Asia Times Online – The best news coverage from South Asia
The News Review:
- Asia Times Online – The best news coverage from South Asia
- China to speed up decision on 3G mobile phone licenses – report
- Off the Wall: This never would have happened under Gillick
- India army extends pilot project using handheld computers.
Asia Times Online – The best news coverage from South Asia
Asia Times Online – Dec 23, 2004
Nepal could become another Bhutan (which had been forced – through a friendship treaty of 1949 – to survive as India’s protectorate). “The king needs to talk to the Nepali people about a solution, not to the Indians,” said the Nepali Times in an editorial last week, alluding to a nine-year insurgency that has already claimed more than 11,000 lives. “This is a home-grown revolution, it needs a home-grown solution,” the editorial said. But King Gyanendra’s palace has done little to allay public fears about potential pacts with India. On the contrary, on December 10, the king’s press secretariat issued an announcement, which remained silent about the purpose of the “official visit to the Republic of India” from Thursday to January 2. It merely said the king and queen would be in India at the invitation of President A P J Abdul Kalam. Officials in Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not have much to say about the visit, which, they conceded, was being planned and supervised by a select group of high-placed palace functionaries.
China to speed up decision on 3G mobile phone licenses – report
Forbes – Dec 23, 2004
04, 12:39 PM ETAFX News LimitedBEIJING (AFX) – China will speed up its decision over issuing long-awaited 3G licenses, the Guangming Daily reported, citing Xi Guohua, vice minister of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII). Xi was quoted by the official communist party newspaper as saying that it is time for the government to make its decision over the issue. He said that the MII had after recent 3G field tests, concluded that WCDMA technology is “near mature” for commercialization, while the home-grown TD-SCDMA standard has made great progress. Xi also said that current competition among domestic telecom operators is not effective as they do not occupy balanced positions. China has four major telecom players. China Mobile and China Unicom offer mobile services while China Telecom and China Netcom operate fixed-line services. But mobile subscribers have increased faster then fixed-line users which has put the two fixed-line operators in a disadvantageous position, Xi said.
Off the Wall: This never would have happened under Gillick
Seattle Post Intelligencer – Dec 23, 2004
Great, sustainable teams are built with some variation of the stars-and-filler strategy. The Red Sox won in 2004 with a set of established, well-paid stars supported with a cast of who-dat players plucked from scrap heaps and the lunch entrée section of the free-agent menu. The dominant Yankees teams featured mercenaries placed around a core of home-grown stars in Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada. The great Braves teams cycled in new, young talent from their farm system and supplemented it with wise investments in quality free agents, and made run after run at the title. Cleveland rebuilt from scratch, signing future star talents to long-term deals early and then, when the team started to compete, finding the short-term hires to help out. Great teams have more than one high-paid player. The teams on which one player consumes an inordinate amount of the payroll are almost entirely teams that are being torn down, such as the first post-championship Marlins team when Gary Sheffield was still on the roster.
India army extends pilot project using handheld computers.
Free with registration – Economic Times – AccessMyLibrary.com – Dec 23, 2004
| Economic Times (New Delhi, India) (December, 2004). 23–NEW DELHI — This home-grown technology could prove to be one of Indian army’s best "sathi"! Picture Indian army soldiers on the battlefront carrying indigenously developed handheld PCs ca.