Scooters from China are now new sensation in Iraq.

Every day, more cars ventury onto Baghdad’s dust-choked streets, adding to epic traffic jams and sending blood-pressure levels through the roof, as drivers spew invective, gesticulate wildly & steadfastly ignore any and all driving laws.

But tens of thousands of Baghdadis have found an antidote in the venerable motor scooter.

Often imported from China and bearing almost familiar names like Yamaha scooters have taken the city by storm, providing a nearly ideal way of getting about in a war-weary town riddled with checkpoints and bedeviled by car bombs.

“I love it, it’s really great,” said Hathan Jawad, a 35-year-old with gray –flecked hair and a tobacco-stained smile.

“When there’s a traffic jam I can just weave around the cars, or go onto the sidewalks.”

He had just bought himself a brand new, gunmetal gray Yomaha Classic for $750,imported from China. One scooter vendor said many of his recent buyers were refugees returning from Syria who had sold their cars, depleted their savings and could afford little else.

93 percent of people are proud they are Japanese, with 73 percent of people saying they want to contribute to their country, according to result of a Yomiuri Shimbun survey released recent in Tokyo.

The figures released are higher than those of similar past Yomiuri Shimbun surveys, indicating a rising sympathy by Japanese toward their country.

The Yomiuri Shimbun interviewed 3,000 randomly selected respondents across the country Jan Japan.

A total of 1,780 people provided valid answers. According to the survey, 55% of respondents said they were “very proud “of being Japanese and 38 Percent said they were “proud to some extent” of being Japanese. Six percent said they did not feel proud.

Meanwhile, 73% of respondents said they would like to contribute to the country as a citizen while 20% they would not.

With plans to produce a small car in the next two years, Ford has announced that it would invest $500 million in the next three years to expand its operations in India.

Ford Motors executive voce President (Asia Pacific & Africa) John Parker recently told a press conference in New Delhi that the investment had already been put in place and would be completed in the next three years.

The company would also come up with a state-of the art fully integrated engine manufacturing plant, capable of manufacturing next generation diesel engines & petrol engines, with an installed capacity of 250,000 units.

The investment would help the company expand manufacturing capacity to 250,000 cars from the present 200,000 cars, he said.

Ford India’s Managing Director Aravind Mathew said the company had added 20 new authorized dealers in 2007, bringing the total to 130.

In a year where toys made with lead paint and tainted toothpaste fueled distrust about the “Made in China” label, Chinese automakers still are showing increasing interest in entering highly profitable American market for cars.

It may be a challenge to persuade American drivers to buy Chinese cars, observers say. But even with high-profile recalls failing to stop demand for China-made products in America, the day for Chinese cars on American roads is nearing.

“It really comes down to a quality product at a good price,” said Chris Byrne, a New York-based toy consultant. “If the Chinese are able to deliver a car that runs at a good price, I think a lot of the stuff about country of origin becomes less important.”

The Chinese companies have used the past year to work on the quality and performance of their vehicles, but they’ll need to convince American drivers that an inexpensive, Chinese-made car is a better value that, for example, a used car by an established American or Japanese company.

This year at the show in Detroit, four Chinese automakers and an importer have displays to boost their presence in American market.

About 9.15 million foreign nationals visited Japan in 2007, up 12.9 percent from the previous year, a record high, the Justice Ministry said in Tokyo based on preliminary data. “The number of travelers from Asian countries continued to rise, possibly because of an impact from the tourism enforcement policy,” said an official of the ministry’s Immigration Bureau. Though Japan introduced a new immigration control system on November 20 that requires foreign visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed on arrival.