Tokyo - Japan's stock market ended 6 per cent lower Thursday as renewed economic concerns wiped away gains brought a day earlier by Senator Barack Obama's victory in the US presidential election.

The Nikkei 225 Stock Average plunged 622.1 points, or 6.53 per cent, to close at 8,899.14.

The broader Topix index of all first-section issues also lost 57.61 points, or 5.96 per cent, to 909.3.

On currency markets at midday (0300 GMT), the dollar traded at 98.07-12 yen, down from Wednesday's 5 pm quote of 99.37-38 yen.

Tokyo - A 9-year-old boy drove a car about 3 kilometres without supervision in central Japan, practicing the skills he learned from a video game, because he wanted to visit his grandmother, media reports said Thursday.

Police in Gifu prefecture took him into custody at a parking lot Monday after they received a call about a car moving without a driver.

The elementary-school-aged driver was not visible through the car window because he is about 135 centimetres tall, the Kyodo News Agency said.

Toky

With a step closer to new invention, a team of Japanese researchers claimed on Monday that they have been successful in cloning dead mice that had been frozen for 16 years. This raises a possibility that woolly mammoths that walked the Earth thousands of years back could also be cloned. 

Tokyo - People in the small north-central and southern Japanese towns of Obama exuberantly celebrated Wednesday as the communities' namesake was elected US president.

The Obama Boys and Girls were dancing their hula in north-central Obama city when the news broke that Barack Obama defeated rival Republican candidate John McCain and was declared president-elect.

During Obama's victory speech at Grant Park, Chicago, his fans in the far-eastern fishing town also joined the Obama chants.

"Mr Obama proved to us that we can make our dreams come true by taking action," an Obama resident said after the results came in.