US calls for emergency plans to cope with Y2K
Singapore: The United States on Thursday called for ``emergency response''plans to be put in place in the Asia-Pacific region to deal with the millennium bug. John Koskinen, an advisor to US President Bill Clinton on the millennium issue,told APEC experts who opened talks here on the Y2K bug that apart from national and cross-border contingency plans in key services, emergency response mechanisms were critical. ``Being prepared means not only working at fixing our systems, not only having adequate contingency plans, but having appropriate emergency response plans so that we can work together during that transition time to deal with whatever problems we confront,'' he said. Koskin said the region should also set up communication links so that they could be tested to ensure that ``we can immediately stay in constant contact if there difficulties to be able to respond to them.''

Australia's an approved destination for Chinese
Sydney: Australia on Thursday became the first western nation to win official tourist destination status from the Chinese government. The move isexpected to bring in more than 2.5 million Chinese holiday-makers over the next nine years, creating thousands of jobs and pumping US $4.16 billion into a sector hammered by the financial crisis. The only other countries with Approved Destination Status status are Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.