Home-grown mobile players feel the pinch
The News Review:
- Home-grown mobile players feel the pinch
- London bombs underscore global reach of terrorism
- Senate approves $US14.5b US energy bill
- The sum of our fears
Home-grown mobile players feel the pinch
The Standard - Jul 30, 2005
Barely a week has passed since June without word of a crisis at one Chinese firm or another. A series of announcements and local media reports have warned of profit plunges, credit crunches and payment defaults. Analysts say that by late last year, the multinationals finally learned how to compete with the likes of China’s TCL Communication, Ningbo Bird and Kejian in a market that buys one of every eight cellphones sold worldwide. Copying the local groups’ business models, Motorola and Nokia have introduced low-end models this year and strengthened their distribution in less affluent smaller cities that are home to most of the population.
London bombs underscore global reach of terrorism
USA Today - Jul 30, 2005
that it is part of a kind of a network, interconnected — all the fingerprints are there,” said Michael Cox, a professor at London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs specializing in the post-Sept. 11 terrorism threat…
Aswat is implicated in a 1999 plot to establish a terrorist training camp in the United States and has told Zambian investigators he once was a bodyguard for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Zambian officials said. Before he was detained in Zambia, Aswat had been hiding in Johannesburg, South Africa, and was followed after entering the country from Botswana, the Zambian officials said. “Every single terrorist event we’ve had, and the failed ones we’ve had, there usually are foreign connections, even though the cannon fodder may be home grown,” said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “The Bouyeri network in the killing of (filmmaker Theo) van Gogh in the Netherlands, the Madrid bombings — all of these investigations have a foreign component to them, which makes them extremely complex. ” British authorities were fortunate to have good quality closed-circuit television pictures of the July 21 suspects. That could have spooked them into a “panic” response counter to known terrorist training methods, with three failing to immediately flee the country and Hussain using a cellular phone that could be traced easily, Ranstorp said.
Senate approves $US14.5b US energy bill
The Age - Jul 30, 2005
1 billion) energy bill championed by theWhite House as a way to boost domestic energy supplies, but blastedby environmental groups and other critics as a giveaway to the oilindustry. Supporters say the measure will revive America’s nuclear powerindustry, boost oil drilling, convert coal into a cleaner-burningfuel and use home-grown, corn-based ethanol to stretch petrolsupplies. Environmental groups and some Democrats criticised its extensivetax breaks, subsidies and loan guarantees as a lavish gift to anindustry enjoying near-record profits. The measure cleared the Senate 74 to 26 on Friday, following thelead of the House of Representatives that approved it by a widemargin of 275 to 156 on Thursday. President George W Bush - who spent the past four years pressingCongress to overhaul US energy policy - is set to sign it intolaw. The bill will have no short-term impact on petrol prices or oilimports, Republicans acknowledged.
The sum of our fears
The Age - Jul 30, 2005
Three symptoms of the heightened state of alarm in the freeworld after the London bombings. Three pointers to a future inwhich freedom is curtailed, even sacrificed, in the name offreedom. In each case, the “offender” was innocent. The student wasresearching an honours thesis that sits on the shelves at theMonash University library and argues the case against violence. Thetourists were touring. The shooting victim was a lawful residentwithout a work permit. Maybe that is why he ran from theplain-clothes police officers.