Japan will loan $1billion for metro in Chennai

The first beneficiary of the coming together of the “samurai” and the “swami” will be the Chennai metro, for which Japan will give a $1 billion loan.

Japan will also extend a soft loan of $4.5 million over three years as part of the first tranche of funding for the 1,469-km Mumbai Delhi western freight corridor from Jawaharlal Nehru Port near Mumbai to Tughlaqabad near Delhi.

The move to invest in the southern city as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived here Tuesday on a three-day visit to Japan is certain to give a fillip to bilateral relations. Indian officials openly acknowledge they owe the Taro Aso government in Japan a “debt of gratitude” for unreservedly backing the NSG waiver for India in Vienna.

Chennai’s connection to Japan stems not just from superstar Rajnikanth, whose films are dubbed in Japanese and hugely popular here. This country is also the major donor to war-torn Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, where New Delhi has huge stakes.

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Venezuelan Mendoza crowned Miss Universe

Miss Venezuela, Dayana Mendoza, was crowned Miss Universe 2008 in Vietnam's resort city of Nha Trang on Monday.

The 22-year-old brunette was given her crown, made of white and yellow gold and precious stones, by last year's winner, Riyo Mori of Japan, at the pageant finale watched by nearly a billion television viewers worldwide.

"I am excited. I cried a lot. I am really glad I made it," Mendoza, the 57th winner of the title, later told reporters.

The professional model has said her "express kidnapping" in Venezuela a year and a half ago taught her to remain calm in stressful situations.

"It is something that happens in my country and that's why I want to raise my voice and say violence is not the answer," she said when asked about the incident.

Mendoza, an aspiring interior designer, was among four finalists from Latin America, including first runner-up Taliana Vargas, 20, from Colombia.

The rest of the top five were from the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Russia.

This year's event went more smoothly than the 2007 pageant in Mexico, which was marked by protests, a banned dress and the withdrawal of Miss Sweden after critics at home complained the contest degraded women.

However, misfortune befell Miss USA for a second straight year. During the evening gown parade, Crystle Stewart of Texas slipped on the runway. She finished in the top 10.

A year ago in Mexico, Rachel Smith also lost her footing and landed on her bottom. She finished fifth.

The annual Miss Universe pageant -- which tries to present itself as something more meaningful than a swim wear parade -- was first held in Long Beach, California, in 1952.

The event was taken over in 1996 by U.S. real estate mogul Donald Trump.

Communist-led Vietnam spent nearly $20 million on the event, including $7 million on a new resort and convention centre to host the pageant, in a bid to promote tourism to the Southeast Asian nation.

After celebrating at home with her family, Mendoza will spend her year-long reign traveling the world to speak out on humanitarian issues.

"I think I will jump on my family and they will jump on me. I want to have my mum's food," she said.

Fans line-up in Asia 2 days before new iPhone launch

Seeking to be one of the world's first to grab the new-generation iPhone, fanatical Apple fans around Asia are queuing up two days before its launch, undiscouraged by rain or freezing temperatures.


The July 11 launch will be the first chance for Asian consumers to own an iPhone, and related websites have been swamped with inquiries and early orders.

In Japan, one of the world's most advanced mobile markets, about 20 people were lined up outside Softbank Corp's flag ship mobile store in Tokyo on Wednesday morning, with a sign at the head of the queue reading "We Love iPhone".

"The big appeal (of the iPhone) is that this is an Apple product," said Hiroyuki Sano, a 24-year-old graduate student who early on Tuesday arrived in rainy Tokyo from Nagoya, 225 miles west of the capital, to be first in line.

He will turn 25 on Thursday while waiting to get his hands on the high-end version of the iPhone with 16 gigabytes of memory. Apple also offers an entry-level version with an 8 gigabyte memory.

"I've told my professor I was going to go buy an iPhone, and he gave me permission," said Sano, wearing a T-shirt with an Apple logo. "He is an Apple-lover too, and he sent me off cheerfully."

