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BEIJING - Last week's trade deal between Washington and Beijing is intended in part to address one of the most acrimonious issues between them: China's tactics in acquiring technology from companies based in the West. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

TOKYO -- Olympus, the Japanese camera maker whose executives have admitted to covering up $1.7 billion in losses, said Tuesday that its auditors, KPMG Azsa and Ernst & Young ShinNihon, had not been complicit in the false accounting -- though those firms remain under investigation by the Japanese authorities over possible roles in the scandal. A decision to clear the auditing firms could strengthen Olympus's chances of staying listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, helping the company maintain access to equity capital. Any action to dismiss or sue Ernst & Young ShinNihon, its current auditor, could leave the company without a firm willing to audit its finances, jeopardizing Olympus's compliance with the exchange's listing requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Losing your job anywhere is disorienting, but imagine being laid off when you work in a foreign country. Not only is your source of income, and perhaps a good part of your identity, suddenly yanked away, but often you lose your right to remain in the country. Add to that urgent disruption the calamity of a collapsing industry and you have the life more or less of thousands of American expatriates in banking and finance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At a three-story factory here that used to make television remote controls, most of the fluorescent lights have been turned off. The hallways are nearly silent, and three-quarters of the workers have been laid off. A pencil factory down the road closed last September, laying off 100 workers. Another nearby factory that turned out carved and painted wooden window frames shut down and laid off 800 workers. And two Toyota factories, one here in Karawang and another in a nearby city, have not renewed the contracts of 277 temporary workers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the Yujiapu financial district project in Tianjin, China which is known to be the new Manhattan in the country comprising of 47 skyscrapers in southeast of Beijing. It says that the project is getting finance from state-owned bank loans. It mentions that Zhang Gaoli, Tianjin Communist Party secretary, will be responsible for managing the day-to-day operation of its Chinese economic and policy making.

HONG KONG -- After nearly three years of soaring prices for rare earth metals, with the cost of some rising nearly thirtyfold, the market is rapidly coming back down. International prices for some light rare earths, like cerium and lanthanum, used in the polishing of flat-screen televisions and the refining of oil, respectively, have fallen as much as two-thirds since August and are still dropping. Prices have declined by roughly one-third since then for highly magnetic rare earths, like neodymium, needed for products like smartphones, computers and large wind turbines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

HONG KONG -- Is China's economy in trouble, too? As the American economy appears to teeter on the edge of another recession, Europe struggles with a financial crisis and emerging markets like Brazil and India show new weaknesses, China may appear to be in better shape than most countries, economists say. But ''better'' is relative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CORRECTION APPENDED BEIJING -- In the name of fighting pollution, China has sent the price of compact fluorescent light bulbs soaring in the United States. By closing or nationalizing dozens of the producers of rare earth metals -- which are used in energy-efficient bulbs and many other green-energy products -- China is temporarily shutting down most of the industry and crimping the global supply of the vital resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BEIJING -- If China is going to help ease Europe's financial crisis, silken strings could be attached. Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday offered to help Europe. But, in an unprecedented move for China, he linked the offer to a potentially onerous demand: that Europe renounce its main legal defense against low-priced Chinese exports. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on Monday warned of ''a possible major resurgence'' of the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus in the coming months. The virus had been fading since 2006, but migratory birds now seem to be carrying it to infect poultry in more countries, while a variant of the virus has emerged in Vietnam and China that is not easily stopped by vaccines, the F.A.O. said. The resurgence of the virus poses ''unpredictable risks to human health,'' the agency said. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of China's high-speed train manufacturers, the CNR Corporation, announced Friday that it was recalling 54 of its trains from the Beijing to Shanghai route to test sensors that may be causing the trains to stop unnecessarily, such as when a passenger lights a cigarette in a restroom. The Rail Ministry announced separately Thursday that the number of high-speed trains each day between Beijing and Shanghai would be reduced to 66 in each direction starting next Tuesday, from 88 in each direction now. The moves, coming after the government announced a safety review of high-speed rail on Wednesday, seemed to reflect heightened concern after a deadly high-speed rail crash last month. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HONG KONG -- Ai Weiwei, a prominent Chinese artist and dissident, said on Friday that he had been kept in a tiny room throughout his nearly three-month detention last spring and watched 24 hours a day by shifts of two uniformed military police sergeants who never left his side. During a brief telephone interview, Mr. Ai confirmed and elaborated on a description of his captivity provided by an associate. The sergeants were never more than 30 inches from his side, and sometimes just four inches away, and stayed there as he slept, showered and used the bathroom, Mr. Ai said. