HIGHLIGHTS


ECONOMY – EU-CHINA

EU Rejects China's Bid For Market Economy Status
The European Union has refused China's bid to be recognized as a market economy after an investigation by the E.U. Commission concluded the Chinese government still micro-manages the economy, an E.U. spokeswoman said Monday.
'To arrive at that position we need to establish there is no state interference,' said Arancha Gonzalez, spokeswoman for the Commission's trade department.
In the past year, China has been lobbying hard for the so-called market economy status, which would make it harder for other countries to accuse it of flooding the market with cheap exports and level penalties against it.
In a report submitted to the Chinese authorities, the E.U. has also requested that China install and abide by corporate governance practices and accounting rules in order that accounting information be reliable enough to be consulted when China is accused of violating trade agreements. Laws governing bankruptcy and property rights will have to be imposed and implemented. Finally, China's banking sector must be freed of government control.
Until it fulfils these criteria, China will remain a non-market economy. That official label means its local prices and costs won't be used to determine whether it is dumping cheap exports. Instead, the E.U. will use prices and costs in a third country that is a market economy to determine whether China is guilty of dumping and calculate anti-dumping penalties accordingly.
The E.U. currently has 32 anti-dumping measures in force and 22 anti-dumping investigations going on against China, which is considered a non-market economy. Last year, 0.5% of Chinese exports to the E.U. were subject to anti-dumping charges.
The most important products by import volume subject to measures are bicycles and bicycle parts, fluorescent lamps, dead-burned magnesium and fluorspar, a commission statement said.
The U.S. has imposed anti-dumping duties on textiles, televisions, and wooden bedroom furniture - buoyant sectors that accounted for nearly one-fifth of Chinese exports last year.
Write; by LuisB, June 04

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AIRLINE INDUSTRY – TAIWAN

China Air Interested In Airbus A380 Planes
Taiwan's China Airlines Ltd may buy Airbus's super-jumbo A380 planes for medium to long-haul passenger and cargo services, the Economic Daily News reports, citing China Air Chairman Y.L. Lee.
Lee made the remark during a visit to Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, the report says.
While China Airlines may consider introducing A380s to its fleet, the company has set no timetable for such a plan, the report adds.
Source; ROC media, June 04
Write; by LuisB

Picture; Airbus A380

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DIGITAL DIVIDE – SOUTH PACIFIC

InternetNZ to aid Pacific ICT growth
InternetNZ and Unesco have launched an initiative to boost the use of information and communication technology in the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tokelau.
The New Zealand National Commission for Unesco, the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Apia office and InternetNZ have drafted a memorandum of understanding to form the Pacific Internet Partners initiative.
The partner countries were chosen because of their strong links to New Zealand.
Laurence Zwimpfer, the National Commission deputy chairman, said the development of ICT skills in the Pacific was regionally important, and would be aided by the collaboration.
The initiative will see support this year for a Vanuatu conference, fostering of the establishment of national ICT professional organisations, and the establishment of internship and mentoring exchange programmes between New Zealand and the nations involved.
InternetNZ president Keith Davidson said members had wanted to get such an initiative off the ground for some time.
"By combining forces with UNDP, who are on the ground in these countries, and with Unesco's influence, we'll be getting significantly more bang for our buck."
Joyce Yu, of UNDP's Apia office, said the collaborative effort would allow better use of resources for meeting the UN's Millennium goals.
Don Hollander, chairman of Wellington's 20/20 Trust, who recently returned to New Zealand after two years working in Samoa on UNDP projects, said the agreement had been structured to let other interested parties join.
Hollander said Unesco New Zealand wanted to be involved in developing ICT skills in the Pacific.
Source; New Zealand Herald, June 04
Write; by Richard Pamatatau
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FOCUS


INTERNET – MARKET PERSPECTIVE

Examining the Twists and Turns of the Internet Bubble
Roger Lowenstein begins his book, Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing with the quote, “Set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.” If only Wall Street could have appreciated a good metaphor as much as it appreciated earnings statements. Instead, the real life characters in Lowenstein’s cautionary tale spend the 1990s chasing passing ship after passing ship and disregarding the stars. The outcome would prove disastrous.

The author of two best-selling books, Buffett: The Making of An American Capitalist and When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management and current SmartMoney columnist, Lowenstein takes readers on the fateful journey through the stock market’s late century rise and subsequent slide into the new millennium. The author crafts an easy-to-read, well-researched tale that unfolds like a horror story. The villains - corporate America’s executives and their posse - get bolder at every turn and the main character - the stockholder - falls prey to the inevitable outcome.

Early in the book, Lowenstein lays out the ingredients that create this fateful cocktail. For more than half a century following the Great Depression, the stock market had fallen out of favor. But a recession took hold in the 1970s and stock prices fell. The “cheap” public companies were then taken over - many times by rivals in the same industry - by corporate raiders who purchased a majority share from company stockholders. By the mid-1980s, takeovers had morphed into leveraged buyouts (LBOs), or buyouts financed by debt. No publicly traded company was safe, and the groundwork for what Lowenstein calls “the great bubble” began to take shape.

“To escape a buyout, CEOs felt they had to raise their share price. This was a significant departure. Previously, stock prices had been seen as a long-term barometer,” writes Lowenstein. “A new phrase crept into the argot: ‘shareholder value.’”

Unfortunately, CEOs, whose job it was to maximize shareholder value, began to distance themselves from the phrase’s true meaning. According to Lowenstein, the culprit was the stock option. Although stock options existed prior to World War II, they entered the scene in a reenergized way in the early 1990s.

By giving company leaders a substantial amount of company stock, so went the reasoning, CEOs would become shareholders in their own firms, and would then behave like owner-managers. Hindsight proved this thought process incorrect. Since CEOs were not investing their own money, they assumed no risk. Writes Lowenstein: “A poker player will be aggressive when he is playing with ‘house money.’

“Execs intent on ‘managing’ their stocks became hypersensitive to a single number: quarterly earnings per share. From an economic perspective, quarterly numbers are virtually irrelevant because it typically takes years - not months - for businesses to bear fruit…. The game was to keep earnings rising, but never by too much, so as to save more for the next quarter,” Lowenstein writes.

Accounting statements became less and less transparent. And as financiers got more and more clever - and as they walked the line between creative accounting and illegalities - they found themselves rewarded, notes Lowenstein. In 1999, Andrew Fastow, Enron’s CFO, was awarded one of CFO Magazine’s prized Excellence awards for pioneering “unique financing techniques.” A year before, Scott Sullivan, WorldCom’s CFO, had garnered an “Excellence award.” A year later, in 2000, Tyco International’s Mark Swartz joined Fastow and Sullivan as Excellence award winners.

“That all three winners were eventually indicted testifies to Wall Street’s weakness for (too-) clever financiers. And it hints at a serious problem with creative accounting: it can lead to outright violations and fraud,” writes Lowenstein.

