Apple Partners with O2

Apple's iPhone officially has a phone company partner in the UK. After weeks of rumors, Apple announced Tuesday that O2 -- the largest UK mobile phone operator -- would be its exclusive wireless carrier there.

The UK launch is scheduled to take place on Friday, November 9, with iPhones sold through Apple and O2 stores, as well as through 1,300 Carphone Warehouse locations.

The price for the 8-GB model will be £269 including VAT. Customers can choose to transfer their current mobile phone numbers, whether with O2 or another carrier. An 18-month contract will include unlimited data. According to news reports, Apple will receive 10 percent of usage revenue.

Source: newsfactor.com

Bharti Airtel and Huawei Deal

ellular major Bharti Airtel has awarded a 150 million-dollar deal to Chinese vendor Huawei for building and managing GSM mobile infrastructure for its Sri Lankan operations.

Huawei will deploy comprehensive 2G and 3H network for Bharti Airtel Lanka, the subsidiary of Bharti Airtel.

Airtel has signed three-year deal managed networks deal for its Lanka operations with Huawei Technologies and it includes telecom applications and software.

With the network deal in place, customers in Sri Lanka can look forward to a host of products and services at an affordable price from Airtels vast portfolio, Bharti Airtel said.

Bharti Airtel was recently awarded the licence to provide 2G and 3G mobile services in Sri Lanka. Under the agreement, Huawei will deploy and manage Airtels core network, Node-Bs and BTSs and comprehensive end-to-end 2G/3G network solutions, it said.

According to Sanjay Nandrajog, Executive Director, International Operations & Managed Services, Bharti Airtel, "Bharti Airtel is committed to creating a mobile network and offering 2G and 3G services to customers in Sri Lanka. Huawei has established credentials as a global company producing high quality products and solutions."

Max Yang, CEO, Huawei India said, "We look forward to continuing this strategic partnership with Bharti Airtel by providing innovative and customer-oriented solutions and services including wireless solutions.

Source: dnaindia.com

American Express to sell international banking unit

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AXP59.35, +1.15, +2.0%) said it will get $300 million plus the net asset value of American Express Bank in cash, which would have totaled around $860 million at June 30.

In addition it expects to realize roughly the net asset value of a subsidiary that issues investment certificates to the bank's customers. That should be worth an additional $212 million and will come through dividend payments and a further payment from Standard Chartered (UK:STAN: news, chart, profile) after 18 months.

"Today's agreement reflects our strategic focus on the high-growth, high-return payments businesses that have been driving our performance in recent years," said CEO Kenneth Chenault.

The sale won't include any of its card or travel businesses.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008 and should have a roughly break-even impact on earnings, though this will be spread across several quarters. In the current quarter, American Express expects to take a charge of $50 million.

American Express Bank's operations include correspondent banking -- where it provides services to banks without a local presence -- and private banking in 47 countries.

Standard Chartered, which focuses on emerging markets and Asia, said the deal will double the size of its dollar clearing business as well as providing the group with direct euro and yen clearing operations.

In addition American Express Bank's $22.5 billion of assets under management will kick-start Standard Chartered's recently launched private banking business and provide branch licenses in India and Taiwan.

"This acquisition turbo-charges our plan for private banking by two to three years," CEO Peter Sands told analysts on a conference call.

He added it also gives the bank a foothold in Egypt and Kazakhstan and will improve its ability to service European corporate clients through offices in Paris and Frankfurt.

Shares in American Express climbed 0.3% in early Wall Street trading. See Market Snapshot.

Shares in Standard Chartered remained solidly higher after the announcement, standing up 3.4% amid a broader rally for the banking sector in London. See London Markets.

Cubillas Ding, an analyst with Celent, said the deal appears to be a defense against the likes of UBS (UBS:

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CS64.54, +0.74, +1.2%) and Citigroup Inc. (C:

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C46.65, +0.62, +1.3%) , which are focusing their private banking operations on Asia.

"This response is therefore decidedly required to both defend and grow in Asia, and to avoid playing difficult catch-up scenario," Ding said.

Standard Chartered said it expects to generate pretax costs savings in excess of $100 million a year from 2009 onward and added the deal should boost earnings per share in 2009, the first full year of ownership.

"American Express Bank's balance sheet is highly liquid and its income is predominantly fee-based. This is a transaction which has compelling strategic and financial logic and is management accretive," Sands said.
Source: www.marketwatch.com

3 SEZs cleared by GOVT.

The government on Tuesday gave formal clearances to three IT special economic zones (SEZs) in Navi Mumbai promoted by Mukesh Ambani and another by Tata Consultancy Services but deferred decision on all proposals for Uttar Pradesh.

The go-ahead was given at a meeting of commerce ministry's Board of Approval (BOA) on SEZs, which took up 19 proposals for consideration and decided to extend formal approvals to 10 of them.

"Three IT SEZs in Navi Mumbai and have been granted formal clearances," commerce secretary G.K. Pillai, who is also the chairperson of BOA, told reporters here.

