Washington - A pair of climbers from Lafayette, California, in the United States and Hidaka in Japan have climbed the 3,000-foot vertical face of El Capitan peak in record time, beating a record s

Tokyo - Another smokers' paradise in Asia is disappearing as Japanese smokers face ever more restrictions in the nation's effort to join the global anti-smoking campaign. 

Tokyo - Tokyo stock

Singapore- Champion eaters from the United States and Japan will take on a Singaporean gobbler during a food festival, organizers said Wednesday.
Joey Chestnut, the 24-year-old top-rated Major League Eating competitor, is the ranking champion. He beat rival Takeru Kobayashi, 30, at an annual hotdog-consuming competition in the US, ending Kobayashi's six-year reign.
Eating competitions are rare in the city-state, where a 20-year-old man died in 1989 after choking while participating in a moon cake eating contest.
Major League Eating is a US sports franchise that oversees professional competitive eating events.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Bank of Japan (BOJ) has signed a bilateral swap arrangement (BSA) on Monday. The BSA was signed by BOJ governor Masaaki Shirakawa and RBI governor Yaga Venugopal Reddy in Basel, Switzerland. It will pave a way for swapping local currencies against the US dollar for up to $3 billion. The agreement will also sort out problem of short-term liquidity and strengthen existing international financial arrangements

The agreement was come into effect on Sunday (June 29). Both Japan and India can now swap Yen and rupee against the US dollar up to $3 billion. They will hold biannual consultations on economic and financial conditions of each country with the BSA in effect.