Making a quarterly number isn’t exactly the formula for long-term or enduring shareholder value, but Lowenstein argues that investors - especially professional investors - wanted to be mislead. “Fund families such as Janus, Van Wagoner, and Putman would stuff their portfolios with Cisco, Qualcomm, JDS Uniphase - the hottest stocks - which purchases would drive up the stocks and thus the fund prices higher,” Lowenstein says.

Lowenstein dots his historical narrative with juicy behind-the-scenes details from memos, meetings, and events. They lend a third dimension to Origins of the Crash. One such detail comes from a 1998 speech SEC chairman Arthur Levitt gave at the Stern School of Business at New York University. Levitt told students that “trickery is employed to obscure actual financial volatility.”

If Levitt knew this in 1998, why didn’t the SEC do something? Because the SEC was understaffed and it couldn’t catch up with “corporate miscreants” until many quarters later if at all, explains Lowenstein. “The lack of an effective deterrent, combined with the perverse structure of options, meant that, the rhetoric of pay-for-performance notwithstanding, many executives had an incentive to cheat,” he notes.

Although Lowenstein spends an entire chapter chronicling Enron (which he calls the “single corporation [that] could represent the corruptions of shareholder value”) and much of the following chapter deconstructing WorldCom, he is quick to point out that these companies were not alone in their misdeeds. He offers readers several synopses of other questionable dealings, including General Electric and its star CEO, Jack Welch; Tyco and its acquisition-crazy CEO, Dennis Kozlowski; Xerox; Webvan; CMGI, an Internet incubator; and AOL’s merger with Time Warner.

Along the way, Lowenstein takes issue with analysts, bankers, auditors, lawyers, politicians, venture capitalists, the financial press and investors. In many ways, they all conspired to look the other way. Groupthink prevailed. Lowenstein uses the case of Priceline to make this point: “By 1999, Priceline, which resold airline tickets but owned neither gates nor planes, was worth almost as much as the entire, tangible airline industry…. The bizarre yet inescapable conclusion was that according to the mathematics extant at the turn of the millennium, a dotcom stock was worth more than an actual, cash-generating business.”

Although the stories in Lowenstein’s books are not new, his ability to flesh them out with firsthand accounts and research leaves the reader with an undeniable feeling: what happened to the market at the dawn of the new millennium was years in the making and the manic “virus” of the times spread far and wide.

In the aftermath of the great bubble, what is left is a savvier public, beefed up government regulations and an SEC with as much bite as bark. For example, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 aims to reign in the accounting profession. CEO compensation packages are becoming more realistic. Those who sit on boards of directors are now held accountable. According to Lowenstein, ten underwriting firms were fined $1.4 billion for their part in the corruption and analysts are now barred from promoting their firms’ IPO’s. Many of the corporate executives who created glowing quarterly earnings face jail time.

Yet, has anything been learned from these events? Perhaps Lowenstein’s notes on the last page of his book, say it best: “It is a chief lesson of the scandals that the culture of a community, more than any laws, provides the moral determinant for its behavior.”
Source; University of Pennsylvania, June 04

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MEDIA – INTERNET

Forget Radio, Tune In to Net
Web music broadcasting is the best thing to happen to radio since FM.
The concept has many names: Web radio, webcasting, streaming jukeboxes, Internet broadcasts. But the idea is much the same. Music fans "tune in" to various services through their Net-connected PC, where they can hear music from a huge range of genres. And not just the same 20 songs over and over again, like commercial radio. With Internet radio, listeners can tap libraries of millions of songs that would never be broadcast on the airwaves.

MusicMatch music player software, a fine rival to applications like Winamp. A free version of the program offers free streaming - unlike competitors like Napster and Rhapsody. Just keep in mind you have to keep a full-blown application running in the background to use this service.

The stations are fairly basic, with a few nice options: Listeners can skip songs and are alerted to the next artist in the queue. And, like Launchcast, users can create their own station based on their favorite artists. The more you use the service, the better it is at identifying your tastes.
A music store is integrated into the player, making it easy to purchase songs or albums you just heard. You also get an added bonus if you decide to use MusicMatch to store and organize your MP3s - it has some of the best rating and personalization features around. It's just a shame you can't carry the power of that personalization to the online radio features, which would make the whole package the ultimate jukebox.

Radio Free Virgin Lite: Here's a player that lives up to its lite name. It has virtually no features. There's no need to download anything - the Web-based player launches at the click of a button on the homepage. A listener can select from 30-odd channels - some that are very slow to load - and that's it. While the player displays the song title, artist and album cover, there's no countdown, skip button, song history or customization options. While there is a volume adjustment on the player, it didn't work during our test.
Perhaps the only thing going for this service is that it's easy on the ads. There aren't any pop-ups, which is nice. And the audio ads are few and far between, making it easy to listen to a number of songs without interruption.

Winamp Radio: While better known as an MP3 player, Winamp shouldn't be overlooked as an online radio service (in version 5.03c, click the Internet Radio link in the Media Library). It features a diverse collection of free music with superb sound quality.
Listeners can also access several of these stations through the Shoutcast directory. Shoutcast is a Winamp-based streaming audio system. It's also where aspiring DJs can spin their tunes for other listeners.
Scroll through the list of 500 streams and you can find everything from Korean DJs broadcasting blues to Russian pop hits, and find entire symphonies or video-game soundtracks. It's a nice alternative to some of the Net broadcasters that make you join their premium services to access the more obscure music.
You can also see cool information like bit rates and the number of other listeners tuning in. Another cool feature: Right-click on the station and you can bookmark it. No pop-up ads, either.

The drawbacks? Stations are occasionally cut out or are inaccessible, because many of them are run by independent broadcasters. And listeners don't receive much information on each
song beyond artist and title.
Source; Wired, June 04
Write; by Katie Dean

