LATEST DATELINE FEATURES POLITICS MEDIA BUSINESS OFFBEAT BIOGRAPHY MAIN
Australia: Wayne Swan Confounds His Domestic Critics
Australia: How Euromoney's Finance Minister Award Became a Political Football
Egypt: Banking on a revolution
Thailand: Korn puts Shinawatra government on watch
Wendi Deng Murdoch: La Tigresa del Magnate
Egypt's reluctant finance minister gets to work
Samir Radwan was a surprise choice as Egypt's new finance minister, even to himself. Appointed at the height of the chaos, the retired economist is working hard to sustain Egypt's finances and economy through a period of extraordinary upheaval. Eric Ellis joins him in Cairo
Orascom: A very modern tale of corporate finance
How do you solve a problem like Korea?
Why Farnood was flushed out of Kabulbank
In the battle to rebuild war-torn Afghanistan, Kabulbank inserted itself as a key player, building the country's largest deposit base and becoming the payment agent for many government enterprises. But a run on the bank in August led to the ousting of colourful poker-playing bank owner Sherkhan Farnood. What does this mean for the country's banking sector?
IN THE fomenting debate over Singapore Inc's bid to buy a most vital pillar of Australia's economic architecture, there is something deliciously apt that the decisive call on the Australian Stock Exchange will probably be made by Canberra's independent members of Parliament
Thailand's finance minister Korn faces the
ultimate stress test
Finance minister Korn Chatikavanij has
steered the Thai economy successfully through huge political and social
upheaval. But his long-term aim is to connect with Thailand's people, and not
just its financial and business elite, to bring prosperity to the majority.
Eric Ellis shadowed Korn as he travelled beyond Bangkok, examining the
extent of the grassroots challenges Korn faces to effect meaningful change in a
country ill-served by previous incumbents
Thailand: Korn Steps Out in Samut Sakorn
Gibraltar - Cracks in the Rock?
Tiny Gibraltar is an ocean away from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, but it doesn’t take much traversing of the Rock’s lanes to get a distinctly Groundhog Day feeling that Bill Murray might recognize
Islamic finance: Hub or hubris?
Shariah banking is becoming big business in Southeast Asia, with Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta battling for the title of regional Islamic finance centre. But even the most optimistic bankers fear further expansion could be stymied by arcane regulation and lack of cross-border consensus
After the war comes Sri Lanka’s refugee crisis (shorter version or longer)
A cornered tiger still has teeth
One of the world's most notorious terrorists seems to be cornered....
Abhisit Vejjajiva is the latest to lead Thailand in a tumultuous 12 months. Does he herald economic reform or simply a new round of governmental intrigue?
Australia: Out of pocket in the Outback
Turkey: Its about the journey not the destination
Australia: Swan is happy but not all Australians are as impressed
The Philippines: Teves faces up to taxing issues
As China struts the world stage in the lead-up to the Olympics, its behaviour has been more revealing about future relations than anyone could have imagined
Keeping it in the family
After a decade of concealing their enormous wealth, the Soeharto offspring
suddenly have found themselves back in the limelight
nside Samruk, Kazakhstan's new state holding company
Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev,
has decreed the creation of a state holding company, roughly on
Singaporean/Malaysian lines, to oversee
and rationalize the country’s lucrative but inchoate collection of state-owned
companies and foster corporate governance. Eric Ellis reports on a confrontation
of cultures
Interview with Sir Richard Evans, Samruk chairman
A British corporate warhorse, Sir Richard Evans, has been hired to pull the Samruk operation together
Sri Lankan tea maker Dilmah is taking a leaf from the wine industry to label its beverage as high-end and chic
"Cheers to Wendi! Gan bei! Drink the cup
dry!"
It's 8 pm on a freezing night in Xuzhou, and we're having a jolly time in the
Overflowing Fragrance dining room of the Sea Sky Holiday Hotel, an oddly named
establishment given that this grim industrial city of 10 million people is 500
kilometres west of the Yellow Sea, and no place for a vacation. We're toasting a
thriving Chinese export, a girl born of modest means in nearby Shandong in
December 1968 and given a politically correct name - Wen Ge, shorthand for
‘Cultural Revolution' - as was the imperative for parents in that dark era. And
what a remarkable journey to celebrate: catapulting herself from the anonymity
and austerity of communist China to the family, and the family trust, of one of
the world's most powerful and wealthy men, and all by the age of 30.
