Tokyo - Tokyo's marketd climbed again in early trading Friday after a surge on New York's Wall Street late Thursday, with the Nikkei index of 225 leading companies gaining 265.33 points or 3.14 per cent to 8,723.78 at 9:19 am.

The Nikkei on Thursday plunged 11.41 per cent to 8,458.45 after New York markets plunged from 7 to 9 per cent on Wednesday.

Wall Street recovered some of its losses on Thursday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 4.68 per cent, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index up 4.25 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite Index up 5.49 per cent.

New York - Austria, Iceland, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, and Uganda are competing for five seats on the UN Security Council in an election on Friday in the UN General Assembly.

The five council seats that will be vacated on December 31 are now occupied by Belgium, Indonesia, Italy, Panama and South Africa. Those countries are ending their two-year terms in the body that has authority on issues of peace and security around the world.

Tokyo - The Japanese parliament on Thursday approved a supplementary budget of 1.81 trillion yen (17.85 billion dollars) for the 2008 fiscal year through March, mainly to finance the government's economic stimulus package amid the global financial crisis.

The stimulus package allocates 446.9 billion yen to measures to support small businesses and 188.1 billion yen to promote energy-saving efforts and to help the agriculture and fisheries industries deal with higher oil prices.

About 351.8 billion yen of the extra budget will go to reduce the financial burden on the elderly under a medical insurance programme introduced last April, while 729.6 billion yen will be spent for disaster prevention measures.

Tokyo - Japan's second-largest automaker, Honda Motor Co, said Thursday that it sees no need to revise its earnings projections for the current fiscal year despite worries about a global economic slowdown.

The remarks by Honda President Takeo Fukui came after his counterpart at market leader Toyota Motor Corp said the business outlook for the automotive market was "very severe."

As world stock markets fall as part of the global financial crisis, consumer spending has been affected, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe said.

Tokyo - The Tokyo stock market slipped in early trading Thursday after Wall Street's blue-chip Dow Jones industrials los