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ECONOMY – US

US: Consumer confidence on the upside
- In June, consumer confidence as measured by the Conference Board index markedly improved, gaining 8.8 points (to 101.9), with current conditions up by 14.3 points (to 104.8) and expectations by 5.2 points (to 100.0).
- Last Friday, the University of Michigan released the final reading of its own index for June, up by 0.4 point versus the preliminary reading. Compared with end May, the headline index was up by 5.4 points, with current conditions gaining 3.9 points over the month and expectations 6.9 points from May to June.
- While the index from the University of Michigan remained in June below the high of January, the index from the Conference Board reached its highest level of 2004, and in fact its highest reading in two years. After a marked rebound in January, both indices lost ground until May. However the fall in the index from the Conference Board index was limited to 4.6 points (from 97.7 in January to 93.1 in May) while the University of Michigan index decreased by 13.6 points (from 103.8 to 90.2).
- Details show that both declines were due to the component for expectations, even if, and contrary to the Conference Board index, the University of Michigan current conditions index also suffered. Regarding the Conference Board, expectations lost 10.5 points from January to May, while the economic outlook index from the University of Michigan declined by 18.5 points.
- Going further into details, it appears that expected business conditions were the main concern. Indeed, the decline recorded by expectations from the University of Michigan was due to an expected deteriorating financial position for just 15%, 85% of the deterioration coming from worse business conditions (especially over next year). Even if more broad-based, the deterioration of expectations according to the Conference Board survey was also mainly caused by business conditions (47%), and to a lesser extent by prospects for labour (31%) and income (22%).
- The University of Michigan provides with deeper details. For instance, it published an index retracing news heard about business conditions. These details show that the main component that drove down the composite index from January to May was "bad news from higher prices". This return of accelerating inflation is also illustrated by the sharp increase in the expected rate of inflation over next year, which is also part of data provided by the University of Michigan. While this expected rate was 2.7% in January, it jumped to 3.3% in June.
- Consumers thus expect inflation to accelerate. The first question to be raised is: Is this bad news? The answer is: No, not at all. When the Fed highlighted the deflation risks (in much softer terms…), one of its goal was to revive inflation expectations. Indeed, deflationary expectations can proved self-fulfilled: if consumers expect prices to go continuously down, this is never time to consume, since products will get cheaper with time; demand is thus contracting, which leads to downward pressure on prices. The marked increase in expected inflation is thus good news since it is an additional illustration that the risk of the deflation is well off the table.
- But does this increased expected inflation could be the sign of inflation actually accelerating? First of all, the sharp rise in oil prices since the beginning of the year surely contributed to the rebound in expected inflation. Second, as shown on the graph on next page, consumers proved particularly bad forecasters for inflation…
- In short, just keep in mind that inflation expectations have risen. In Fed terms, you could say, "the probability, though minor, of a rise in inflation from its low level exceeds that of an unwelcome fall in inflation". In clear, there is currently more risk of inflation accelerating than decelerating. Thus the additional monetary easing bias has to be removed. Something the Fed will start doing as soon as tomorrow, with a "moderate" 25 bp hike.
Source; OECD, June 04


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HIGHLIGHTS


BUSINESS – HEALTH CARE

Sales of Health and Beauty Products to Ethnic Men Surpass $1.4 Billion
Increased knowledge and acceptance of grooming practices by male consumers plays key role.
African American, Hispanic and Asian American men spend more than $1.4 billion on personal care items, including both general-use and ethnic-specific health and grooming products, by 2008, sales in the category are expected to climb to $1.7 billion, experiencing a healthy gain of nearly 20 percent.
Increased magazine and television coverage of men’s grooming issues, from the application of skin creams to proper shaving techniques, have helped grow sales in the ethnic male category and in the men’s grooming category overall. The estimates are currently 84 million African American, Asian, and Hispanic men in the United States.
Men in general tend to be overlooked in the personal care industry – and ethnic males are no exception. But the truth is that ethnic men present a lucrative audience to marketers, and, with the explosive growth of the Hispanic population, can offer opportunities in the overall men’s grooming industry, which of late has been stagnant.
Source; Market Research, June 04
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INTERNET – LINUX

Munich confirms plan to replace Windows with Linux
When Microsoft's UK marketing director Nick Barley opened his company's "Get the Facts Roadshow" in London last week, designed to dispel some of the 'myths' about the Linux operating system, he remarked that supporters of the open source operating system are waging a "Jihad" against his company and its Windows product line.
The metaphor suggests that the software giant is facing a long and bitter struggle against irrational fanatics who are passionately anti-Microsoft.

But there was nothing extreme or irrational about the way in which Munich City Council this week calmly and democratically dealt Microsoft one of the biggest blows it has suffered in its short corporate history. After a year's trial, the City's burghers voted 50-29, in a closed door meeting, to migrate all of its 14,000 Microsoft based desktop computers over to Linux, the Open Office desktop suite, and the open source Mozilla browser.

The contract is not huge - with the initial training and implementation, it is believed to be worth less than €20million - but it is very high profile, with key suppliers on both sides viewing this a key battle in a long war. Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer famously broke off a skiing trip to travel to Munich and offer huge discounts if the City stuck with Microsoft, while IBM and Novell, owner of the Linux operating system supplier Suse, both gave thousands of hours of expertise to help run the pilot. (Even then, Munich admitted to Information Age in January 2004 that the trial had suffered "technical difficulties".)

The end of the trial now means that the contract to supply the systems will now be put out to tender – following the rigorous rules set out for public purchasing by the European Commission. HP, Dell and IBM are expected to be among the bidders.
Throughout Europe this year, a succession of public sector authorities have announced plans to migrate to Linux, but in most cases this has meant moving from Unix servers to Linux servers, often staying with the same hardware supplier. Very few organisations have migrated their desktops to Linux. Many of those evaluated Linux are worried about possible instability, the potential loss of key features in Microsoft's Office Suite, possible file incompatibilities, especially when exchanging documents with trading partners, a lack of skills, and staff resistance.

Microsoft executives dismissed the Munich decision, saying that there are peculiar factors involved and that IBM had helped to drive the decision. Even so, Microsoft is becoming worried – as its Roadshow demonstrates.

Analysts believe Munich is a crucial milestone that will accelerate adoption of Linux on the desktop. IDC has forecast that Linux desktop market share will grow from 3% to 6% from 2004 to 2007. Although Microsoft's share is currently a massive 95%, the loss of 3%-4% share amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars lost in Windows and Office licences. If that share were to fall faster, as Linux proponents believe is likely, then Microsoft would begin to suffer serious financial consequences.
Meanwhile, some journalists have been questioning Microsoft's marketing tactics, suggesting that the Roadshow shows "fear" that businesses will pick up on. But Microsoft believes that in a war like this, it has to take the offensive.
Source: Infoconomy Ltd, June 04
Author: Andrew Lawrence
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INTERNET – SECURITY

AOL employee sold email addresses to spammer
24 June 2004 An employee of America Online (AOL), the world's largest Internet service provider, has been arrested and charged with stealing all 92 million e-mail addresses of AOL customers and selling them on to spammers for an alleged $52,000.
The engineer, Jason Smathers, 24, apparently used the identity of another AOL employee to gain access to the company's list of customer email addresses on a supposedly highly secure database. He also took their telephone numbers, postal codes and the type of credit card they use. Fortunately, credit card numbers are kept on a separate database.
He sold the information to the owner of an Internet gambling site, Sean Dunaway, 21, who wanted to spam the addresses to promote his site. Smathers is also said to have sold the list to others although no details have been disclosed.
The two men are the first to be prosecuted under the new US 'CAN-SPAM' law. It requires a business relationship to exist between the sender and recipient of a commercial email and in this way, aims to make certain types of spam illegal. It also mandates working unsubscribe links in any email.
Under the law, each defendant faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Smathers was caught out when AOL was pursuing a lawsuit against a group of spammers in early 2004. During an interview, it emerged that someone had bought addresses from an AOL employee in order to send spam promoting penis enlargement pills.
Source: Infoconomy Ltd, June 04
Author: Caroline Berdon
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SOFTWARE – LINUX