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TOKYO -- Aguri Suzuki, a 44-year-old real estate agent, says she sometimes thinks the ground is shaking even when it is not. When she sees a tree branch swaying in the wind, she worries there has been an earthquake. Doctors here say they are seeing more people who are experiencing such phantom quakes, as well as other symptoms of ''earthquake sickness'' like dizziness and anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HONG KONG -- Drawn by a mixture of anger and grief, tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents poured into the streets on Sunday to protest how the Philippine government handled a bus siege in Manila last Monday that ended in the shooting deaths of eight Hong Kong residents and the dismissed police officer who had taken them hostage. Protest organizers estimated the crowd at 80,000 people, but the police put it at 30,000. Either figure would make it the largest protest march in memory against events overseas, although there have been much larger protests in Hong Kong involving local politics or events in mainland China, notably the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HONG KONG -- In the latest signs that the Chinese economy is beginning to cool after setting a torrid pace in the first half of this year, several government indicators slowed slightly last month, Beijing announced Wednesday morning. The July indicators, for industrial output, retail sales, fixed asset investment and bank lending, all provided a fairly consistent snapshot of a country where economic growth remains the strongest in the world, but where the nearly manic spending of the last few months is starting to fade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HONG KONG -- The death toll from landslides early Sunday morning in western China has climbed to 702, with 1,042 people still missing and 42 seriously injured, the state news agency, Xinhua, reported late Tuesday afternoon. Vice Premier Hui Liangyu ordered rescuers to step up efforts to find people trapped under the rubble in Zhouqu, a town in Gansu Province, and noted that these people had the best chance of survival if found within 72 hours of the disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yields on 10-year Treasury securities, a vital benchmark for home mortgages and corporate loans, tumbled to the lowest level in more than a year on Tuesday after the Federal Reserve said it would buy up government debt in an effort to bolster the nation's increasingly fragile economy. With no more room to reduce interest rates by decree, the Fed has decided to use its considerable market influence instead. By committing to buy up United States debt, the Fed hopes to increase demand for Treasury securities, pushing up their price while reducing their yields and, in turn, a range of interest rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From Loch Striven in Scotland to the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia, more than a tenth of the vessels that transport the world's manufactured goods in containers are idle. For most, orders to sail will not come for some time. Although world trade, which collapsed last year, is beginning to recover, driven by demand from developing countries, the recovery is being offset by added capacity in the large number of new container ships coming out of shipyards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While confirmed cases of swine flu increased only slightly on Monday, the World Health Organization voted to raise its global pandemic flu alert level, but at the same time it recommended that borders not be closed nor travel bans imposed. The W.H.O.'s emergency committee, after meeting until 10:30 p.m. in Geneva, also recommended abandoning efforts to contain the flu's spread. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that. The goal, which radiates from the very top of the Chinese government, suggests that Detroit's Big Three, already struggling to stay alive, will face even stiffer foreign competition on the next field of automotive technology than they do today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chan Shao Zhang is in the race of his life. After four decades of false starts, Mr. Chan, a 67-year-old engineer, is supervising an army of workers operating 60 gargantuan tunneling machines beneath this metropolis in southeastern China. They are building one of the world's largest and most advanced subway systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In another indication that China is growing increasingly concerned about holding huge dollar reserves, the head of its central bank has called for the eventual creation of a new international currency reserve to replace the dollar. In a paper released Monday, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, said a new currency reserve system controlled by the International Monetary Fund could prove more stable and economically viable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The government's fourth round of assistance to the American International Group this month was a play for time -- for languishing markets to rebound, for pockets to fill up again and for buyers to emerge for the sturdy insurance companies under A.I.G.'s tattered corporate umbrella. Only when those insurance companies are sold will there be money to repay American taxpayers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Shou Xuejun was a popular man one afternoon early this month. As a finance official in this town of ancient canals and textile factories, he got to hand out shopping vouchers worth nearly $30 apiece to 20 elderly residents. Chen Jue, 87, could hardly believe her good luck. ''Can these vouchers really buy things?'' she asked, amazed, at a community center decorated with a six-foot-high photograph of Mao. ''The government is very good to us! I will buy flowers, and I will also buy goldfish.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The global economic downturn, and efforts to reverse it, will probably make China an even stronger economic competitor than it was before the crisis. China, the world's third-largest economy behind the United States and Japan, had already become more assertive; now it is exploiting its unusual position as a country with piles of cash and a strong banking system, at a time when many countries have neither, to acquire natural resources and make new friends. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's exports plunged by a record 25.7 percent last month, but investment spending surged as the country's stimulus program took hold, Beijing authorities said Wednesday. The data provided conflicting signals about the health of China's economy. It sketched a picture of a country spending huge sums at home to offset weakening demand overseas, but gave no conclusive sign of whether its stimulus program would succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most economists still do not expect the Chinese economy to suffer a broad decline in prices this year, but statistics released on Tuesday did provide disturbing whiffs of possible deflation. Consumer prices were 1.6 percent lower last month than a year earlier, the first decline since December 2002, the National Bureau of Statistics announced in Beijing. February's result represented a precipitous drop from an inflation rate of 8.7 percent in February of last year, when rising prices were a top priority for the Chinese government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A vice governor of the Chinese province hardest hit by the earthquake last May said Sunday that many schools collapsed then because of the strength of the 7.9 magnitude quake, and not because of shoddy construction. Wei Hong, one of the eight vice governors of Sichuan Province, also declined to release the number of schoolchildren who were killed, saying that the exact tally still had not been calculated almost 10 months later, news agencies reported from Beijing. Mr. Wei spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the National People's Congress there. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China called Thursday for closer political and economic relations with Taiwan, but he offered few specifics and did not expand on a previous suggestion by President Hu Jintao for improving communication with Taiwan on military issues. In his opening speech to the National People's Congress, Mr. Wen clearly signaled the Chinese leadership's support for a series of economic measures that negotiators from Beijing and Taiwan were already discussing. These include the gradual integration of banking and other financial services across the Taiwan Strait, and the drafting of a ''comprehensive agreement on economic cooperation'' that could eventually become the basis for a free-trade agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

SANLU The Sanlu Group, the most prominent of 22 Chinese dairy companies that sold contaminated dairy products, was bought at auction on Wednesday for $90.3 million by the Beijing Sanyuan Group Company, according to Xinhua, the official news agency. The companies sold dairy products like infant formula that were contaminated with melamine, a chemical that made the protein content appear higher. The products were blamed for making hundreds of thousands of children ill and killing six. The scandal forced Sanlu into bankruptcy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As trade withers around the world and freighters sit empty at anchor, some of the most vulnerable economies are proving to be small, extremely globalized trading centers like Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan -- and that is prompting a rethinking of their economic development strategies. Half a century of swiftly growing exports, accompanied by an expansion into international services like finance, has transformed all three economies' urban areas into some of the world's most modern cities. Millions of farmers have been lifted out of poverty. But that progress has now been thrown into reverse with some of the world's steepest plunges in economic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Warning that China faces ''unprecedented difficulties and challenges,'' Prime Minister Wen Jiabao outlined a barrage of construction, increased subsidies and economic measures on Thursday aimed at continuing his nation's modernization despite a world financial crisis. He also indicated that China's leaders would seek to begin a fundamental shift in their economic strategy by encouraging citizens to spend and consume more goods, as in most Western economies. China's startling growth has been driven so far by exports and abundant spending on roads, dams and other infrastructure projects, a trend that experts say cannot be sustained in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's Health Ministry said on Monday that the food safety situation remained ''grim'' and that it would not tolerate ''even the slightest relaxation'' in monitoring. China's highest legislature approved on Saturday a law that will take effect on June 1 to require tighter supervision of food production and distribution, quicker recalls of contaminated food and stiffer punishments for those caught adulterating food. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Preparing for the 50th anniversary next Tuesday of a failed uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule, Beijing authorities issued a white paper on Monday presenting their interpretation of Tibetan history, comparing the abolition of ''serfdom'' in Tibet under Chinese rule to the emancipation of slaves in the United States. The Dalai Lama and other Tibetan leaders have accepted that traditional Tibetan society had shortcomings, but contend that Beijing has long exaggerated the plight of Tibetan peasants and that improvements were under way before China's military action in 1959. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body in Beijing, will receive a proposal to set up a ''cross-straits economic zone'' with Taiwan that would encompass the island and parts of four mainland Chinese provinces that face it across the Taiwan Strait, Beijing's official Xinhua news agency said on Monday. One of China's eight legal minor parties, the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, will submit the proposal when the conference convenes on Tuesday afternoon, ahead of the opening of the National People's Congress on Thursday. Taiwanese officials have been discussing a variety of long-term plans to increase trade with the mainland, including lower tariffs on some products, but are mostly focused in the next few months on winning the right for Taiwanese firms to offer more financial services on the mainland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most people in Taiwan have seen the image of former President Chen Shui-bian holding his handcuffed wrists above his head last November and shouting ''political persecution'' when he was arrested on corruption charges. So a scene in a skit last month performed in front of more than 200 of the island's judges and prosecutors -- some involved in deciding Mr. Chen's fate in his coming trial -- came as a surprise. A prosecutor acting in the skit held her wrists together over her head and yelled, ''judicial persecution.