Defector: Putin's KGB trained top al-Qaeda terrorists.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the reputed Number 2 chief in al-Qaeda and the man second only to Osama bin Laden on the FBI's "Most Wanted Terrorists" list, was trained by the Russian FSB (formerly known as the KGB). That's the story told by ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who fled Russia in...

There is another side to China's story.
The March/April 2006 edition of Foreign Policy (Washington) contains a scathing review of China's progress so far as it struggles to become a market driven, pluralistic society. The author is a distinguished academic with a long association of thinking about China. The review is based on a forthcoming book...

China and India: Learning from Each Other--Reforms and Policies for Sustained Growth.
China and India: Learning From Each Other--Reforms and Policies for Sustained Growth Jahangir Aziz, Steven Dunaway, and Eswar Prasad, eds. Washington: International Monetary Fund, 2006, 282 pp. This book's title promises more than it delivers. It compiles presentations at a seminar in October 2005 organized by the...

Bank of America to focus on cards, corp. banking in Europe, Asia -- CEO.
HONG KONG (XFN-ASIA) - Bank of America Corp will expand into Europe and Asia chiefly through credit cards and corporate banking, rather than through acquisitions, the Wall Street Journal quoted the bank's chairman and chief executive officer Kenneth Lewis as saying. In Asia, the bank will sign...

Foreign banks: what do we know?
In their twenty years since their entry into Australia, foreign bank performance has been considered a failure. This paper will canvass this and related issues and argue that some of these perceptions may have been based upon inappropriate expectations. It will be argued that the foreign banks have been...

No training. No English ... now you are a nurse: an NSWNA member went to China on an assignment to train nurses about aged care for Australian nursing homes. She came back deeply concerned about the integrity of the project.
Earlier this year the Age newspaper exposed a Melbourne-based agency, NurseBank, that was sending Chinese nurses to work in Victorian nursing homes and hospitals for up to 50 hours a week, including Christmas day, for a flat $300 a week. The Howard government had approved s.442 trainee...

China battles economic overheating.
China is worried about inflation. Beginning on July 5, 2006, the People's Bank of China (PBoC) is requiring all "financial institutions" to raise their capital reserves from 7.5 percent, the current level, to 8.0 percent. This has the effect of freezing bank funds (approximately us$18.8-billion) making these...

The danger of inflation in China is overestimated.
The subject of China and inflation has been getting a great deal of attention recently. Most discussed is the question: 'With China's strong growth seemingly immune to any of the pressures that appear to be slowing growth in other parts of the world, how can China's economy escape the...

Chinese-Cuban J-V gets hotel financing.
The Bank of Shanghai has awarded a $72 million loan to a Chinese-Cuban joint venture, SunCuba, for construction of a 700-room hotel in Shanghai's Pudong district. A contract formalizing the loan was signed in October by Fun Jian Hua, president of the Bank of Shanghai, and by...

Chinese trade takes off.
EVER SINCE establishing formal diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in July 1990, China's relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states has been increasingly significantly, although officials on both sides point out that the true bilateral trade potential will take some years to realise. China's bilateral trade with the...