Iraqis get a taste for Linux
A group of Iraqi computer enthusiasts are advocating the use of the operating system Linux to rebuild their country.
Ashraf Hasson and Hasanen Nawfal are both natives of Baghdad.
Like many 20-somethings, Hasson and Nawfal grew up nurturing passions for computers and for programming.
Both of them are firm believers in open source software. Unlike expensive proprietary software, open-source software can be freely distributed and modified, as long as the modifications are shared with other users.
They are particularly fans of Linux operating system.
These two Linux enthusiasts, though, did not even know one another before the ousting of Saddam Hussein.
But they found each other online, in a Linux forum hosted by Iraqi expatriates, soon after Saddam fell and started thinking about what they could do.
"Every country has a Linux users group except Iraq, so I thought, maybe Iraq deserves to have a Linux users group," said Ashraf Hasson.
"We started sending e-mails, and trying to figure out how to help Iraqi people here to know about Linux, educate them, spread the word. And so we did."

Cost savings
The Iraqi Linux User Group has now been up and running for a little more than a year.
"I wanted to find people to share knowledge with," explained Hasanen Nawfal, "to learn from them, to speak with guys who share my thoughts."
The Iraqi Linux User Group website lists more than 200 members, most of whom are Iraqi expatriates.
They are united in their belief that open-source software like Linux could help their nation.
Its chief advantage is that Linux code is free to use and modify.
To Nabil Suleiman, a member of the Iraqi Linux User Group living in Canada, Linux could mean significant cost savings.
"There is a shortage in power and water supplies, and sewage systems, so the last thing Iraq needs is spending billions of dollars on very expensive and overpriced products, especially software products," he said.
"We believe that Linux can save us lots of money in this field."

Illegal software
But it is about more than just cost for the Iraqi Linux User Group.
The open source enthusiasts believe it could allow Iraqis to build their own home-grown technologies.
"This enables the country to build its own infrastructure based on open source, on open ideas," Ashraf Hasson.
"That might help establish a solid base for Iraqi technology, and help not constrain the country with proprietary software and prevent monopolisation over Iraq by such major companies."
But getting Iraqis to think about Linux is an uphill battle. Most have never touched a computer, let alone thought about what operating system they want to use.
Computer software is now more widely available in Iraq, but little of it open-source.
"Currently, most software in use in Iraq is illegal copies of proprietary software," explained Don Marti editor of the US-based Linux Journal.
Software giants like Microsoft, he said, are happy to hook Iraqis on their software.
"Proprietary software companies are using these illegal copies as a free sample program, and a marketing tool, as they have in other countries."
"When the crackdown comes, and the people in Iraq start having to comply with the licenses for this software, then they're going to be in trouble."
It means Iraqis are going to have to start paying companies like Microsoft, who declined to be interviewed.

Obstacles in the way
Ashraf Hasson of the Iraqi Linux User Group said he would actually welcome tech giants like Microsoft coming into the Iraqi market.
He grudgingly even admitted that the Windows operating system may be OK for "people who want to do basic stuff".
But he is pushing small and medium-sized businesses, and the Iraqi government, to consider running open-source software on their servers.
He is also leading Linux seminars at a couple of Iraq's larger universities.
And Nabil Suleiman in Canada says that some expatriate members of the user group want to open a Linux training centre in Baghdad.
"But it all depends on how the political issues and all the other issues are resolved there," he said.
"I think it will take between two years and five years to stabilise the whole system, and then we can start building on a more stable foundation."
Inside the country, the Iraqi Linux User Group is thinking big. Their ambitious goal is to see every server in the country running Linux a year from now.
Getting there, they face numerous obstacles.
"Security, electricity shortage, poor communications, blurred view of the future, money, bad response from government, lack of resources," explained Hasanen Nawfal, "too many to mention."
Source: BBC News, June 04
Author: by Clark Boyd, is technology correspondent for The World, a BBC World Service and WGBH-Boston co-production

Picture; The US is running various computer-training projects in Iraq

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E-BUSINESS – AFGANISTAN

Overstocking in Afghanistan
When Neelab Kanishka fled Afghanistan for Pakistan with her family in 1989 at the age of 11, the idea of ever returning to her war-torn native land seemed far-fetched.

She could not have conceived in her wildest imagination, Kanishka said, that 15 years later she'd not only be coming back, but also directing one of the nation's largest employers. Nor would she have envisioned her role as envoy of a discount Internet retailer located in, of all places, Salt Lake City.

"I can't say it's a dream come true, because I don't think I could have had a dream like this 17 years ago," said Kanishka, who moved to the United States from Pakistan in 1997 with her husband, a former childhood friend who had been working in the States.
The couple settled in Salt Lake City, where Kanishka later took a job as a customer service rep for Overstock.com, a site specializing in product liquidations. After little more than a year on the job, she took over management of the website's Worldstock division, which sells handmade goods.

These days, Worldstock employs more than 1,500 Afghan artisans among a worldwide network of craft workers. It's an accomplishment that Overstock's CEO, Patrick Byrne, attributes to both an upswing in online retail spending and reliable demand for inexpensive handmade rugs.

That confluence of factors culminated this week in a confirmation by the Afghan Ministry of Commerce that Overstock is currently the largest provider of private employment in Afghanistan. According to Mariam Nawabi, commercial attaché for the Afghan Embassy in the United States, Overstock is currently believed to provide employment, directly or indirectly, for about 1,700 people living in Afghanistan.

Prior to Overstock's arrival, Byrne was told that the country's largest employer was a brick factory in the Western city of Herat, which had about 400 workers.
"That was the (General Electric) of Afghanistan before we got there," said Byrne, who traveled to Afghanistan in March. "Now we're the GE."

Byrne's operation in Afghanistan is strictly low-tech. The company's suppliers largely work from home. Their chief products are rugs, embroidery, jewelry and fur-lined clothing.
Afghanistan is one of more than 30 countries that sell handmade goods for Overstock, and it is currently the site's largest foreign supplier. Rugs, according to Kanishka, are the top-selling item, ranging in price from around $200 to $1,700.

Overstock isn't the only one attempting to profit online by selling handmade goods from exotic locations. Competitors include retailers specializing in single-product categories as well as sites like Novica, an online venture backed by the National Geographic Society that sells crafts from a network of more than 2,000 artists around the globe.

The principle behind the business, said Roberto Milk, Novica's co-founder and chief executive, is to give people who traditionally sold their wares only at markets near their homes a chance to reach a much bigger group of potential buyers.

