From the News, Nation, Dawn, Pakistan Observer, Daily Times, Frontier Post, Nawa-i-Waqt (Urdu) and Jang (Urdu) newspapers                                                                            

5 January, 2009

INTERNATIONAL NEWS  

POLITICAL

-          Tokyo (AFP) Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso signaled Sunday he had no plan to call early elections for at least a few months as he pledged to focus on the economic crisis. (Pakistan Observer, p-5)

ECONOMIC  

-     Tokyo (AFP) Japan’s central bank chief warned Sunday that the soaring yen was hurting Asia’s largest economy and said he was looking at measures to cope with it. (Pakistan observer, p-7)

-     Tokyo (AFP) Major Japanese companies a bearish over the prospects for the country’s crisis-hit economy, with a majority of them seeing a recovery as unlikely until 2010, surveys showed on Sunday.  (Pakistan observer, p-6)