Tokyo - Tokyo stocks were down sharply early Tuesday in the first trading in the Japanese market since the latest Wall Street banking crisis, including the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers and the struggles of insurance giant AIG.

Opening trading after being closed Monday for a Japanese holiday, the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average at 9:22 am was down 563.59 points, or 4.61 per cent, to 
11,651.17. It was the first drop below the 12,000 mark since March.

Tokyo - Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is aiming for a parliamentary lower house election on October 26, the country's biggest newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported Saturday.

Quoting sources within the LDP, it said the lower house of parliament would probably we dissolved on October 3, by which time the party would have a new president who would have been made prime minister by the lower house, where the LDP has a majority.

Tokyo - In the middle of a worldwide credit crisis, Japanese companies are using their large cash reserves to go shopping beyond their borders.

So far this year, they have taken part in mergers and acquisitions worth 4.56 trillion yen (over 42 billion dollars), a 180-per-cent increase over the same period last year, the Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei reported Saturday.

While US and European firms are struggling with the consequences of the credit crisis that was triggered by the mortgage industry in the United States but has spread broadly, their Japanese competitors have abundant stocks of funds.

Brussels- The European Union on Friday said that it was "deeply concerned" by the execution in Japan of three death-row inmates and asked Tokyo to bring in a moratorium on further hangings.

"The European Union is deeply concerned at the Japanese authorities' announcement that three people under sentence of death - Mr Yoshiyuki Mantani, aged 68, Mr Mineteru Yamamoto, aged 68, Mr Isamu Hirano, aged 61 - have been hanged," a statement on behalf of the EU from the French government said.