The long-anticipated 3G iPhone, which has faster Web links than its predecessor and supports third-party applications such as games and email, will debut in Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand on Friday as part of the global launch in 22 countries.

The original iPhone was only available in the United States and Europe, and the next-generation model is expected to go on sale in 70 countries by the end of the year.

Shares of Apple gained 2.5 percent on Tuesday ahead of the launch. Softbank shares rose 1.9 percent on Wednesday.

Softbank, Japan's third-biggest mobile carrier, will start selling iPhones at its flagship store at 7 a.m. on Friday (2200 GMT Thursday) and expand sales nationwide at noon.

Targeting a far bigger market with its new iPhone, Apple slashed the handset price and is allowing carriers to subsidize the phone this time around, making it easier for users to bring home the device.

Research firm Enterbrain said 6.7 percent of 1,200 people it surveyed in Japan wanted to buy an iPhone immediately.

WORLD'S FIRST

Four New Zealanders with deck chairs, sleeping bags and a small tent started queuing on a chilly Tuesday night outside the Auckland shop of Vodafone, which will launch the iPhone at 12:01 a.m. Friday (1201 GMT Thursday), the first in the world.

"I'm really just doing it to be able to say that I'm the first one in the world with one of these phones," 22-year-old student Jonny Gladwell told the New Zealand Herald.

Vodafone, New Zealand's top mobile carrier, is selling the phone for as little as NZ$199 ($150) in the country if consumers sign up for a two-year contract. Demand for pricing details was so heavy it crashed Vodafone's New Zealand website on Tuesday.

In Hong Kong, Hutchison Telecom International was flooded by 60,000 online applications over the weekend from consumers who are hoping to grab one of just 500 phones on sale.

A number of the more desperate would-be users pleaded online they needed the iPhone to appease demanding wives or stressed it was their birthday, according to Hong Kong media.

The only woman in the Tokyo queue said she was securing places in line with her co-workers so that her company, Ubiquitous Entertainment Inc, can own iPhones and develop content for the device.

Despite the hype, analysts say Japan's 108 million mobile subscribers who are already frequent users of Web browsing and email on 3G networks might not be easily wowed by the iPhone.

Most of the people in the Tokyo queue told Reuters they plan to buy the device as their second cellphone.

"We can expect certain demand from core Apple fans and others, but there will be users who would hesitate about buying the iPhone because of the high monthly charges of some 8,000 yen," said Hironobu Sawake, a JPMorgan senior analyst in Tokyo.

"Even though there will be other features that are more attractive than ordinary phones, the fact that the iPhone does not offer some features that are available on most handsets could turn off some users too," he said.

Toyota struggles to meet hybrid, small car demand

The surge in popularity for small cars and fuel-efficient hybrids has left Toyota Motor Corp facing an unusual problem: deepening shortages of popular models such as the Prius hybrid.

A limited inventory of small cars hurt Toyota, which reported a 11.5 percent drop in U.S. sales in June.

In stark contrast, Japanese rival Honda Motor Co reported a 13.8 percent sales rise on record demand for its Fit subcompact car and Civic sedan.

Toyota executives said a dwindling inventory of vehicles, such as the Prius, Yaris and Corolla, had forced the automaker to scramble to try to keep up with demand in June, a month when industry-wide U.S. auto sales dropped almost 9 percent.

Sales of Toyota's Prius, the top-selling hybrid in the U.S. market, fell 26 percent as dealers ran short of inventory and customers faced a six-month waiting list. Toyota said it would only partly be able to satisfy the backlog of demand from its dedicated Prius factory in Japan this year.

Hybrids command about a $5,000 price premium compared with equivalent vehicles without the expensive battery.

"It is very doubtful that there is going to be a lot of recovery this year to be able to satisfy consumer demand and that is very unfortunate," said Jim Lentz, Toyota's head of North American sales, referring to the Prius.