"All proposals for setting up SEZs in Uttar Pradesh have been deferred since they did not have the possession of the land. Also, there was no official from the state government present," Pillai added.

Besides the three Navi Mumbai SEZs, other prominent ones that received official nod were those of Tata Consultancy Services in Gujarat and another from Gujarat Industrial Development Corp.

Pillai said the board has so far given formal approvals to 386 SEZs out of which 149 were notified. He said an investment of Rs.477 billion ($11.5 billion) has already been made in SEZs, providing direct employment to over 40,000 people.

The BOA chairman indicated that the government may soon reject as many as 100 SEZ proposals that had been given in-principle approvals but its promoters had failed to obtain their respective state government's approvals.

"However, they can re-apply and put in fresh application for the government to consider. They are free to apply," said Pillai.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

Aligarh Muslim University - UPDATE

The Aligarh Muslim University, one of India's oldest universities, is in the news once again for the wrong reasons. On September 16, at around 10 pm, BSc II year student Mazhar Nayeem was shot dead. He was a resident of room 10, Mumtaz House at the Aftab Hall of Residence.

Some unidentified people shot Nayeem at point-blank range and fled. Like many previous killings in AMU, it is not known who killed Nayeem and why.

Students close to Nayeem say he was not involved in any controversy, did not have any love affair; there was no known rivalry in his family in the Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh. The boy was gentle, religious, and had a small friend circle of like-minded students.

Thus, in many ways, this murder resembles a series of murders in the recent past in AMU -- a residential university which is home to 25,000 students in the north Indian town of Aligarh, about 125 km from the national capital New Delhi.

In April, two undergraduate students were killed in separate incidents. The murders were then linked to the ongoing process of empanelment of the new vice-chancellor as the then vice-chancellor Naseem Ahmad had completed his five-year term.

Nayeem's murder was followed by mass violence on the campus on Monday. Angry students burnt the vice-chancellor's home, the proctor's office and other university property.

The students' anger and frustration mounted because before Nayeem's murder, a Class IX girl was allegedly raped by some non-teaching employees of the girls' hostel on September 8. Despite protests, no action was taken against the alleged rapists.

The administration allegedly tried to cover up the incident, but the girl students broke out of the hostel on September 12 and staged a demonstration before the VC's office. Only wide media coverage persuaded the vice-chancellor to institute an inquiry, that too headed by a male, which is in violation of Supreme Court's directives.

Source: rediff.com

Russia and China worried by Iran attack talk

Russia and China expressed alarm on Tuesday over comments by France's foreign minister raising the spectre of war with Iran, and Washington said diplomacy was key to ending a standoff with Tehran over its nuclear programme.

Minister Bernard Kouchner, his comments clearly testing the resilience of a coalition of major powers seeking to curb Iran's ambitions, sought to play down his weekend remarks, saying they had been meant as a warning against war.

"I do not want it to be said that I am a warmonger!" he told Le Monde newspaper, days before the five U.N. Security Council permanent members, including Russia and China, and Germany were due to meet to discuss possible new sanctions against Tehran.

"My message was a message of peace, of seriousness and of determination," the paper quoted Kouchner as saying on his plane as he headed to Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear at a joint news briefing with Kouchner that his remarks had disturbed a Kremlin, like China, less inclined to sanctions than the West.

"We are worried by reports that there is serious consideration being given to military action in Iran," Lavrov said. "That is a threat to a region where there are already grave problems in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Washington, which itself has kept open the possibility of armed force if diplomacy fails, made clear it had no interest in military embroilment at this stage. At the same time, it seemed at pains to dismiss suggestions of disunity among the powers.

"We believe that there is a diplomatic solution," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "We are working with the French and the rest of the EU (European Union) community in order to pressure Iran to comply with their obligations under the U.N. Security Council regulations."

Source: uk.reuters.com

Japanese PM candidate Vows to Stay Away from Controversial Shrine

The campaign to succeed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who announced his intention to resign earlier this week, is now officially down to two candidates, and their comments have already provided some clues to what Japan's post-Abe foreign policy might look like. Catherine Makino reports from Tokyo.

Yasuo Fukuda (file photo)

The former chief cabinet secretary, 71-year-old Yasuo Fukuda, appears to be the leading candidate to replace Mr. Abe. His opponent is the former foreign minister and current leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, 66-year-old Taro Aso.

Fukuda is a political moderate, who says his aim is to create warm relations with Japan's neighbors, especially China and South Korea. Aso, a conservative, has annoyed China in the past with disparaging remarks.

Japan's relations with the two countries deteriorated badly during the tenure of Mr. Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. A major reason was Mr. Koizumi's insistence on making regular visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 14 convicted war criminals among Japan's 2.5 million war dead. Japan's neighbors see the shrine and the visits as glorification of the country's militaristic past.

On Saturday, Fukuda said prime ministers should not visit the shrine, and said he would not do so if elected. He suggested removing the irritant of Yasukuni altogether by building a new memorial.

