Helsinki - Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen's Centre Party dropped to third place after local elections held Sunday, final tallies showed Monday.

Vanhanen noted that his party had probably suffered from being in office and said election results differed.

The Centre Party dropped 2.7 percentage points compared to the 2004 local elections, scoring 20.1 per cent.

Analysts including Goran Djupsund, professor of political science and political communication at Abo Akademi University, did not rule out a shake-up of the party leadership.

Tokyo - Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso on Monday ordered the government and ruling parties to immediately implement measures to stabilize the stock market.

"Stock prices greatly influence the real economy," Aso said at a press conference. "In that sense, we have to consider various measures and implement them."

The government was expected to implement emergency measures such as a larger government fund to recapitalize ailing banks and help for employees to purchase stock in their companies, Aso said.

Jakarta - Indonesian stock

The central government is thinking to raise import duty on edible oil. It was, earlier, cut significantly in the beginning of the year. The union agriculture ministry is of the view to bring it back to the original level. The union commerce department is also backing the proposal of increasing import duty. Oil prices are very unstable from last few weeks following world financial crisis. The Cabinet committee on pricing will discuss the matter in its proposed meeting on November 3.

The issue of the country’s financial turmoil appears to be benefiting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in a fairly steady manner, with November 4 election just round the corner.

Though Obama’s 11-point lead over his rival Republican John McCain, according to Sunday’s Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll, is his lowest of the month over the economy issue, it nevertheless is a gap that McCain has to think about.

Five days after the brouhaha over financial disclosure forms from the Republican National Committee revealing a spending of $150,000 on clothing of Sarah Palin and her family, the vice presidential candidate tossed the blame back to the RNC.

Opening her remarks in Tampa, Palin, who had offered no comments till now, revived the unpleasant topic for the McCain campaign, saying that the whole wardrobe talk was very “ridiculous.”