"For people who work with us, their economic situation changes because they have an ongoing way to sell to the world market," Milk said.

But Novica isn't a nonprofit venture. Milk estimates that the site's revenues are growing at a rate of 30 percent annually and he expects it to become profitable in the second half of the year.

Like Worldstock, Novica's wares span several continents. Suppliers include leatherworkers from the Andes, carvers from West Africa, basket weavers from Bali and Java, and painters from all locations.
Other online retailers are venturing even farther off the beaten path to seek out handmade goods.

Pete Burris, president and namesake of Alpaca Pete's, a retail chain and website that sells rugs and clothes made from the woolly South American alpaca, buys finished products almost exclusively from a group of about 4,000 Peruvians from the island of Amantani, located in the middle of Lake Titicaca, the highest-elevation lake in the world. Aside from a small tourism business, Burris says, his Alpaca exports constitute one of the only local sources of employment.

In Afghanistan, Kaniskha's network of suppliers consists largely of women who were prevented from working outside their homes under the Taliban regime. These days, many of these women make substantially more money than men.
Given the disparity between prevailing wages in developed and developing nations, both Overstock's Byrne and Novica's Milk say their goal is not to get the lowest possible price for handmade goods.

At Novica, Milk said, artists themselves set wholesale prices for the retailer, which are usually at least slightly higher than local prices.

On its website, Overstock says that it will not make a profit of more than 1 percent on goods sold through its Worldstock division. In practice, Byrne said, this translates into artisans receiving about $70 from every $100 customers spend on their wares.

By American standards, earnings for suppliers of handmade goods don't seem like much to rejoice about. Kanishka cites the example of one mother and six daughters who make about $400 a month embroidering shawls. In Afghanistan, where government workers commonly earn less than $40 a month, Kanishka insists, "that's big money."
Source; Wired; June 04
Author: by Joanna Glasner

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INTERNET – ISP’S

ISP’s in Ghana’s region of Tamale call for review licence fees
ISPs in Tamale, in the northern region of Ghana, have called on the regulator, the National Communication Authority (NCA) to review its licensing regime.
The ISP’s claim that the USD30,000 ISP license fee required by the NCA is a big impediment to them rolling out services more widely locally. The ISP’s say the huge fees is a major reason for the slow pace of Internet growth in northern Ghana, as not many businesses would like to invest in Internet services in the North where the market is relatively small.
The ISPs made the appeal during a Technical Update Seminar organised by the International Institute of Communication and Development, IICD, Centre for Information Technology Research and Development (CITRED) and Ghana information Network for Knowledge Sharing (GINKS). The aim of the seminar was to share information with the residents of the Northern region on connectivity options available in the world today and how best as a community they can develop and promote the region into the knowledge based economy using Information and Communication Technology tools.
Ernest Kofie, Director of GrasRut, a cybercafé and ISP operator in Tamale, said considering the high cost of Internet usage to most of the people of Tamale, his ISP has adopted a community approach to the deployment of Internet in Tamale. He was therefore very agitated by the requirement of NCA to pay USD 30, 000 license fees as paid by all ISPs in Ghana. He pleaded to the NCA to have some waivers for ISP’s who decide to operate outside of Accra.
Jonnie Akakpo of CITRED introduced new technologies to the participants and said it was important that the government take the new ICT4AD policy seriously and implement its recommendations to the letter.
Denise Clarke of IICD introduced the Bgan Mobile IP Satellite Technology as one of the possible connectivity options for rural areas. She was of the view that such connectivity tools where relatively cheap and afforded people in the rural areas to also have access to the benefits of Internet.
Kofi Mangesi of GINKS encouraged the community to continue to dialogue on how best they can influence policy in the area of connectivity.
Source: Ginks, June 04
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TELECOMUNICATIONS – NIGERIAN MARKET

Nigerian Telecom firm Reltel raising funds on the Indian market
elTel, a Nigeria-based telecom company, is looking to raise funds and find a strategic partner from India. The company has appointed the Mumbai-based investment-banking firm Strategic Capital Ventures Ltd as its exclusive financial advisor. RelTel hopes to raise about USD120 million from the Indian markets and tie up with an Indian telecom operator with expertise in large scale expansion projects.
Sunil Pathak, director, RelTel, said that the funds will be utilised for expansion and will be a combination of debt and equity, adding that the company is willing to sell its controlling stake if all other criteria fall in place.Pathak said, "The similarities between Indian and Nigerian telecom services have prompted us to come to India as the expertise here can be very well utilised to shore up operations in a small but growing Nigerian market."He said talks are on with some big telecom players in India but declined to disclose names.
Source; Nigeria Telecom, June 04
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GPS – MARKET ISSUES

EU-US summit
As US President George W Bush jets in to the EU-US summit in Ireland on Saturday, the aim will be to revitalise transatlantic relations. A key sign of improvement will be the signing, after years of haggling, of a final accord on the compatibility and inter-operability of the two blocs' rival GPS and Galileo satellite navigation systems.
For a long time, the US was not overly keen on what it saw as an unnecessary rival to its own GPS system. However, Europe went ahead, is building Galileo's first satellites, signing international agreements with Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico and China, and is set to be operational by 2008.
The EU-US agreement should reap benefits for both the US and Europe in a highly competitive satellite positioning market forecast to reach EUR 300 billion globally by 2020. Galileo is expected not only to create some 150,000 jobs in Europe, but also to herald a technological revolution comparable to that of the mobile phone.
Author: LuisB, June 04
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EUROPEAN UNION – ECONOMY

EU grants new EU members EUR 24 billion in aid
The European Commission said Wednesday it had formally granted the 10 new members of the European Union 24 billion euros in economic and social development aid, with the largest single amount earmarked for Poland.
European Commissioner for regional policy Jacques Barrot said in a statement that the programmes "will help to bridge the significant gaps in the enlarged European Union and contribute to integration and to territorial cohesion".
When the European Union grew to 25 members on May 1, its population increased by 20 percent but its gross national product rose only five percent, highlighting the development gap between the previous 15 members and the 10 new members.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said that efforts would in particular be made so that countries benefitting from the aid would have the administrative capacity to manage the funds.
About 15 billion euros were targeted at the poorest regions, defined as areas having gross domestic product equivalent to 75 percent of the EU average.
Poland, the biggest new EU member, would receive 8.2 billion euros, the biggest share of the aid, followed by Hungary with 1.9 billion euros, the Czech Republic with 1.45 billion euros, Slovakia with 1.041 billion euros, Lithuania with 895 million euros, Latvia with 626 million euros, Estonia with 371 million euros, Slovenia with 237 million euros, Malta with 63 million euros and Cyprus with 53 million euros
Source; EU sources, June 04
Author; LuisB


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FOCUS


TELECOMMUNICATIONS – CORPORATE OVERVIEW

SA’s Telkom continues to make high profits
Telkom last week announced strong group annual results for the year ended March 31, 2004, with healthy increases in operating revenue and operating profit, positive cash flow growth, and excellent growth in both headline and basic earnings per share. The group financial highlights for 2004 include:- 8,8% group revenue growth to R40, 795bn;
- 39,5% growth in operating profit to R9,088bn;
- 40% group Ebitda margin;
- Group return on assets of 18%;
- Net debt to equity of 61%;
- Total dividend of 200 cents per share paid for the year.
Commenting on the results, Group CEO of Telkom, Sizwe Nxasana, says: "The management of the Telkom Group is pleased to report strong results in our first full year as a listed company that has seen us execute well on strategy and deliver growing returns to our shareholders.
"Group operational highlights include the Telkom Group achieving robust operational performance across all levels of the business, with delivery against its three strategic pillars of customer growth and retention, operational efficiencies and innovation and sustaining the development of the marketplace."

