Seoul - South Korea's central bank said on Friday that it has arranged new deals to expand its bilateral currency swap facilities with Japan and China.

Under the new won-yen swap deals, South Korea can secure access to a total of 30 billion US dollars in a credit line from the Bank of Japan (BOJ).

South Korea can access about 28 billion US dollars in credit from the People's Bank of China.

Under a May 2005 arrangements already in place, South Korea can access a 13-billion-US-dollar credit line from the BOJ and 4 billion US dollars from the People's Bank of China.

Beijing - Shares in China's two stockmarkets plunged by nearly 4 per cent on Friday, following a regional fall prompted by the US Senate's failure to approve an emergency loan package for the auto industry.

The key Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks shares traded in local and foreign currencies, ended the day on 1,954.21, down 3.81 per cent, or 77.47 points.

The smaller Shenzhen Composite also lost nearly 4 per cent of its value, as the Shanghai Daily newspaper said investors were "taking profits due a gloomy economic outlook and fear of future losses."

Beijing  - Hundreds of millions of television viewers across the world saw China for the first time in August, or at least they saw a new side of the vast nation of 1.3 billion people.

The extravagant opening and closing ceremonies and the perfectly organized Olympic events at spectacular venues won heartfelt praise from international Olympic officials and spurred deep national pride in many ordinary Chinese citizens.

"I think ordinary Chinese people were excited about the Olympics," said Zhang Ming, a politics professor at People's University in Beijing.

"Beijing people were very proud of holding the Olympics," Zhang told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Beijing, Dec. 12 : The website of the French embassy in Beijing has apparently come under a cyber-attack after President Nicolas Sarkozy outraged China by meeting Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

The cyber-attack is believed to have taken the form of mass attempts to access the site simultaneously, largely at night, disabling the system.

The Telegraph quoted a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman as rejecting any suggestion that the Chinese government might approve of the cyber-attack, which made the embassy''s website inaccessible for several days.

"From the perspective of the Chinese government, China is against the hacking of the websites of the embassies of other nations," its spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said.

Warsaw  - Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama drew thousands to a lecture in the capital on Thursday amid warnings from Beijing to respect China's interests.

The Dalai Lama's visit to Poland sparked protests from China when he earlier met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and prompted China to cancel two upcoming summits with the European Union.

Beijing - China protested Thursday in an uncharacteristically mild manner a private meeting between Polish President Lech Kaczynski and the Dalai Lama that took place a day earlier in Warsaw.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told journalists at his regular press conference that Beijing had contacted the Polish government over the meeting and said Warsaw should respect China's fundamental interests and not create impediments to Chinese-Polish relations.

Liu's statement fell significantly short of Beijing's earlier reactions to international contacts involving the Tibetan spiritual leader.