Squeezed between the mullahs and George W. Bush, and with war and a nuclear future looming, many moderate Iranian families are planning their escape
Sanctions? Coke and Pepsi found a way around them and are battling for market share in Tehran with local Zamzam Cola
A short walk with Eric
Newby
Warriors with scimitars and muskets have given way to warlords with AK-47s and
mobile phones, but there are still hidden valleys of timeless peace and beauty
Five years after the war, Kabul is showing signs of economic life. But making money there is still risky business
With books about George Washington arrayed on a shelf behind him in his office in Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai talked to FORTUNE recently about the nation-building challenges that still confront his country five years after the fall of the Taliban
Afghanistan Gets Back To Business
The country’s newly revitalized banking system throws up colourful characters and eccentric approaches to marketing. But overseeing it all is a rigorous central banker with solid US commercial banking experience
Whether or not Iran is building nuclear weapons, its auto industry, the largest in the Middle East, is learning how to cope with privation—and planning for worse.
One man’s extraordinary journey from middle Australia into the heart of Indonesia’s Islamic world. Or was it into the heart of darkness?
The royals are ridiculed, Maoists are flexing their muscles and the lucrative climbing industry has had a tough season. Eric Ellis finds all is not well in the troubled Himalayan nation
The Americans have put the mess back into Mesopotamia, says an Iraqi-Australian economist after trying to help the reconstruction of his birthplace
East & Eden
For a truly inspiring Asian experience step off the well-trodden path. The top
10 must-visit holiday hotspots
Even before the Muslim backlash over those notorious cartoons, liberal Denmark was under siege from some demons closer to home
After 15 years on the lam, with $1.5bn missing and facing 18 charges from one of the biggest corporate scandals in Australian history, Abraham Goldberg finally wants to come home
Eric Ellis on the background to the hanging in Singapore last week of an Australian drug-dealer
Naval Gazing
Cruising the tropical islands of the South China Sea
Almost a year later, too little has changed along the tsunami-smashed Sri Lankan coast. Aid was sent but the will to recover seems to have been swept away
Hang Democracy, Let's Trade
Singaporeans don't like to be reminded they do business with Burmese narco-traffickers,
and admit they don't mind punishing the innocent to preserve law and order
Singapore seems determined to hang Melbourne man Nguyen Tuong Van as an act of defiance in the face of international criticism
Gotcha, Goldberg!
The one that got away
When Melbourne rag trade magnate Abraham Goldberg disappeared, $1.5bn went
missing with him. How we tracked down Australia's biggest corporate fugitive
Islamabad's long-delayed sale of state telecom operator PTCL should be encouragement -- and a warning
Reputed to be incubators for terrorists, Islamic schools in Pakistan claim they are innocent – and are still waiting for long-promised Western aid
At 27, Schapelle Corby is probably a bit too young for Warren Zevon but, given her present predicament, she would doubtless appreciate the American singer’s sentiments. Which are surely appropriate now that Jakarta’s most flamboyant lawyer, Hotman Paris Hutapea, has stepped into her troubled life, well practised as he is in law, guns and, particularly, in money
Interview with Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf
Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf defies conventional politics....
Eric Ellis on the weeping, xenophobic hysteria in Australia over the conviction of Schapelle Corby for smuggling drugs into Indonesia
As an occasional resident of a Sri Lankan fishing village, writer Eric Ellis pitched in to help those ruined by the tsunami. But the plan to finance and organise replacement boats was beset by bureaucracy, connivance and internecine warfare
The Bali expats and intelligentsia are disgusted by Australia’s racist reaction. The other 230 million Indonesians ask, “Schapelle who?”
Sri Lanka’s efforts to rebuild after the tsunami have been slowed by bureaucracy and renewed ethnic tensions. Can President Kumaratunga use the disaster to transform the island’s political culture?