Key achievements include:
- 14% growth of data revenue, 44% growth in Internet subscribers, 17% growth in ISDN channels and 661% growth in ADSL subscribers;
- The launch of VPN Supreme;
- Growth of voicemail accounts to nearly one million. Value-added fixed-line voice packages penetrate 64% of residential customer base;
- The introduction of new fixed-line calling plans, like Xtratime;
- The winning of 14 international call centre customers;
- The introduction of on-line ordering, payments and billing;
- Re-branded TelkomDirect retail outlets;
- The distribution deal with Vodashop;
- Property development deals to ensure upfront communications availability;
- Mobile customer growth of 30% to 11,2m customers with contract customer growth of 20%;
- Mobile gross connections of 6m, compared to 4m in the prior year;
- African mobile customer growth of 93%;
- Mobile data revenue growth of 59%.

Nxasana adds, "Telkom aggressively promoted data products to the consumer and SMME markets through campaigns in the past financial year, which advanced the group’s strategy of becoming the data provider of choice." The increase in revenue growth was said to be mainly due to higher demand for data services in the medium and small business segment, with leased line revenue growing by 17,7%, which was offset by a 2,2% decrease in mobile leased facilities revenue, due to network optimisation initiatives by the mobile operators.
There has also been a stringent focus on key business imperatives. The execution of group strategy helped Telkom SA to grow headline earnings per share by 175% to 863,6 cents, from 314 cents in its first full year as a listed company.

The group declared a final dividend of 110c per share, thanks to sustained revenue from traditional voice services and market endorsement of value-added data and mobile services. Telkom’s strategy to defend core revenues and enhance operating efficiencies lifted group operating revenue by 8,8% to R40,795bn (2003: R37,507bn).

Basic earnings per share grew by 177,5% to 812 cents (2003: 292,6 cents) through a 39,5% increase in operating profit to R9,088bn (2003: R6,514bn)and a reduction of finance charges, which included net losses of R776m arising from measuring derivates at fair value and currency volatility. Ebitda margins expanded to 40% from 35%, underpinning the generation of strong cash flows.

Telkom advanced on its stated plan to contain net debt to equity within a 50 - 70% range. Net debt decreased by 33,8% to R13,362bn (2003: R20,171bn), bringing the net debt to equity ratio to 60,6%, compared to 109,9% in the previous period.
Group capital expenditure decreased by 7,1%, and represented 13% of group revenue, in line with the group’s guidance of maintaining capital expenditure in the range of 12 to 15% of group revenues.

The mobile segment accounted for 25% of group operating revenue, driven largely by customer growth that is evident in a decrease in contract churn.
"Telkom has also allocated R7,7m in its 2004/05 financial year to programmes designed to control the HIV/Aids pandemic," Nxasana adds.
Telkom’s strategy is to enhance education campaigns and to offer voluntary counselling, testing and treatment for affected staff across the country. Telkom estimates HIV/Aids prevalence at 9,6% within its workplace, which is considerably lower than the country’s estimate of 26,5%.

Nxasana says, "People are Telkom’s most important competitive asset, and are key to it being an efficient and cost-effective group. The group has implemented a strategic human capital management plan, which seeks to protect and nurture its people. Telkom’s people are driving operational efficiencies and innovation within the group, and are the people behind customer retention."

Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) also underpins Telkom’s drive for sustainability. Telkom has advanced its strategy, which elevates BEE as a crucial growth imperative for Telkom, by directing R5bn to BEE suppliers in the 2004 financial year. And, in its efforts to contribute to the development of a broad-based black middle class, Telkom created an estimated R560m in value for over 100 000 retail shareholders, who subscribed to Telkom’s Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Telkom has also proceeded with a socially responsible approach to headcount reductions, which has been boosted by the Agency for Career Opportunities. This is an initiative to help employees, often through re-skilling, to become re-employed either internally or externally.

Telkom reduced its fixed-line headcount by 8,5% (excluding subsidiaries) to 32 358 in the 2004 financial year, with only 3,6% of losses being involuntary retrenchments. Telkom aims to reduce employee numbers on an annual basis by 7 to 10% per annum, including natural attrition. This will be largely enabled through the Operational Support Systems (OSS) initiative, which aims to provide automated solutions to enhance revenue and reduce costs. Already, increased employee productivity has been reflected in growth from 137 to 149 lines per employee.
Author; LuisB, June 04
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HIGHLIGHTS


TELECOMUNICATIONS – WIFI

T-Mobile, Hyatt ink hotspot deal
T-Mobile signed a deal with Hyatt Hotels & Resorts to launch WiFi hotspots in nearly all of Hyatt's 200 hotels by mid-2005.
The companies have already launched service at the Hyatt in Charlotte, North Carolina, with plans to launch service in the Hyatt Regency at Chicago's O'Hare airport next week. Hyatt aims to have wireless access in nearly all of its hotels and in most of its hotel rooms. Access will be available for $9.99 per day for guests who do not subscribe to T-Mobile's nationwide hotspot service. This deal is T-Mobile's first major hotspot contract with a hotel franchise. No financial details of the deal were released.
The deal is a coup for T-Mobile, which beat out hotspot rival Wayport for one of the last remaining nationwide hotel WiFi contracts. Wayport dominates the paid-access WiFi sector for hotels. Wayport has recently emerged as the defining player in the paid-access hotspot market thanks to the company's growing hotel network and its recent nationwide hotspot deal with McDonald's.
Meanwhile, most investors and financial analysts are down on the paid access hotspot business model. This market pessimism has grown worse since hotspot service provider Cometa Networks closed its doors last month.
Date; May 2004

