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A restaurant in Japan has some unusual waiting staff on its books - two macaque monkeys.

Yatchan and Fukuchan serve customers hot towels and drinks, and are given soya beans as tips.

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London's FTSE 100 moved ahead by late morning, despite banking shares taking a hammering. Royal Bank of Scotland - which lost 40% at one point - fell 17%.

Having shed 7.8% in the previous session, the key London index was up 0.6%. France's Cac-40 index added 1.6%.

Japan's Asian markets were mixed as traders reacted to the turmoil.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index sank more than 5% - below the 10,000-point barrier - before recovering slightly to close down 3%.

However Australia's financial markets rallied after the country's central bank cut its official interest rate from 7% to 6%.

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London's FTSE 100 index and France and Germany's main stock markets all sank more than 5.5% in morning trading.

Japan's Nikkei index fell 4.3% to its lowest close since February 2004. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index slid 5%, while key Russian markets slumped by 15%.

The falls came in the first sessions since the US approved bank bail-out.

The $700bn (£398bn) rescue plan's lack of immediate impact on the availability of credit for banks had contributed to markets being driven downwards, analysts said.

"The Fed's bail-out plan may have been passed on Friday but so far there's been no real reaction in credit markets and because of this the natural assumption is going to be that the measures won't work, even if such a call is rather premature," said Matt Buckland of CMC Markets.

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The 6.6-magnitude quake struck at 2152 local time (1552 GMT) on Sunday, destroying more than 100 buildings in the southern province of Osh.

Rescue workers are still searching for survivors under the rubble, the emergencies ministry said.

Destruction was concentrated in Nura, a village in the mountains close to the border with China.

Health officials said the remote location of the village was hampering rescue efforts.

"The picture we saw was frightening," Emergency Situations Minister Kamchybek Tashiyev was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

"The village of Nura is fully destroyed, 100%, there are many injured."

matter

because it's very important to knows what is matter. and it's a little be hard, so we need some times to learn it.

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North Korea has recently reneged on the deal, angry that it is still on the US terrorism blacklist despite submitting an account of its nuclear facilities.

In protest, it has started restoring its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

Mr Hill's trip coincided with a meeting between officials from North and South Korea to discuss military issues.

It was the first official meeting since the South's President Lee Myang-Bak took office in February.

A South Korean official was quoted as saying that the meeting had ended early, and little progress had been made.

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The official People's Daily said the Sanlu Group asked Shijiazhuang city government to help "manage" the media response to the case.

It made the request in August, weeks before the contamination of milk with melamine became public knowledge.

It comes as a new list of tainted milk products is published.

Fifteen more Chinese dairy companies have been identified as having produced milk products contaminated with the industrial chemical.