Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, December 29, 1994                   TAG: 9412290136
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

IN BUSINESS

Sales paid for by check were up 10.6 percent in Virginia during the Christmas shopping season in one of the nation's strongest retail performances, according to a firm that monitors the sales.

Virginia trailed only the San Antonio-Austin area of Texas, where sales paid for by check rose 12.4 percent, and Boston, where they climbed 11.9 percent, said TeleCheck Inc. of Houston.

The company said sales paid for by check across the country were up 5.1 percent.

- Associated Press

U.S., Japan race clock in car talks

WASHINGTON - The United States and Japan apparently are headed for another round of negotiations on opening the Japanese market for autos and auto parts, the odd man out in two years of effort by the Clinton administration to reach new trade agreements with Tokyo.

Jeffrey Garten, undersecretary of commerce for international trade, met for 1 1/2 hours in London on Tuesday with his Japanese counterpart, Sozaburo Okamatsu, vice minister of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

The meeting, hastily called by Japan, was intended to gauge the prospects for some kind of agreement before Jan. 11, the day that Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama comes to Washington to meet with President Clinton.

Unlike previous encounters over the last two years, this one comes without the threat of imminent U.S. trade sanctions.

- Journal of Commerce