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TELECOMUNICATIONS – EUROPE - MOBILE VIDEO MARKET


Mobile Video to Generate US$5.4bn by 2008
Europe : In a new report entitled Mobile Video: Worldwide Market Analysis and Strategic Outlook 2003-2008, industry analysts ARC forecast that the mobile video market will generate worldwide revenues of US$5.4bn in 2008.
ARC Senior Analyst Rupert Reid, takes a quick look at recent developments in the mobile video space to ee how they measure up against ARC Group's forecasts and whether there is any substance behind the hype.
As the latest in a line of applications touted to turn around flagging ARPUs and kick-start the dawn of a new mobile multimedia era, mobile video has been much in the spotlight recently. Whereas the adoption and usage levels of 3's much publicised video telephony services have not exactly set the industry alight in the early days of its launch, the underlying trends nevertheless point to a steady ramping up of interest in mobile video.
In the last 6 months, a flurry of activity across all elements of the value chain has witnessed the increasing momentum behind bringing mobile video applications and enabling technologies to market as players from platform vendors to content aggregators all attempt to carve an early lead in this nascent market.
Recent deals between Vodafone and Warner Bros. Entertainment, Mobilkom Austria and CNN and 3 Sweden and Endemol/Kanal highlight the growing focus placed on strategic partnerships between operators and content owners to target mobile video streaming, downloading and messaging services. By building up a rich ecosystem of branded content, 3G operators are clearly positioning their networks primarily as video-capable, and heavily promoting video streaming and video telephony services as a differentiator from 2.5G networks.
It is not just the 3G operators however who are pioneering video services as a number of 2.5G operators have launched video services of their own. For example, a number of European operators including Telefonica, TIM and O2 have launched a range of early video streaming applications through partnership with RealNetworks and its Helix Universal Platform. Likewise, the indications from Sprint PCS are very encouraging with PCS Vision customers having sent more than 100m picture messaging images and 15-second video messaging clips since November 2002.

Despite these promising early trends, there are challenges at every point in the mobile video value chain, which must be resolved before video takes off on a mass-market basis:
- Reducing the price of video-supporting handsets to gain mass
market acceptance
- Developing viable business models for video distribution which
include content protection,
- Resolving the interoperability, interconnect and roaming
issues for such services.

Top of these challenges remains the perennial problem of video-capable handset availability and a lack of well-defined and established standards across the value chain which are essential for operators to build a full service that includes content, servers, applications and handsets.

Nonetheless, ARC is confident that ongoing developments in high-performance, low-power multimedia application processors coupled with continuing improvements in high-resolution CMOS image sensors and high-resolution colour LCD screens, will see the mass market penetration of video-enabled handsets by 2006.
As with any forecast, the purchasing behaviour of end-users remains the key variable in assessing demand and also the hardest to predict. Nevertheless, on the balance of evidence, ARC believes that the widespread availability of video-capable terminals together with high-bandwidth networks supported by a rich distribution network of branded and mobile specific content will result in a steadily growing market for mobile video services over the next 5 years.

Mobile Video, from the ARC Group, forecasts that between 2003 and 2005 there will be a relatively slow rate of adoption, as the market is in its launch phase although from 2005 onwards strong growth is anticipated, and by 2008 it is forecast that close to 250m consumers will use mobile video services.
Mobile Video also predicts that video messaging will remain the biggest application category throughout the forecast period. In 2003, the figure of 5.1m users is mainly made up of the video clip messaging services that have been launched by operators in Japan. In Europe, initial video services have also been focused mostly on video messages, since user-generated content frees the operator from dealing with content copyright issues and content owners' DRM requirements. As MMS starts to enter the mainstream in Europe, it is expected that as camera phones in the European market evolve to support video, there will be a high adoption rate for video messaging services as an enhancement to regular MMS.

Video download is expected to be second to video messaging in terms of users until 2005, when video streaming will take over second spot, based on the higher penetration of 3G networks. After 2003, streaming will be a preferred method of consuming video content, since it has a much more immediate viewing experience than video download, and enables longer video clips and also live TV-like live broadcast services.
As a strictly a 3G service, ARC expect the total number of video telephony users to increase from 1.3 m in 2003 to almost 90m in 2008. Video telephony will continue to differentiate 3G networks from 2.5G networks, and the popularity of this application will rise as more possibilities become available to connect via video calling to enterprise video conferencing systems and consumer video devices in the broadband-connected home. This network effect of home, office and mobile video telephony devices will cause mobile video telephony to overtake video download services by 2007.
Source; ARC; May 2004

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INTERNET – WIRELESS BROADBAND

Wireless Hits WiMax Speeds
Standardized products that are expected to drive down the price of WiMax wireless broadband gear may be as much as a year away, most industry insiders say.
But Alvarion used this week's Wireless Communications Association conference in Washington, D.C. to roll out equipment that it says can be easily upgraded to support the emerging standard.
Alvarion already makes its own proprietary wireless broadband infrastructure, which it sells to carriers that want to provide high-speed Internet access over long distances. The BreezeMax product line introduced Wednesday, based on an Alvarion chip, includes wireless base stations that later will be able to serve WiMax CPE (customer premises equipment). All that carriers will need in order to support the new CPE is a firmware upgrade, according to Patrick Leary, assistant vice president of marketing at Alvarion, which is based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Vendors including Alvarion and Intel are counting on high-volume production of WiMax silicon to drive down the price of customer gear and make wireless broadband a profitable carrier service. WiMax is designed to deliver data speeds comparable to cable modem and DSL services over a distance of as much as 30 miles. The WiMax Forum industry group expects to begin certifying WiMax products by the end of this year.

Changing the Channel
The group is working toward specifications for three pieces of radio spectrum, around 2.5 GHz, 3.5 GHz, and 5 GHz, Leary says. Alvarion's platform introduced Wednesday, the BreezeMax 3500, will use the 3.5-GHz band. Once an Intel chip set that supports WiMax in the 3.5-GHz band is commercially available it will be integrated into new, standardized versions of Alvarion's CPE and its base stations, he says. Leary expects the chip set to ship around the middle of next year. That standardized, high-volume silicon should drive down costs significantly, Leary says.

The BreezeMax 3500 line will include "macro" base stations for dense urban areas and "micro" base stations for rural deployments, along with three kinds of CPE. One CPE device is for IP data only, one supports both data and voice over IP, and one has an integrated 802.11g wireless LAN access point for wireless hotspots or small businesses. For the CPE, Alvarion will charge carriers between $200 and $500 depending on volume, capacity and configuration. The micro base stations will range from $10,000 to $15,000 and the macro versions from $50,000 to $60,000.
Though much attention has been focused on the licensed 2.5-GHz and unlicensed 5-GHz bands, Alvarion is aiming at the initial sweet spot with a 3.5-GHz product, according to Leary. That band has already been licensed for wireless carrier services in many countries outside North America, he says. The 3.5-GHz BreezeMax products have been in trials at carriers in Europe and Asia.

