By outward investment appearances, the purchase by Spanish financial giant BBVA of Texas-based Laredo National Bancshares for $850 million this year was a typical bank acquisition.

Financially, the deal weighed in at about three times book value and 16 times earnings. But strategically the transaction represented much more. With the purchase, BBVA gained 35 branches in South Texas and 110,000 new customers – more than 93,000 of whom are Hispanic. And that connection to a historically under-served market, which experts project will have growing influence and affluence, was just the latest in a string of deals by global financial giants all seeking to get a foothold in the market.

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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a history of using alternatives to mainstream media to get his message out – but he’s now breaking new ground by writing a monthly column for exclusive distribution by ethnic news organizations.

The column is translated into multiple languages by New California Media, an association of more than 700 ethnic news outlets that is holding its sixth annual awards banquet in Sacramento tonight.

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The lender is Hipotecaria Nacional, one of several Mexican mortgage firms that have followed millions of workers across the border.

Industry officials say immigrants’ dollars might help finance the flourishing Mexican mortgage market and provide them with a place back home. It is also a new way for Mexico to funnel part of the $13 billion yearly flow of remittances into tangible investments.

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“Globalization is the environment in which we live. We’ve got one world. Get used to it. Make the most of it. Debating globalization? It’s like asking fish to debate the merits of living in the sea,” McNamee writes in his new book, The New Normal.

The United States may be the most powerful country in the world, but we can’t even control the value of our currency, much less the ebb and flow of world trade. And the truth is, the pain of globalization has been relatively small in comparison to the benefits,” McNamee writes.

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A Duke University expert on Asian film says that global flow in the film industry has meant an increase in the ‘Asianization’ of Hollywood films to match the long-standing influence of Holywood films on Asia.

Professor Leo Ching, chair of the Asian and African Languages and Literature Department, says that remakes of Asian films that are big hits in the United States often reflect the influence of Hollywood on Asian directors.

“Hollywood is not being taken over by Asian cinema. In fact, it’s the reverse. It only works because of the Hollywoodization of Asian cinema,” he says.

After all, says Ching, Asian audiences have been viewing U.S. films for 20 to 30 years and have acquired a taste for them. Seventy-eight percent of the Thailand box office is Hollywood films. It’s an astonishing 65 percent of the box office in Japan.

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C’est mon opinion, et je la partage.

It’s not often you see French in American newspapers, unless it’s a conservative rail against our longtime ally France. Little of that would be printable in a family newspaper, though.

But what about, “nom de guerre”? Do you know what it means?

Reader John Appeldorn of Akron called recently after an article involving Yasser Arafat referred to him as Abu Ammar, his “nom de guerre.”

Appeldorn suggested the Akron Beacon Journal stick to words and phrases that regular people can understand. He had seen the phrase before in the paper and always wondered what it meant.

Indeed. A close reader of the Beacon Journal would have seen that French phrase three times in the past year and 57 times in the last 20 years. It’s been used in a variety of ways, but never has it been defined.

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In the current Chinese cyberspace, bloggers may not be as loud as their American counterparts. But they are potentially certainly no less subversive to the dominant paradigm. Hope will be born from their whispers.

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In the field of law, Japan certainly cannot yet be said to be sufficiently open vis-a-vis other countries. In order to improve this situation, a law-and-ordinance translation group set up within the government’s Office for Promotion of Justice System Reform has unveiled a project to translate legislation into English, with priority given to basic laws such as the Civil Code.

At present, government ministries and agencies and private organizations engage in the translation of some legislation, but separately and without any consistency. The working group proposes, through government involvement, to formulate and unify the basic rules of translation, such as what terms and expressions should be used, to ensure that translations are both accurate and easy to understand.

The translation of laws and ordinances into foreign languages would facilitate international business and promote investment by foreign companies. It would also help support the establishment of legal systems in developing countries, especially those in Asia, introduce and increase knowledge of Japanese legislation in other countries, and familiarize foreign residents with life in Japan.

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I hate to be the bearer of good news, because only pessimists are regarded as intellectually serious, but we’re in the 11th month of the most prosperous year in human history. Last week, the World Bank released a report showing that global growth “accelerated sharply” this year to a rate of about 4 percent.

Best of all, the poorer nations are leading the way. Some rich countries, like the United States and Japan, are doing well, but the developing world is leading this economic surge. Developing countries are seeing their economies expand by 6.1 percent this year – an unprecedented rate – and, even if you take China, India and Russia out of the equation, developing world growth is still around 5 percent. As even the cautious folks at the World Bank note, all developing regions are growing faster this decade than they did in the 1980s ‘and ’90s

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It is no surprise that Wal-Mart once again dominates the list of the world’s top 100 retailers. What is unusual about this year’s list is the global emergence of US retailers, the acceleration of globalization, the accelerated growth in categories such as hardlines specialty stores and specialty apparel, as well as the dramatic distinction in growth strategies between the fastest-growing US and European retailers.

The 1999 Top 100 Retailers Worldwide, compiled and analyzed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world’s largest professional services organization, indicates that while US-based retailers tend to be the biggest (comprising seven of the top ten), the largest European retailers are more global, have a strong incentive to invest in new markets and therefore, are becoming more cosmopolitan than their US counterparts.

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The main case pivots around the long-running dispute over the use of the name Budweiser. The Czech Republic, a newly incorporated EU member, is seeking geographic indication (GI) status for the name of its ancient and prized lager.

Most of the world knows the name Budweiser from the giant American brand owned by Anheuser-Busch, which has sold its product under that name since 1876. The US company sold 9.9 million hectoliters of lager last year, compared to the Czech group’s 1.2 million.

The United States went to the WTO in April 2003 complaining that Anheuser-Busch had lost sales because some European countries had allowed the Czech beer to be sold under the Budweiser name. The Czechs argued that they were entitled to the name, and that their beer should be protected as a GI product because it is the only one still brewed in Budweis.

Since Budweis is the German name for Ceske Budejovice, the Czech brewer would not be able to claim protection for its Budweiser brand should this ruling become official.

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Tegic’s T9 Text Input version 7.2 offers enhanced multi-lingual support, which makes it easier for users to alternate between languages when texting. It is not uncommon for users to switch back and forth between languages when speaking or writing to friends and family. Yet mobile users currently have to manually select or change the language in which they want to text in order to do so. The new multi-lingual enhancement changes this by recognising the language a user is typing in and automatically predicting the word in the language the user is most likely to want.

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An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian who was drunk on Scottish whisky, followed closely by Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles; treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines.

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Wharton Marketing Conference panel of speakers addresses Hispanic marketing segmentation by national origin and level of acculturation, strategic marketing initiatives, Latin American competition, ‘unbanked’ Hispanics, assimilation, shopping habits and other challenges.

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And speaking of ketchup, have you heard the contagious tune “The Ketchup Song (Hey Hah)” by Spain’s “Las Ketchup.”

Elroy Ness, a resident at Sage Towers in Billings, kindled a friendship with a French woman while stationed near Paris during World War II. After he was discharged, they lost contact and he married and raised six children.

Then, after his wife’s death several years ago, the pair reignited their correspondence with the help of translators from West High’s French classes

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