it should cease its “provocations” after Iranian vessels confronted US warships in the Gulf.

“Iran should not engage in such provocations,” Rice said in an interview to a
newspaper and website in Israel after Washington said armed Iranian speedboats had threatened three US warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

“That’s what it was and it needs to stop. The US is going to defend its interests. It’s going to defend its allies,” Rice was quoted as saying.

Iran is “the single greatest threat to the kind of Middle East we all want to see,” she added.

The weekend incident, in which the Iranian boats radioed a threat to blow up the US ships, according to US officials, sent tensions rising ahead of the US President George W. Bush’s visit to the region.

“It was provocative, and that kind of provocation is dangerous,” Rice also told the BBC’s Arabic service. “I would sincerely hope that the Iranians would refrain from any such activity.”

The Strait of Hormuz is a crucial energy supply route, with about 20-25 per cent of the world’s crude oil passing through from Gulf oil producers.

The US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain and US Navy officials say about three dozen US and coalition warships are in the region at any one time. The aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman currently is in the Gulf.

“The United States under this president has sent a very strong signal that America has strong interests in the Gulf, that the United States will continue to defend its interests in the Gulf, and this goes back for decades,” Rice told the BBC.

COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan government minister was killed Tuesday in a powerful roadside bomb attack by suspected Tamil Tiger rebels near the island’s capital and international airport, officials said.

D. M. Dassanayake, the 51-year-old minister for nation building, suffered severe head injuries and died while undergoing surgery, said doctor Lalini Gunasekera at the Ragama hospital here.

Officials said one other person died and nine were wounded in the attack, the second such bombing in the Colombo area since the government abandoned a ceasefire with the ethnic Tamil rebels last week.

Police said a fragmentation mine — a device frequently used by the Tamil Tigers — was detonated as the minister’s convoy passed the town of Ja-Ela, between Colombo and the international airport.

“The minister was on his way to parliament when his white Toyota Land Cruiser vehicle was hit by a Claymore… his vehicle has been badly damaged,” military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said
Updated at : Tuesday, January 08, 2008

At least 15 people are feared to have been killed in two separate suspected suicide attacks against security forces in Pakistan.

A suicide bomber rammed a car into a defence ministry bus outside an intelligence service office in garrison city of Rawalpindi on Saturday.

Another bomber blew up his vehicle outside Pakistan’s army headquarters.

Al Jazeera correspondent Kamal Hyder said: “The blast outside the intelligence agency was very powerful and the casualties are likely to be in the dozens.”

The blasts were powerful and the death toll is said to be rising

Reports of the number of people killed in the attack varied, with the Reuters news agency reporting at least 15 people were killed. (more…)

Kevin Rudd leads Labor Party to emphatic vKevin Rudd, Australia’s principal opposition leader, has led his Labor Party to an emphatic victory in the country’s parliamentary election, ending John Howard’s 11-years as prime minister.

Speaking at his campaign headquarters in Brisbane, Rudd thanked Howard for his public service and pledged to “write a new page in our nation’s history”.

Rudd said: “I will be a prime minister for all Australians. A prime minister for indigineous Australians. Australians who have been born here and Australians who have come here from afar.”

He said he looked forward to working in participation with countries across continents.

(more…)

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes in the Philippines and Vietnam as two major storms batter the region.

Nearly 200,000 people in the Philippines fled the path of Typhoon Mitag, with many taking refuge in storm shelters.

In Vietnam, nearly 31,000 people moved away from the coast and oil and coffee production were disrupted following warnings of the approach of Typhoon Hagibis, which later weakened and made landfall as a tropical storm, government officials said on Saturday.

More than 194,000 people have fled or been moved in evacuation efforts in the Philippines
(more…)

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s principal opposition leader, has led his Labor Party to an emphatic victory in the country’s parliamentary election, ending John Howard’s 11-years as the prime minister.

Speaking at his campaign headquarters in Brisbane, Rudd thanked Howard for his public service and pledged to “write a new page in our nation’s history”.

John Howard conceded defeat to his supporters at a hotel in Sydney

Rudd said: “I will be a prime minister for all Australians. A prime minister for indigineous Australians. Australians who have been born here and Australians who have come here from afar.”
(more…)

China’s state-owned railway builder says it has raised $3bn in a heavily oversubscribed initial public offering on the Shanghai stock exchange.

China’s government is ploughing millions into expanding its rail network

Beijing–based China Railway Group Ltd said the IPO attracted massive investor demand, drawing a record $450bn in bookings.

That put it marginally ahead of the recent IPO of Petrochina shares, which itself raised $8.94 billion, a record for a mainland exchange.

China Railway is China’s largest railway and tunnel contractor and is the world’s number three construction contractor in terms of revenue.

Analysts say high demand for the offering indicates Chinese investors are undeterred by recent turbulence in the world’s stock markets.

The shares will give investors access to China’s massive capital investment in railways.

Beijing is ploughing funds into new lines and upgrading existing routes hoping to ease transport bottlenecks that are threatening to put the brakes on the country’s rapid economic growth.

It has announced plans to increase China’s operational railway lines to more than 90,000 km by 2010 from 75,438 km in 2005.

Apart from listing in Shanghai, China Railway is also offering shares on the Hong Kong exchange, with the offering there also reported to be oversubscribed up to 15 times.

Aside from continuing expansion in the domestic market, the firm says it is also looking to grow its overseas business, looking to opportunities in Africa, South America, the Middle East and Australia.

China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has dropped nearly 20 per cent since hitting a record high on October 16 and by Friday was hovering near a three-month low.

Investors have been selling off blue chips to lock in profits amid mounting worries over the markets’ relatively high valuations and increasingly gloomy forecasts for the US economy.

Nonetheless, as demand for the China Railway offering shows, appetite for new shares in strong, state-owned companies remains robust.

The president of the Philippines has called for a “zero casualty” target, as tens of thousands of people are evacuated from the path of typhoon Mitag.
(more…)