The 3.5-GHz band is "the most stable environment in a regulatory sense, and it's where we believe mass deployment can be achieved most rapidly," Leary says.
Yankee Group analyst Lindsay Schroth agrees. Outside the Western Hemisphere, many major carriers already hold spectrum in that range, she says. By contrast, WiMax deployment in the 2.5-GHz range probably will have to wait for decisions by two big U.S. carriers, Sprint and Nextel Communications, Schroth says. Unlicensed 5-GHz services probably will remain the realm of enterprises and small rural providers, she adds.
"The U.S. market in general is kind of up in the air in terms of how quickly people will deploy stuff," Schroth says.
Source; IDG News Service, May 2004
Write; by Stephen Lawson

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TECHNOLOGY – MOBILE DEVICES

Motorola to promote first megapixel phone with online film
Motorola said it will sell its first megapixel camera phone in the United States starting this summer.
The company also said it has teamed with Hollywood director Scott Sanders to develop an online “advertainment” film promoting the phone.

“By finding innovative ways to showcase Motorola's dynamic phone technology, we are serving the consumer in two ways. First, we are highlighting the important benefits of the V710, which include seamless mobility, creative expression and personal freedom,” said Jason Few, vice president of marketing for Motorola. “Second, we are demonstrating the role technology plays in opening doors for the development of creative content and platforms in the arts. The V710 truly is the gold standard in mobile phones."

Motorola’s CDMA V710 features a 1.2-megapixel camera, video capture and playback, an MP3 player and 10 megabytes of internal memory. Motorola did not name a carrier to sell the phone, although Verizon Wireless in the past has said it is testing the device.

Under Motorola’s promotion with Sanders, the filmmaker wrote and directed a short film “starring” the V710, which is available at hellomoto.com/producer. Motorola said the cliffhanger ending to the film will be released online when the V710 becomes available this summer.

In other phone news, Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo Inc. released three new third-generation wireless phones, which feature 2-megapixel cameras and video capabilities.
Source;RCR; May 2004
Write; by Mike Dano

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SCIENCE – ASTRONOMY

Cassini will unlock Saturn’s secrets
The international Cassini-Huygens mission is poised to begin an extensive tour of Saturn, its majestic rings and 31 known moons. After nearly a seven-year journey, Cassini is scheduled to enter orbit around Saturn at 10:30 p.m. EDT, June 30, 2004.

"The Saturn system represents an unsurpassed laboratory, where we can look for answers to many fundamental questions about the physics, chemistry, evolution of the planets and the conditions that give rise to life," said Dr. Ed Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science, Washington.

Cassini was launched Oct. 15, 1997 on a journey covering 3.5 billion kilometers (2.2 billion miles), Cassini is the most instrumented and scientifically capable planetary spacecraft ever flown. There are 12 instruments on the Cassini orbiter and six on the Huygens probe. The mission represents the best technical efforts of 260 scientists from the United States and 17 European nations. The Cassini mission cost approximately $3 billion.

The Cassini/Huygens mission is a four-year study of Saturn. The 18 highly sophisticated science instruments will study Saturn's rings, icy satellites, magnetosphere, and Titan, the planet's largest moon.

The spacecraft will fire its main engine for 96 minutes during the critical Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI) maneuver. The maneuver will reduce Cassini's speed, so Saturn can capture it as an orbiting satellite. Cassini will pass through a gap between the planet's F and G rings, swing close to the planet, and begin the first of 76 orbits around Saturn's system. During the mission, it will have 52 close encounters with seven of Saturn's 31 moons.

There are risks involved with orbit insertion, but mission planners have prepared for them. There is a backup in case the main engine fails, and the path through the ring plane was searched for hazards with the best Earth and space-based telescopes. Particles too small to be seen from Earth could be fatal to the spacecraft, so Cassini will turn to use its high gain antenna as a shield against small objects.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun, and it is the second largest in the solar system, after Jupiter. Saturn and its ring system serve as a miniature model for the disc of gas and dust that surrounded the early sun, which formed the planets. Detailed knowledge of the dynamics of interactions among Saturn's elaborate rings and many different moons will provide valuable data for understanding how the solar system's planets evolved.

The study of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is one of the major goals of the mission. Titan may preserve, in deep-freeze, many of the chemical compounds that preceded life on Earth. Cassini will execute 45 flybys of Titan within approximately 950 kilometers (590 miles) of the surface. This will permit high-resolution mapping of the moon with the Titan radar-imaging instrument. The radar can see through the opaque haze of Titan's upper atmosphere.

"Titan is like a time machine taking us to the past to see what Earth might have been like," said Dr. Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. "The hazy moon may hold clues to how the primitive Earth evolved into a life-bearing planet," he said.

On Dec. 24, 2004, Cassini will release the wok-shaped Huygens probe for its journey to Titan. Huygens is the first probe designed to descend to the surface of the moon of another planet, and the most distant descent of a robotic probe attempted on another object in the solar system. On Jan. 14, 2005, after a three-week ballistic freefall, Huygens will enter Titan's atmosphere. It will deploy parachutes and begin 2.5 hours of intensive scientific observations. The Huygens probe will transmit data to the Cassini spacecraft, which will relay the information back to Earth.

JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. A team at the European Space Technology and Research Center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, managed the development of the Huygens probe. The Italian Space Agency provided the high-gain antenna, much of the radio system and elements of several of Cassini's science instruments. JPL manages the overall program for NASA's Office of Space Science.
Source; NASA, May 2004



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FOCUS

INTERNET – SOFTWARE MARKET

The Changing Face of E-Mail
Information overload will drive e-mail into the ground unless software vendors act now and make major changes to the 30-year-old technology, warned a leading Internet expert Wednesday.

During his keynote speech at the Inbox e-mail technology conference, Eric Hahn, CEO of antispam firm Proofpoint, called on software developers to stop treating e-mail inboxes as places to dump memos and start thinking of them as control centers that combine e-mail, instant messaging, voicemail and other communications.

Gmail service features a similar option.
Advanced e-mail search is also gaining in popularity. The feature allows users to leave all their e-mails in a single folder, where individual messages can be found later using fast searches. Both Gmail and Stata Laboratories' Bloomba software now offer advanced search.
Still, it's unclear when more popular e-mail products will adopt similar features. Yahoo's antispam product manager Miles Libbey said his company is working on a summer face lift for its Yahoo Mail service, but he declined to say whether it would include any major interface changes.

He did say, however, that the upgrade would likely include the addition of some sort of indicator next to messages in the inbox that would let users know if their e-mails came from authenticated senders. Authenticating senders is a goal of Yahoo's DomainKeys antispam technology, which is currently in its testing phase. The indicator would make it easier for users to detect so-called phishing scams that some spammers send out in an attempt to trick people into revealing their personal information.

Speakers at the Inbox conference will continue to present more ideas for making e-mail more useful and manageable through Friday. Inbox is the first of two major e-mail-related conferences taking place this month. The second event, aptly named the Email Technology Conference, takes place June 16-18 in San Francisco.
Source; Wired magazine, May 2004
Write; by Amit Asaravala

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