Tokyo - Panasonic Corp on Thursday cut its earnings forecast for the current fiscal year on the yen's rise and a slowdown in consumption.

New Delhi - Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi Thursday condemned the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and offered to set up a hotline between the intelligence chiefs of the two countries to strengthen a joint anti-terrorism mechanism with India.

Qureshi, who is in India on a four-day visit, said he was "shocked and horrified" to hear about the attacks in Mumbai that claimed over 100 lives.

He mentioned he had spoken of the need for the two countries to step up their fight against terrorism in his talks with his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday.

Amsterdam - A former businesswoman of the year who later functioned as alderwoman of the city of Rotterdam has been found homeless, Dutch daily newspaper Metro reported on Thursday.

Rabella de Faria's homelessness was discovered after she checked herself in at a local night shelter.

She has lived on the streets most of this year but was now staying with friends, Rotterdam city councillor Driesch Mosch told Metro.

De Faria, 48, was the city of Rotterdam's alderwoman for security and public health on behalf of the Leefbaar Rotterdam party between 2002 and 2004.

Union Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj clarified on Wednesday that no
proposal to change the procedure of appointment of judges to High
Courts and the Supreme Court on the recommendations has made by a
collegium of judges headed by the Chief Justice of India (CJI).

At
the Law Day celebrations, at the Supreme Court, Bhardwaj referred to
the recent hullabaloo over the collegium recommendations to promote the
Chief Justices of three High Courts to the apex court, and said, “I
[the government] will not deviate from the mandate of the Supreme Court

Madrid - Esperanza Aguirre, one of the leaders of Spain's main conservative opposition People's Party (PP), arrived Thursday in Madrid after surviving the terrorist violence in Mumbai.

Madrid regional Prime Minister Aguirre was visiting India with a delegation of Spanish businessmen and politicians, when shooting and explosions broke out near their hotel, press reports quoted members of the delegation as saying.

Aguirre and others hid behind a desk and threw themselves to the ground while bullets were flying by in the hotel lobby.

Berlin - Germany set up a crisis office and sent a team of psychologists to India Thursday to counsel victims of the terrorist attacks which have killed at least 101 people in Mumbai.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier "most sharply" condemned the attackers.

At his ministry in Berlin, a crisis office was handling the German response, and extra staff were deployed to the German Consulate General in Mumbai.