He says he supports an alternative place to honor the soldiers and civilians who died during World War II. He says there should be one centralized memorial, but he would need public support for this.

Aso has defended Mr. Koizumi's visits to the shrine in the past and hinted he might do the same. He was circumspect Saturday when asked what he would do if elected.

He says his thoughts are the same as he stated in a recent newspaper interview. Just because a memorial has been built, he says, does not mean that it will not disappear.

Both candidates say they will support an extension of the Japanese navy's support mission for U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan. Mr. Abe has also fought for an extension of the mission, in which Japanese ships in the Indian Ocean provide fuel for U.S. and other coalition forces.

The extension is opposed by the main opposition, the Democratic Party, which controls the upper house of the Japanese parliament. A survey by the Asahi Shimbun this week shows that the public is also opposed to the mission, with 45 percent against and only 35 percent in favor.

Both candidates say they support Japan's hard line against North Korea. Pyongyang wants normalized relations with Japan, but the Japanese have demanded more details about Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents during the Cold War.

Aso said Japan could not engage in a dialogue with North Korea "without pressure." Fukuda said Japan's basic stance should not change, but he suggested that Tokyo should try harder to explain its position to Pyongyang.

Most factions of the ruling party, of which both men are members, have already pledged their support to Fukuda, and opinion polls also show that the public prefers him.

Sources

SCO files Chapter 11 bankruptcy

The SCO Group Inc., just one month after being dealt a crippling blow in its legal offensive against IBM and advocates of the freely distributed Linux operating system, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday.

The small Lindon company's bankruptcy filing came on the eve of a trial -- which was to have started Monday -- over the remainder of its controversial intellectual property lawsuit against Novell Inc. News of SCO's bankruptcy sent its shares skidding more than 43 percent or 28 cents to close at 37 cents on Friday. The company had hit a five-year high of nearly $25 a share in 2003 shortly after it announced it sued IBM.

Friday's bankruptcy filing, which has the effect of staying all pending litigation including Monday's trial, came after a federal judge last month found Novell, and not SCO, owns the copyrights to Unix.

That ruling undermined SCO's long-held claims that IBM stole code from Unix and put it into Linux. SCO also was ordered to remit to Novell a portion of the fees it collected from selling Unix licenses to Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.

Monday's trial would have examined whether SCO had the authority to collect Unix license fees and how much it would have to pay Novell for licensing fees it collected over the past few years.

But SCO's bankruptcy petition came as little surprise to some, and in fact, reflects what one Linux advocate describes as "the last throes of a battle that has long since been lost."

"The bankruptcy filing wasn't a surprise to anyone. The real question is: Will there be cash to get?" said James Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium formed to foster the Linux operating system. In its bankruptcy filing, SCO listed assets of between $1 million and $100 million, and liabilities of between $1 million and $100 million.

"It's not surprising that the lion's share of SCO's debts are legal bills," Zemlin said.

The Florida law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, which is representing SCO in its legal battle against IBM and others, is listed among the Lindon company's 20 largest unsecured creditors.

Other creditors include: New York legal services company Amici LLC; SCO's former venture capital provider Canopy Group; and a slew of tech companies including Sun Microsystems, Microsoft Licensing, Veritas Software, Intel Corp., Fujitsu Services and Unisys Corp.

Another Linux Foundation executive, Don Kohn, says SCO may face the possibility of being forced into an involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition to liquidate its assets depending on how aggressive its creditors and Novell are in their debt recovery attempts.

Novell declined to comment on its next move.

"We'll be evaluating our options for pursuing our interests in this matter," said Kevan Barney, spokesman for Novell.

By filing bankruptcy, SCO may buy some time to negotiate with creditors and obtain debtor-in-possession financing for its debts.

In a news release Friday, SCO said its board of directors "unanimously determined that Chapter 11 reorganization is in the best long-term interest of SCO and its subsidiaries, as well as its customers, shareholders, and employees."

"We want to assure our customers and partners that they can continue to rely on SCO products, support and services for their business critical operations," said Darl McBride, president and CEO of SCO Group.

"Chapter 11 reorganization provides the company with an opportunity to protect its assets during this time while focusing on building our future plans," he said.

Subject to court approval, SCO and its subsidiaries will use the cash flow from their consolidated operations to meet capital needs during its reorganization.

SCO has filed a series of court documents to ensure that it will be able to maintain all of its commitments to its customers including paying its vendors and retaining various advisors.

But Kohn questioned if the company will survive the bankruptcy filing in the long run.

"Even if they emerge from Chapter 11, I can't imagine anyone wanting to risk their business by buying SCO's software," Kohn said.

Zemlin said the brunt of SCO's bankruptcy filing will likely be borne by its customers and its 150-plus employees.

"SCO customers will have to decide whether to continue to use its technology, or migrate to an alternative in the long run," he said.

SCO officials declined to comment beyond the news release on Friday.

Sources