Toyota had a one-day supply of the Prius hybrid and a 2-1/2 day supply of its hybrid Camry sedan at the end of June.

Inventory of other popular Toyota cars also ran low in June. Dealer supply of Corolla sedans was down to a 15-day supply, while Yaris had a 7-day supply at the end of June, the automaker said.

Toyota said it expected inventories of Yaris and Corolla to increase in August and was working to add capacity at its hybrid battery manufacturing plant in Japan.

The current generation Prius uses nickel-metal hydride batteries made by Panasonic EV, a joint venture between the automaker and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd.

Toyota, which put the world's first hybrid car on the road in 1997, has a goal of reaching global annual sales of 1 million hybrid vehicles soon after 2010 -- more than double last year's sales tally.

Toyota's Lentz said the production constraint made it hard to forecast how large the market for the hybrid model could be in the United States, the Japanese automaker's largest market.

"We don't know what the top end on Prius is," Lentz said.

In a J.D. Power survey, 72 percent of U.S. consumers said they were interested in buying a hybrid.

Overall, the U.S. sales performance of the three major Japanese automakers were mixed in June with Nissan Motor Co posting a 7.5 percent decline.

Honda bucked the downtrend in overall U.S. light car sales, outselling Chrysler LLC for the second consecutive month in June to grab the No. 3 spot in the U.S. market.

On a combined basis, the three major Japanese automakers increased their share of the U.S. market to 34.7 percent, up from 32.9 percent from a year ago.

The market share of the three Detroit automakers -- General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler -- fell to 45.8 percent in June from 50.2 percent a year earlier.

Korea, United States break nuke deadlock

North Korea submitted a long delayed declaration of its nuclear program on Thursday, as the Bush administration immediately responded by saying it would remove the country it once described as part of the "axis of evil" from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The declaration was believed to provide a partial, though important, view of North Korea's nuclear capability, and it marked a significant step forward in a multi-national effort to end the country's drive to build nuclear weapons.

China, which has hosted the six-nation talks on the North's nuclear program, said Thursday afternoon that the North would abide by Thursday's deadline to submit its declaration. But an hour later, South Korea, another participant, said the North had already handed the declaration to China.

Whatever the source of the confusion, the White House announced shortly afterward that it would remove North Korea from the terrorism list and thus make it eligible for aid and assistance, a goal long sought by the cash-starved country.

The North was scheduled to follow up on Friday by blowing up a cooling tower at its Yongbyon reactor, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang. Pyongyang has invited officials and television networks from the five nations negotiating with the North on its nuclear program - the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia - to witness the tower's demolition. But the destruction, which is expected to be broadcast live, will be largely symbolic since the reactor was disabled late last year under American supervision. U.S. officials expected that the declaration, which had been due at the end of last year, would provide details about North Korea's nuclear facilities and programs, including the amount of plutonium produced at its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon.

"I do think it's important to note that if we can verifiably determine the amount of plutonium that has been made, we then have an upper hand in understanding what may have happened in terms of weaponization," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, after arriving in Kyoto, Japan, on Thursday for a Group of 8 meeting.

Ms Rice added that the declaration was "a natural step on the way to dealing verifiable with the devices or weapons themselves."

Partly to deflect criticism from hard-line critics in Washington that the current deal was too soft on North Korea, American officials have emphasized the importance of the information on plutonium. The North is believed to have produced enough weapons-grade plutonium at its reactor in Yongbyon to make as many as half a dozen bombs.

But, significantly, the North's declaration was not expected to reveal details on three critical points: the nuclear bombs the North has already produced; its alleged attempts to produce nuclear arms by secretly enriching uranium, which triggered the ongoing crisis in 2002; and accusations that the North helped Syria build a nuclear plant.

Some of the missing details, particularly on the North's existing nuclear bombs, are expected to be revealed at the next stage of the step-by-step agreement.