TOKYO (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) is likely to have secured a group operating profit of about 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) in April-June, thanks to solid sales and a sharp recovery from the previous year’s loss, the Nikkei business daily said on Sunday. But the automaker, which had a loss of 194.8 billion [...]

BEIJING (Reuters) – Premier Wen Jiabao said China’s economy was responding appropriately to its stable policies, adding “relatively fast” growth would help create jobs and boost domestic demand, the Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday. Ending a three-day visit to the northwestern provincial capital of Xi’an, Wen said the country’s economic performance was consistent with [...]

HONG KONG (AFP) – Asian shares sank on Tuesday as optimism about US corporate earnings tapered off and China denied it was easing restrictions aimed at curbing its red-hot property market. The Nikkei index of the Tokyo Stock Exchange closed down 0.11 percent after a brief rally, continuing its slide from the previous session after [...]

DAEJEON, South Korea (Reuters) – Asia has emerged as a global economic powerhouse but is now faced with policy challenges from rising capital inflows, the International Monetary Fund chief said on Monday. IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn also said in a speech at a conference that Asia, which has until now relied heavily on exports [...]

HONG KONG (AFP) – Any change in the make-up of China’s foreign-exchange reserves would have to be very slow, International Monetary Fund chief economist Olivier Blanchard said Friday. The remark to a Hong Kong business lunch came a day after China’s finance ministry announced that the country’s investment in Japanese government bonds in May was [...]

NAGOYA, Japan – Toyota’s president says the company is open to raising the wages of workers in China, where strikes have disrupted the in that fast-growing market. automaker’s operations Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda says raising wages brings benefits because it creates more customers who can buy Toyota vehicles. He says workers and managers [...]

SUN VALLEY, Idaho – Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Thursday he expects Beijing to renew the license the company needs to continue operating a website in China. The renewal had been in doubt due to the tense relations between Google and Chinese authorities over censorship of Google search results. Google closed its China search engine [...]

SEOUL, South Korea – Hundreds of computers that helped cause a wave of outages on U.S. and South Korean government websites last July launched new attacks on the same sites, but no major interference was reported, police said Thursday. The computers were programmed to attack every July 7, according to police, so this year’s assault [...]

SINGAPORE – Oil prices climbed to near $75 a barrel Thursday in Asia, extending big gains from the previous session as global stock markets rallied. Benchmark crude for August delivery was up 66 cents to $74.73 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose [...]

HONG KONG (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund upgraded its 2010 global growth forecast on Thursday, citing robust expansion in Asia and renewed U.S. private demand, but warned the euro area’s debt crisis posed a big risk to recovery. The IMF said the euro zone’s sovereign financing problems and resulting financial market turbulence were significant [...]