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Palace Museum in Beijing has agreed to lend artworks to the National Palace Museum in Taipei for a special exhibition this year, temporarily reuniting a small part of China's immense imperial collection for the first time in 60 years, both museums said on Monday. A spokesman for the Palace Museum in Beijing said that no agreement had been reached on how many would travel. The Taiwan museum plans to borrow the works, mainly paintings, for a three-month exhibition starting in October of art from the reign of Emperor Yongzheng, who ruled from 1723 to 1735. In meetings over the weekend in Beijing the directors of the museums agreed to coordinate their catalogs and Web sites, according to the Taiwan museum, but the two sides did not address mainland China's legal claim to full ownership of the entire imperial collection, which has long been divided by strife. The Nationalists took nearly a quarter of it when they lost China's civil war to the Communists in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan. The Taipei museum refuses to lend any works to the mainland for fear that they will not be returned and has only rarely lent works from the imperial collection to other countries for fear of legal action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Palace Museum in Beijing has agreed to lend works of art to the National Palace Museum in Taipei for an exhibition next autumn, temporarily bringing together a small part of China's imperial collection for the first time in 60 years, both museums said on Monday. The art works -- mainly paintings of Emperor Yongzheng, an 18th century ruler of China, and his concubines -- are part of China's immense imperial art collection, long divided by strife. The Nationalists took nearly a quarter of the collection, including most of the best works, when they lost China's civil war to the Communists in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From lawyers in Paris to factory workers in China and bodyguards in Colombia, the ranks of the jobless are swelling rapidly across the globe. Worldwide job losses from the recession that started in the United States in December 2007 could hit a staggering 50 million by the end of 2009, according to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. The slowdown has already claimed 3.6 million American jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

America's new secretary of state is preparing to visit Beijing with an agenda that barely mentions Taiwan -- and that is fine with the president of Taiwan. President Ma Ying-jeou said here on Thursday that he was glad to have reduced tensions with mainland China and that he was not concerned that Taiwan was low on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's list of priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Divided for 60 years by war and political turbulence, the imperial art collection of China is now the focus of negotiations that could lead to at least a few of the works being exhibited together again. The director of the National Palace Museum here, the repository of the cream of the 1,000-year collection, plans to travel on Saturday to Beijing, the first official visit by a director of that museum to the mainland since the Nationalists lost China's civil war to the Communists in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are returning here earlier than usual from their home villages after the Chinese New Year holiday. Lugging their belongings in plastic sacks and cardboard boxes, they are hoping to find increasingly scarce jobs. Many will fail. Liu Yijiang, a 21-year-old worker from Guangxi Province, stopped his bicycle in front of a factory's gate and explained that he had been unable to find work since he was laid off late last year by a ceiling lamp factory and went home to his village. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

More money is moving in a new direction in China -- out. Some Chinese are so eager to turn their yuan into other assets that when an online real estate brokerage organized a tour of foreclosure auctions in the United States, it received so many applications that it had to turn away nearly 400 people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In an effort to hold back the domestic effects of the global downturn, China is starting to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new highways, railroads and other infrastructure projects. The stimulus plan, one of the world's largest, promises to carry the modernity of China's coasts deep into the hinterlands, buying the kind of great leap forward it took the United States decades -- and a world war -- to build, and priming China for a new level of global competition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A freelance photographer has accused the first lady of Zimbabwe of striking him repeatedly in the face when he tried to photograph her last week during a shopping trip in Hong Kong. The photographer, Richard Jones, had been taking pictures of Grace Mugabe, 43, on a public sidewalk on Thursday. Robert Mugabe, to whom Mrs. Mugabe was married in 1996, has been president of Zimbabwe since the end of 1987. Mr. Jones said that as a result of the beating by Mrs. Mugabe, above, he had nine cuts and bruises, and that her bodyguard had tried unsuccessfully to wrest Mr. Jones's camera from him. Mrs. Mugabe left Hong Kong the same day. The Hong Kong police said they were investigating an ''assault occasioning actual bodily harm'' but had made no arrests; Zimbabwe's embassy in Beijing declined to comment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Barack Obama reached out to the world in his inaugural address on Tuesday, pledging to help the people of poor nations make their farms flourish and clean waters flow, and promising that America would ''play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.'' The world listened with a mixture of optimism and caution. From Kenya to London, millions gathered around television screens in public squares, cafes and living rooms to watch Mr. Obama accept the mantle of American leadership, and with it, take on the hopes of a world battered by war and recession. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's exports and imports shrank at an accelerating rate last month, a trend likely to set off more job losses in the country's export-oriented coastal regions. The job losses, in turn, could cause further worries about social stability as millions of unemployed migrant workers return home to interior provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]