Taipei- Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou on Thursday urged Japan to sign a free trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan, despite China's warning that Taipei's signing of such agreements with foreign countries must be approved by Beijing.

Ma made the call while receiving Hiroyuki Hawabe, vice director of Japan's Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Ma said that Taiwan and Japan have close ties despite lack of a diplomatic relationship, with Japan being Taiwan's number two trading partner. Taiwan-Japan trade hit
64 billion US dollars in 2008.

Beijing  - The expansion of the Chinese economy slowed to a record low in the first three months of 2009, adding 6.1 per cent year-on-year, however, performance was "better than expected" an official said Thursday.

However, China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate was 4.5 percentage points lower than in the same period last year and the lowest since the start of quarterly records in 1992. GDP growth was also down 0.7 percentage points from 6.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Beijing, Apr. 15 : In a bid to improve cross-Straits relations, China''s mainland negotiator Chen Yunlin and his Taiwan counterpart Chiang Pin-kung are planning to hold a new round of talks in April or May.

Beijing - China on Wednesday launched a satellite into orbit for use in a global navigation system, the official Xinhua news agency said. A Long March 3C carrier rocked took off successfully from China's space centre Xichan in Sichuan province shortly after midnight, carrying the second satellite for China's Compass navigation system.

Beijing - New Zealand's Fonterra Co-operative Group will buy up shares from a farm it jointly owned with Sanlu Group, the company at the centre of a milk contamination scandal that killed six children in China last year, state media said Tuesday. Fonterra Chairman Henry van der Heyden said Monday that his company, which already owns 85 per cent of the dairy farm , plans to buy the remaining 15 per cent owned by Sanlu, according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Beijing - A Chinese anti-tobacco group is petitioning the country's trademark authority, asking it to ban the use of the name of the country's leadership compound as a cigarette brand, state media reported. Zhongnanhai, the name of the central leadership's quarters in Beijing, is also the name of one of China's most popular cigarette brands.

Anti-tobacco lobbyists say using the name on a cigarette pack can mislead consumers, and submitted a petition to the trademark authority on Tuesday, the state-run China Daily said.