China Urges Restraint As US, South Korea Plan New Drills

China is appealing for all sides to avoid inflaming tensions with North Korea as the United States and South Korea conclude a major naval exercise in the Yellow Sea. But South Korean Defense Ministry officials said Wednesday they are in talks for another major exercise with the United States to take place as early as this month.  South Korea is also planning its own live-fire artillery drills to take place next week. South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted the military command saying one of the exercises would take place near Daecheong Island, located just south of the two Koreas' disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea. North Korea launched a deadly artillery attack on another island while South Korean forces were conducting a similar drill last week, firing into waters that both...

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Tata Motors' Nano Sales Plunge in November as Customers Lack Loan Options

Tata Motors Ltd.’s sales of Nano plunged 85 percent in November to 509 units, the lowest since the car’s debut last year, as customers faced difficulty in accessing loans to purchase the world’s cheapest car. Tata Motors is hiring more sales people at dealerships and working with banks to help buyers get loans, the automaker said in an e-mail response to Bloomberg News today. Chief Executive Officer Carl-Peter Forster said last month that that a lack of financing options available to buyers was causing a slump in Nano sales. Banks are reluctant to lend to many low-income customers on concern that they may default, while instances of some...

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Fleets likely to drive early demand for electric cars

To Willy Morales, the little Leaf electric car sitting on the Nissan stand at this year’s Los Angeles auto show “looks like the future.” It's “like the stuff I used to see on the Jetsons,” he said, referring to the futuristic cartoon series he loved to watch as a child. But while Morales admits being impressed by the idea of never having to buy gasoline again, he’s far more concerned about the idea of running out of power one night with his kids in the back seat. And he isn’t alone. So-called “range anxiety” is unquestionably the biggest obstacle automakers like Nissan face as they begin to roll out a new generation of battery-electric vehicles,...

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Loans make up half of new EU climate aid for 2010

The European Union said on Tuesday it provided 2.2 billion euros ($2.87 billion) in extra aid in 2010 to help developing nations combat climate change and defended the use of loans for half the total. The United Nations said a flow of new funds, promised at a summit in Copenhagen last year, could be a "golden key" to unlock progress at the Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 talks in the Caribbean resort of Cancun, Mexico, on measures to slow global warming. A report issued on the sidelines of talks among almost 200 nations said EU nations, facing deep austerity at home, were on track to provide 7.2 billion euros for 2010-12 as part of a total $30 billion promised by rich nations in Copenhagen. It said the cash went to projects, including a Danish scheme to help protect the coasts of the Maldives in the...

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China Repeats Call for Korean Calm as U.S. Carrier Patrols Sea

China repeated its call for calm and restraint on the Korean peninsula as a U.S. aircraft carrier patrolled its coast and a North Korean official visited Beijing. “The parties concerned should keep calm and exercise restraint, and work to bring the situation back onto the track of dialogue and negotiation,” the official Xinhua News Agency cited Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi as saying today at a forum in Beijing. The comments coincide with top North Korean official Choe Thae Bok’s meeting in Beijing today with a member of China’s legislature. China on Nov. 28 proposed "emergency consultations" with negotiators from the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the U.S. to defuse tensions following North Korea’s artillery attack on a South Korean island last week that killed four people. A U.S....

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BOJ's Suda Offers Grim Outlook

YAMAGATA, Japan—Bank of Japan policy board member Miyako Suda said Wednesday that Japan's economy may be in for a prolonged slowdown, with deflationary pressures continuing to drag on the economy well into next year. "I think the possibility that on-year changes in the core consumer price index, which excludes fresh food prices, will come out of negative territory in the next fiscal year [ending March 2012] is not high, and improvement toward overcoming deflation will likely take some time," Ms. Suda said in a speech to business leaders in this northern Japan city....

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