Hong Kong  - Unions representing bank workers in Hong Kong were Monday planning protest action over mass job cuts that they believe could see 1,000 employees in the city fired.

Union representatives say they have information suggesting that around 1,000 of the 18,000 people employed by HSBC in Hong Kong will lose their jobs as early as this week.

Tokyo  - Japan's key machinery orders fell 6 per cent in 2008 from a year before to 11.6 trillion yen (126.32 billion dollars), the Cabinet Office said Monday.

Core machinery orders, which are considered a key indicator for corporate capital spending about six months ahead, have been "drastically decreasing," the Cabinet Office said.

Tokyo  - Japan's current account surplus shrank by 34.3 per cent in 2008 from a year before, the fastest fall on record, because slowing exports and import growth narrowed the trade surplus, the Finance Ministry said Monday.

The nation's current account surplus dropped for the first time in three years to 16.28 trillion yen (177.26 billion dollars) in 2008. It was the largest drop since 1986, when the comparable data became first available.

Hong Kong  - Membership prices for elite clubs, symbols of prestige and wealth in Hong Kong, have crashed because of the widening global economic slump, a news report said Monday.

Dealers in second-hand memberships for clubs such as the Hong Kong Golf Club and Hong Kong Cricket Club say prices are down by as much as 30 per cent to 45 per cent, according to the South China Morning Post.

Washington  - The US Senate spent much of Saturday debating the economic stimulus package on which lawmakers had reached a compromise a day earlier in a bid to pull the United States out of recession.

A bipartisan group of senators put forward a tentative deal late Friday on a 780-billion-dollar recovery plan. The compromise would strip some 150 billion dollars out of an earlier version of the legislation before the Senate.

Dhaka- Bangladesh has recorded a rise in remittance inflow, from its over 6 million expatriate workers, despite a global recession that forces massive job cuts around the world, central bank officials said Saturday.

The South Asian country received over 860 million dollars in remittances in January, the highest in the last seven months and almost 22 per cent more than the same month in 2008, according to a provisional estimate released by Bangladesh Bank.

Bangladeshi expatriates, most of whom are employed in oil-rich Middle East countries, sent home over 710 million dollars in January 2008.