What were to be summit meetings of East Asian leaders have collapsed completely as a tropical storm bears down on the summit site. VOA's Heda Bayron reports from the Philippine city of Cebu, a meeting of the Chinese and Japanese foreign ministers is all that saved the event from complete failure.

"Singapore's multi billion-dollar campaign to develop a biomedical sector and create new sources of revenue is failing to yield any significant payoffs so far," two prominent World Bank economists said. The economists, authors of a new book about industrial policy in East Asian cities, said Singapore has only a 50/50 chance of succeeding, but the move is a gamble it must take to maintain economic prosperity in the face of growing competition from low-cost neighbors such as China.

Strong economic growth in East Asia helped lift some 25 million people out of severe poverty in the first three quarters of 2006.