Hong Kong - Panic died down Thursday among customers of Hong Kong's Bank of East Asia who a day earlier had rushed to withdraw their savings amid rumours the bank was facing collapse.

Long queues of hundreds of customers died away Thursday morning after Hong Kong's chief executive, the head of its central bank and the bank's chairman all insisted the institution was not in difficulty.

Text messages widely circulated from Monday said the bank was on the brink of collapse, sparking a rush to withdraw funds from the bank's 130 branches in Hong Kong.

A recent research note issued by Macquarie Securities has clarified that the short lending rate by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will be kept unchanged at 9.0% at the next policy review on 24th October. 

Earlier, Macquarie had forecast an increase of a quarter percentage point in the repo rate to 9.25%. However it had said that a revision in the forecast has been done following the global financial problems. 

Berlin  - The head of a German public bank, KfW, has described how staff frantically snatched 20 billion euros' worth of planned swaps away from Lehman Brothers on Monday last week, the day the US investment bank failed.

Chief executive Ulrich Schroeder, 56, was testifying behind closed doors to a parliamentary inquiry in Berlin, but participants leaked details to the press.

The legislators were investigating how one future-trading settlement went awry, with KfW transferring cash to Lehman and receiving nothing in return a week ago.

Oslo- Norway's central bank kept its key lending rate unchanged at 5.75 per cent Wednesday, citing the "unusually high degree of uncertainty" in wake of the recent global financial turbulence.

Norges Bank deputy governor Jan F Qvigstad noted that "there are wide daily swings in money market rates, equity prices, the krone exchange rate and oil and commodity prices."

"It is difficult to determine how long this pressure will last and the effects on inflation and activity in the Norwegian economy. It is therefore appropriate to keep the interest rate unchanged now," he added in a statement.

New York, Sept. 24 : The Bush administration''s 700 billion dollar plan to bail out the American financial industry is being received with a great deal of skepticism.

Influential lawmakers in both the Republican and Democratic parties have demanded changes in the White House-backed proposal, and conservative Republicans have recoiled at the prospect of federal intervention into private capital markets.

Sen. Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said on Tuesday, "What they have sent us is not acceptable."

Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, said, "We have got to look at some alternatives."

Hong Kong  - Panicked customers queued up Wednesday to withdraw their savings from branches of the Bank of East Asia in Hong Kong as rumours circulated that the bank was facing financial problems.

The rumours were categorically denied by the bank's management, which nevertheless had to extend business hours by 30 minutes to cope with the queues of anxious customers.

The Bank of East Asia, owned by one of Hong Kong's wealthiest families, blamed "malicious rumours" that it said had been circulating in the market since Monday and questioned the bank's financial stability.