A reporter’s account of one personal mission
Interview with President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka
The trials of Schapelle
There are braying reporters, dozing judiciary members, colourful lawyers and
assorted hangers-on basking in the limelight and baking in the Indonesian heat.
Centre stage, an Australian woman's life is at stake
As an occasional resident of a Sri Lankan fishing village, writer Eric Ellis pitched in to help those ruined by the tsunami. But the plan to finance and organise replacement boats was beset by bureaucracy, connivance and internecine warfare. But as Ellis' diary shows, it was a story with a happy ending
Sri Lanka's expat elite are kicking off their high heels and rolling up the sleeves of their linen shirts with some acts of extraordinary generosity that few thought them capable of. Eric Ellis reports.
After the apocalypse; A journey to find loved ones in the devastation of southern Sri Lanka defies description - the jaw drops; the eyes glaze; the soul weeps. And the politicians fiddle as the people wail.
Whatever will be, will be, especially in a timeless village in Andalucian Spain. Until, that is, it is "discovered" by the invading hordes of New Europe and beyond.
How a frozen-food salesman from New Jersey - a former refugee from war-torn Afghanistan - built his country's largest wireless network
It’s election time in Kabul and a motley assortment of carpet-baggers, do-gooders and telephone salesmen are gathering for the big day.
Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani is battling warlords, cabinet colleagues, indifferent global donors and stomach cancer as he struggles to salvage Afghanistan’s ravaged economy. If he fails, the world could pay an enormous price. Eric Ellis reports from Kabul
In the days after the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, The Bulletin journeys into Indonesia's hardline Islamic world
He was one of Mahathir Mohamad’s closest business allies. Now a new Prime Minister has cut the mogul down to size
The rise of the tribute band has closely followed John Howard's conservative ascent. What price Kissteria's Gene Simmons clone as next PM?
Has Asia, home to the world’s most dynamic economies, a region which provided the world’s first modern female leader, suddenly become enlightened?
The hopes of a generation of Indonesians were destroyed in the rubble of the Sari Club
This weekend's Bali bombing commemoration has upset the island's Hindu elders, who say the gods will not be pleased
Indonesia holds a world record that Jakarta doesn’t like to make public: the most pirate-infested seas on the planet
ALLAH'S ASSASSINS *winner of 2003 Walkley Award, Asia-Pacific reporting
The Bali bombers were rootless young men recruited from the dusty poverty of a village in West Java - their overseer a worldly West Javanese, burning with Islamic zeal and with the contacts to organise and bankroll their jihad. Eric Ellis retraces their steps as they moved from village to town meeting the fixers, financiers and bombmakers, and finally assembling and detonating the devices that would kill and maim so many in a Kuta Beach tourist precinct
Indonesian forces have historically sought ties with Islamic groups only to suit their purposes, as Eric Ellis reveals
The determination of authorities in Indonesia to execute any convicted Bali bombers raises many questions about Australia's role in the investigation, writes Eric Ellis in Jakarta
An elaborate purification ritual may have exorcised some of Bali's demons, but the killers still to face justice there are monsters on the loose. In Kuta, ERIC ELLIS talks to the policeman heading the investigation and examines the secretive world of 'Indonesia's Arabs."
As well as the lives of many, the nightclub bombs destroyed any lingering illusions that Bali was a tranquil haven somehow isolated from Indonesia's current malaise. Eric Ellis reports from Kuta Beach.
As dawn broke on the chaos that was Kuta Beach, Eric Ellis searched Ground Zero Kuta for survivors of Australia's worst terrorist outrage
Why is the only shopping mall with a UN seat suddenly near the very centre of the terrorist map? Eric Ellis seeks signs of foment amid Singapore's frangipani
After
many years avoiding the place, Eric Ellis has been to Bali too. What's more, he
has decided to stay. The smell of scented candles is in the air
as he explains why
The poached salmon we were eating in New York was perfectly edible. But, enhanced by the fiery sambal with its chili, garlic and cumin ingredients we had enjoyed on holiday in Bali, it would have been sublime.....from Upper East to further east
Critic
Robert Hughes is due to face court again over his near-fatal car crash in
Western Australia. In the strange mix of culture and chaos that is Broome, Eric
Ellis gauges the
Shock of the Broome
The aftermath of an accident that nearly killed social historian Robert Hughes could be a metaphor for Australia and its myriad complexities. Was it just another bloody car crash, mate, asks Eric Ellis.
