Building a solid banking foundation

Strongly optimistic about the future of Indonesia's banking sector, Jakarta-based Bank Bukopin, founded in 1970, intends to build on past successes to become a dependable financial institution ready to serve customers throughout the country.

PT Berlina packaging its way to success

Indonesia-based PT Berlina Tbk established the Hefei Paragon Plastic Packaging Co Ltd in China's Anhui province in 2004 to supply bottle packaging for one of its biggest clients - Unilever China. The move drastically reduced transport costs and ensured on-time delivery.

Life Travel

Faces you won't forget

As the first rays of sunlight reach the maze of old houses in Kashgar, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the city gradually wakes up as the chanting of the Quran is heard from the mosque. Small alleys begin to pulse with merriment - vendors shouting, housewives chatting and children laughing. Local Muslim Uygurs who have lived in the city for generations start a new day as usual.

Where man and beast are not Poles apart

KOLOBRZEG, Poland: The yellow eyes peer out of the darkness and only hours after enjoying a meal of freshly grilled woodland mushrooms, the holidaymakers find themselves gripped by fear. Man and beast stare at each other for a while until the fox decides the situation is harmless and breaks into a leisurely trot.

Life Health

Catching a killer

Twenty-six years after the first five cases of a novel immunodeficiency disease were described, the AIDS pandemic has become the world's biggest public health crisis. In order to end this epidemic, scientists have been trying to develop a vaccine. However, countless failures have smashed their hopes again and again.

Hip new treatment wafts its way to arthritis sufferers

HAMBURG: Rose hips may provide an effective alternative treatment for sufferers of crippling rheumatoid arthritis, according to new research by scientists in Germany and Denmark.

IN BRIEF (Page 19)

Life Culture

Drawing stories from a deep well of real-life experience

The life of Liu Defang, a storyteller from Central China's Hubei Province, is as dramatic as his immense collection of folktales, legends and jokes.

Unearthing family roots

In Peter B.C. Huang's vision, a Chinese person will be able to discover his or her ancestral line going back several centuries just by typing their surname into a website. He may be talking about the future, maybe several decades later, but he's already working on this goal.