IV. International
(12-16-06)
.
The US dollars suffered further sharp falls as reports in weak
US business activity and
a benign inflation picture undermined it.
.
KPMG’s revenues leap by an average of 42% in
Brazil, Russia, India and China in the past year,
overshadowing pedestrian expansion in developed markets.
.
CapitaLand, Southeast Asia’s larges property
developer, soared 4.2% to a record S$6.25 as investors
cheered the overwhelming response to its
China property trust, which was 96 times subscribed.
. The US retained it #1 position, with its
name value calculated at $7.2 trillion, followed by
Germany and UK at $4.8 trillion and $2.7 trillion
respectively. In Asia, Japan ranked fourth and China
eighth. Korea ranks 10th with its brand value
equivalent to 110% of its GD at $787 billion.
.
The drive to develop a vaccine to prevent HIV infection is one of
the most heroic endeavors in the history of medical
research. No other virus has received such scientific
attention or so much funding for vaccine
development--$759 million last year alone from public,
commercial and charitable sources, according to the
International Aids Vaccine Institute Initiative
(IAVI).
.
The industry lobby group in India has so far managed to
persuade only 600 of its 5,000 or so members to sign up
to its HIV/AIDS code. Many businesses have been
reluctant to make such voluntary commit- ments to
non-discriminatory treatment of HIV-positive employees,
often because they fear lawsuits and because of
inability to recoup the cost of HIV/AIDS related
healthcare from company insurance policies.
. For a long time, AIDS was a skeleton in
Russia’s cupboard, ignored by the government, business
and society. The country now has one of the
fastest-growing rates of HIV/AIDS infection in the
world. The Kremlin has awaken to the simmering epidemic
that will accelerate
Russia’s already dramatic demographic decline.
.
Five years may be a short time in the development cycle
for a new medicine, but it has been an extremely busy
period for the pharmaceutical sector in intensifying the
distribution of its existing AIDS drugs around the
world. There is little doubt that activist pressure has
helped push companies to offer more generous terms.
.
Russia’s relationship
with the Chinese has improved significantly over the
past few years with Russia pledging to build oil and as
pipelines to
China. China
is also the primary market for Russian weapons.
.
There is a growing fear of the Chinese moving into
Russia’s sparsely populated Far East which has lost 16.5% of its population since 1989. It constitutes 36%
of Russia’s land
mass, but is home to only 4.6% of its population.
.
The Chinese are crucial to the Russian Far East.
China feeds and clothes this region. The local attitude
towards the Chinese workers and traders is a lot more
relaxed than that of the Russian authorities.
.
In two months Shinzo Abe,
Japan’s
new prime minister, has gone from being a promising
leader to appearing weak amidst mounting domestic
issues.
.
Nomura Securities, the Japanese investment bank,
as won its 6-year battle with the Czech government over
the costliest bank collapse in Central Europe. The
government will pay Nomura $332 million for failing to
protect its investment in the country’s third largest
bank (Investicni a Postovani Banka).
. Japan ended China’s dominance in regional
swimming in a major Asian Games upset this month.
China emerged as a regional swimming power the 1990
Asian Games 4 years ago with 20 gold medals to Japan’s
11. At the close of the 6-day competition, China and
Japan were deadlocked on 16 gold medals each, but Japan
claimed the edge overall with a total medal count of
47-44.
.
Public funds paid to Ma Ying-jeon,
Taiwan’s
opposition leader and presidential hopeful, remain
unaccounted for over 5 of his 8 years in office as mayor
of Taipei, said Financial Times.
.
Pres. Chen’s wife was disciplined along with 3 aides on
corruption charges who are also defendants in the same
case. Prosecutors indicted them last month on charges of
graft, document forgery and perjury.
.
Acer, the world’s fourth largest computer maker,
leapt 5.8% after a newspaper reported the firm’s founder
as saying he would welcome a private equity bid
.
A group of rightist scholars in South Korea are fanning
controversy with their plan to publish a new history
textbook said to glorify military leaders who rose to
power through coups in 1961 (Park Chung-hee) and 1980
(Chun Doo-Hwan).
.
Thousands of farmers and workers held scaled-down
rallies across the country in protest against a free
trade deal with the US. Around 6k protesters, far less
than expected, joined the demonstrations in
Seoul, Busan, Daegu and
Gwangju.
.
The Air Force is employing its main fighter aircraft,
the KF-16 at an airbase in Gunsan,
North Jeolla Province,
to beef up its air defense capability in the country’s
Southwest territory, said military officials.
.
Agrarian reform beneficiaries nationwide in the
Philippines
have not only learned to put their acquired lands to
good use, they are now applying the concept of
value-adding on their agricultural produce that
transform them to agri-business entrepreneurs.
.Technologies
such as satellite and radio frequency identification or
RFID are expected to boost credit card use in the
country, particularly in tourist destinations, where
telecommunication structures are not available.
.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has upgraded its
peso-dollar exchange rate expectations for next year to
a range of 50 to 52 against the dollar given robust
foreign exchange inflows from exports, overseas Filipino
workers and investments.
.
The national government spent P684 billion to service
its debts in the first 10 months of 2006, up 13.6% from
P602.21 billion a year ago.
.
Under Philippine law, the gold medal winners in the
Asian Games will receive P1 million; silver medalists
P500,000; and bronze winners P100,000.
.
Merck offers to cut the price of anti-HIV drug in
Thailand
to stop the government overriding its patents and using
cheaper generic supplies.
.
Fifty-nine North Korean refugees (50 adults/9 children)
were arrested at a housing estate in the suburbs of
Bangkok and are being held on a charge of illegal entry,
police said.
. She said she wanted to win the gold, but
the Philippine contender’s (Veronica Domingo)
performance lacked the drive to go for it as she was
completely outclassed by her Thai rival (Chonnapas
Premwaew) in the women’s 63kg division in taekwondo in
the Asian Games in Qatar.
.
ANZ bank said it would become the controlling shareholder in
Malaysian financial group AMM after a $652 million
deal to take its stake to 24.9%.
. India
set on an unexpected spurt of growth in the last quarter
fuelled by sharply rising consumer credit and government
spending, increasing the prospects that the central bank
will raise borrowing costs for the fourth time in a
year.
.
India police have named a Pakistani as the main
conspirator behind the deadly train bombings in
Mumbai in July as they framed formal charges against
30 suspects in the attack.
.
India is experiencing worse rainstorms owing to global
warming and has a greater risk of damaging floods, a
group of scientists have found.
. There has been no shortage of warnings
about the potential impact of HIV/AIDS on the Indian
economy. Its spread could knock almost point off India’s
average annual economic growth in the next decade,
according to a controversial study produced in
collaboration with the UN and India’s National AIDS
Control Organization (NACO).
.
The number of HIV-infected persons exceeds 5 million and
is expected to quintuple to between 20 million and 25
million by 2010, says the National Council for
Economic Research (NCAER).