ON
A dusty afternoon in Dili, capital of a haunted land that is soon to be
proclaimed the 190th member of the United Nations, a babel of languages issues
from the foreign clientele at the City Café. Here, at $2.40 a shot, a caffe
latte costs either what most of East Timor's 800,000 people earn in a day, or
1/70th the average per diem of the 20 or so UN workers patronising the cafe
while the
Dili Dynasty....
The
House of Tata, big and historic, is one of India's most beloved companies. It is
also a mess. Eric Ellis goes
inside the House of Tata
A
quarter of a century on, Sydney Opera House designer Joern Utzon finally breaks
his silence on the thwarting of his vision and explains why we all have paid a
price. He also dispels a long-standing myth about his inspiration. ERIC ELLIS
reveals Utzon's
Orange Peel Opera House
As
its leaders come to grips with the new rules of the digital age, the city-state
once known for its stuffiness begins to loosen the reins on pop culture and
political discussion in
Liberalising Singapore
THE QUIET inlets of Uliss Bay provide
shocking evidence of the depths to which Vladivostok has sunk since the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the mighty military-industrial complex that nourished
this city in
Russia's Wild East
PARIS.
Raining. Its 10.20 in the morning and Henri Cartier-Bresson is 20 minutes late.
I consult a waiter in bad French. “C’est Cafe Carousel ici, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui, monsieur.”
A clear-eyed Frenchman, one of only two other people in the cafe and holding a grubby knapsack adorned with protest buttons – Nuclear? Non merci!” – looks up from his booth across the room. “Do you need help?” he asks, in English to start a rare interview with Henri Cartier-Bresson
THE
lighting was low, the room mesmerized by Diana Ross' Endless Love. The leggy
temptress lovingly wrapped her right hand around the long slender tube, caressed
it tenderly with her other hand before putting its head carefully to her mouth.
Its
Karaoke Kulture
The
continent watched glumly as a New Economy rose--faster than Yahoo!'s share
price--from Silicon Valley. Now, with a raft of homegrown start-ups ready to
make waves, it's Asia's turn as the
Asian Internet Lifts Off
Ironically,
the neglect of almost 400 years of colonialism--from the benign Portuguese
version to the brutal Javanese approach--offers East Timor its best prospect for
a viable post-independence economy. That neglect grows wild and plentiful in the
jungle hills of this verdant half-island: some of the world's finest strains of
arabica coffee plants, untouched by chemicals or human hands and, in an ideal
world, destined for the West's trendy coffee shops. Call it the Starbucks
Economy as
East Timor Descends...
More than 30,000 bulls will die this year in the name of Spanish sport. Opponents are vocal but can do little to dampen the passion or staunch the flow of blood. ERIC ELLIS reports from Huelva about the Stain on Spain
A
mangy goat draped in a crude Indonesian flag saved an East Timorese family of
six from a grisly death last week. When the militiamen of the Besi Merah Putih--Red
and White Iron--came to the home of a goatherd in the village of Liquica, they
offered him an ultimatum: he and his wife would be beheaded and his four
children disemboweled if he didn't display loyalty to Jakarta. The goatherd
wasted no time. "My wife quickly made this bandeira [flag] from two old shirts,"
he recalls. The bloodthirsty mob was mollified, for the moment at least.
Can East Timor Avoid Civil War?
Climate control in the Singapore Press
You don't have be a spook to be a Singaporean journalist. But it doesn't hurt. A report from a society where the challenge for journalists is testing the undefined boundaries that are so much a part of their culture.
A series tracking the revolutionary re-invention of America
The Sweet And Sour Sides Of The Silk Road
On the Karakoram Highway between China and Pakistan
The consistency of Timboon Gourmet Feta Cheese isn't great at 5,500m above sea level. Tasty, 'tis true, but the thin air makes it a little hard to spread on crunchy Kashgar bagels.