NEW YORK - Rupert Murdoch said Thursday that a business news channel his media company News Corp. plans to launch in the fall will be more business-friendly than its rival CNBC.

Speaking at a media and technology conference in New York, Murdoch said there would be more details on the long-awaited channel announced soon. He said there was a great opportunity there.

The project has been in the works for several years, and the company has said it would only get launched if enough distribution were in place. Recently the company signed up Time Warner Cable, a division of Time Warner Inc. that is the second-largest cable provider in the country.

Murdoch, speaking in a question-and-answer session with Steve Adler, the editor of Business Week magazine, said the new Fox business channel would be friendlier to the business world than CNBC, which is a unit of General Electric Co.s NBC Universal.

They leap on every scandal, he said.

(MSNBC.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)

Murdoch also said News Corp. was seeing rapid growth from its MySpace unit, the leading social networking site on the Internet, where advertising revenues were growing about 30 percent every quarter.

Murdoch also said he hoped to see revenues from online-only businesses at News Corp. such as MySpace to make up about 10 percent of the companys revenues in the next five years or so.

He didnt provide a comparable figure for current online revenues, but on Wednesday News Corp. reported as part of its earnings release that revenues from its Fox Interactive Media unit, comprised mainly of MySpace, had grown to $125 million in the three months ending in December, which would be around 1.5 percent of the companys overall revenues.

Murdoch also said he saw big opportunities for expanding overseas as well in mobile devices such as cell phones. He said that a new deal to deliver MySpace to subscribers of Cingular Wireless, now part of AT&T Inc., had already signed up about 200,000 customers in 7 weeks. News Corp. shares revenues from the service, which costs users $3 per month.

On the matter of succession a question that comes up regularly for the 75-year-old media mogul Murdoch quipped: I just want to live forever, then demurred, saying it was up to the companys board of directors.

Murdoch, who recently distributed $100 million in News Corp. stock to each of his six children, has said he hopes to keep control of the company within his family, but he declined to go into greater detail Thursday.

The Murdoch family will control about 40 percent of News Corp.s shareholder vote once a deal is complete to swap the companys stake in DirecTV Group Inc. for a 16 percent stake in News Corp. owned by Liberty Media Corp.

Speculation has recently centered on Murdochs 34-year-old son James, who is CEO of British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC, a satellite broadcasting company in which News Corp. owns a stake of about 38 percent.

However Murdoch said it was too early to say whether James would succeed him, noting that there are other very capable family members. In 2005 his son Lachlan, now 35, left the company and moved to Australia, though he remains on the board. 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A RESTAURANT which has been open for less than a year has become only the third in the Capital to gain a prestigious Michelin Star.

The Kitchin restaurant on the Shore was awarded the top honour today, joining near neighbour Martin Wishart and Number One at The Balmoral on the list.

Owner Tom Kitchin, 29, is also close to Michelin-starred chef Tony Borthwick’s Plumed Horse, which has just relocated from Dumfriesshire to Henderson Street.

Mr Kitchin, who trained with Michelin-starred chefs such as Pierre Koffmann, Guy Savoy and Alain Ducasse, had been widely tipped to receive the honour himself, despite only opening his restaurant in June. But he said he was shocked when Michelin named him among only 15 new recipients in the UK, taking the total up to 122.

Mr Kitchin said: “I’m still gobsmacked. I honestly didn’t think it would happen. It’s too early, we only opened in June. It’s a remarkable feat and I’m very proud of everyone.

“Getting Michelin-starred was not the objective. I wanted to cook food I like to cook, using the wonderful produce we have here in Scotland.

“I only had one meeting with Michelin. Because we are a new restaurant they came to eat here. They started with roast langoustine, stuffed courgette flowers, and mackerel tartar. I can’t remember what they had for the main course.

“After the meal they identified themselves but they didn’t talk about the food or give me any feedback.

“They asked where I source the ingredients, what’s my philosophy on food, where did I train. They even wanted to come in and look at my kitchen.

“They said there would be two or three more visits, but that they would be completely undercover.”

It has been a whirlwind few months for the chef, who married his wife Michaela in August and closed the restaurant this month to go on a belated honeymoon. The Kitchin opened again yesterday.

He recently joined celebrities Ewan McGregor, Nick Nairn and Colin and Justin in a fundraising drive to help youngsters in Rachel House.

He has contributed special dishes from The Kitchin, to a tenth anniversary recipe book which will raise money for children’s homes in Kinross, Balloch and Inverness.

“It had been pretty full on and we finally went away for a two-week break this month. Now we’re back and it’s been good finding my feet again.

“This is a great start to the new year.”

More restaurants in Britain and Ireland now have Michelin stars than ever before.

In the recent round of awards the Channel Islands did particularly well, with Guernsey boasting a Michelin-starred restaurant for only the second time.

Four London restaurants were awarded a star each, and one was awarded two stars with the upgrade of Petrus, in Belgravia.

Michelin Guide editor Derek Bulmer said: “London has done well this year.

“More and more chefs are opening in London, so there are more listed than ever.

“The Channel Islands have also done well. The area is able to support these sort of restaurants, it’s been very successful.

“The chef who was awarded the star in Guernsey this year transferred from another restaurant there, which also had a star, but closed down.”

A total of 12 establishments were stripped of their single Michelin awards.

The Waterside Inn and the Fat Duck, both in Bray, Berkshire, and Gordon Ramsay in London’s Chelsea held on to their positions as the UK’s only holders of three Michelin stars.

BEIJING, March 8 (UPI) — China will begin to fill its third strategic oil reserve in Shandong in mid-2007, the official Xinhua news agency reported Thursday.

Xinhua quoted Du Guosheng, assistant to the president of the China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., as saying Sinopec will complete work on the Huangdao base, with an expected capacity of 19 million barrels, in Shandong.

Of China’s four planned oil reserves, two, both operational, are in Zhejiang Province; the one in Shandong is expected to be ready by the middle of the year and the fourth is planned for Liaoning Province. China has invested approximately $77.5 million to secure 10 million tons of oil reserves at the sites.

Separately, Du said China was planning to build a second set of strategic reserves that will add another 28 million tons of storage capacity. The northwest Gansu Province was chosen as one of the locations, while southern Guangdong and Hainan provinces also hope to be picked.

Du said Sinopec would complete talks with Saudi Aramco, which is looking to buy a 25 percent stake in the Qingdao refinery, which has a capacity of 200,000 bpd.