Bright sparks – Money – Business – Home – theage.com.au
The News Review:
- Bright sparks – Money – Business – Home – theage.com.au
- Europe’s young economies are still drawing investors
- BET should refute, not perpetuate, stereotypes
- Another T3 snub for Mac
- Search Results | Seattle Times Newspaper
Bright sparks – Money – Business – Home – theage.com.au
The Age – Jan 17, 2006
On the scale of financial fantasies, one of the more seductive -right after winning Lotto – has to be hatching an idea that willmake early retirement a reality. Feeding the popular dream of backyard tinkerer-turned-Lear Jetowner are television shows such as The New Inventors (ABC) andDragons’ Den (Seven), along with a long list of home-grownworld-class inventions such as the Victa motor mower, the Hillshoist, the black box flight recorder and the double-flushtoilet. Then there are local legends such as Melbourne’s George Lewinwho, at 25, invented the original Triton saw bench while strugglingto make a coffee table, his first woodwork project since highschool. Despite desultory initial interest from manufacturers,marketers, wholesalers and hardware retailers, his idea suddenlytook off after his appearance on The Inventors and produced about$250 million in domestic and export sales from 1976 to 1999. Today, Triton continues to design and manufacture tools as asubsidiary of Hills Industries, with an annual turnover approaching$20 million. But is One Good Idea really the only thing that stands betweenyou and early retirement?”It’s extremely difficult to make money from an invention,” saysTroy White, the commercialisation manager with the IndustryDevelopment Centre in the Hunter Region, one of Australia’s largestgovernment-sponsored innovation centres… The technology makes it next to impossible to rebirth cars orsell stolen parts. Australian and international car manufacturers, including Lexus,Lotus, BMW and Audi, are increasingly including DataDotDNAtechnology. Allen mortgaged his Sydney home to raise the $2. 5 million to getthe business off the ground, but he is comfortably in the blackagain, after raising $10 million in the company’s Australian StockExchange float in January last year. Both Allen and McLaws have anequity stake estimated at $6. 6 million, based on their ownership of20 million shares each, (worth 33 cents apiece at the time ofpublication), after listing initially at 25 cents. It’s a far cry from his days as an 11-year-old schoolboy, whenhe asked his mother for some money.
Europe’s young economies are still drawing investors
International Herald Tribune – Jan 17, 2006
The Kronospan Group, an Austrian-Swiss wood-processing company, last month announced it would invest E100 million in a company it owned in Latvia. For the Latvia's minister of economics, Arturs Krisjanis Karins, moves like that highlight the end of an era that relied on privatizations for growth. Foreign companies may also be on the verge of greater competition from home-grown companies whose executives came of age working for Western investors, executives said. Richard Lada, the head of Motorola Poland, said that most foreign investors in the early 1990s sought out young people without ingrained, communist-era habits, something that might yet come back to haunt them as those people struck out on their own and started new businesses. "You now have world-class managers who are hungry and want to show the rest of the world that they are very good," Lada said. Still, Motorola, based in the United States, is firmly anchored in Poland. It opened a software development center in Krakow in 1998.
BET should refute, not perpetuate, stereotypes
St. Petersburg Times – Jan 17, 2006
The black media, however, was almost as important. It was Jet magazine that printed the open casket photo of a slain and disfigured Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American who was brutally beaten and shot after allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. So shouldn’t we expect BET to play a role in furthering the cause today? No, it’s no longer black-owned, but it should recognize the opportunity it has to deliver more than booty-shaking music and sensational stories. Yes, it’s largely an entertainment channel aimed at young people, but now that it has captured that market, can’t it deliver a dose of inspiration instead of a series of negative stereotypes?
Bowman told the audience BET was recommitting itself to news and public affairs. Gone from the programming is a nightly 30-minute newscast, but he promised it would be replaced with shorter updates throughout the day. Furthermore, he suggested that part of BET’s role is to give young artists a marketplace to express themselves, even if we parents frown upon those expressions. Yet given the legacy of the African-American struggle, those who cater to a black audience have a responsibility that goes beyond creative freedom and profit margins… The impact of the network’s programming is too great to dismiss it as kids being kids. Not only do the musical messages and visual themes influence the next generation, but they define how the world views African-Americans and how African-Americans view each other. Until African-Americans become more prominent in all television programming, BET needs to toe the line and balance today’s questionable videos with home-grown values. All hip-hop all the time is not the answer. That’s all I’m saying. –Ernest Hooper can be reached at 813 226-3406 or.
Another T3 snub for Mac
Australian IT – Jan 17, 2006
ad –> Font Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print. article-tools –> Michael Sainsbury | January 17, 2006. module-subheader –> MACQUARIE Bank, Australia’s largest home-grown investment bank, has been snubbed by the federal Government once more after failing to make an 11-strong institutional selling panel for the planned $25 billion Telstra sale later this year. The bank will miss out on millions of dollars it would have reaped in fees from the sale. The latest slap in the face comes after the so-called “millionaires’ factory” missed out on one of the three key roles as joint global co-ordinator for the sale, announced by the Department of Finance last November. Macquarie was widely seen as a leading contender for a plum role in the Telstra sale, known as T3, but its chances appear to have been reduced by a damaging leak that forced it to pull out of a lucrative Defence Department contract in October. The bank — whose interests range from infrastructure to advisory services — was also carpeted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in December for “misusing” its monopoly powers at Sydney Airport, following complaints by Virgin Blue.
Search Results | Seattle Times Newspaper
Seattle Times – Jan 17, 2006
During the Clinton presidency, Republican leadership — including then candidate George W. Bush — was loudly and openly critical of President Clinton’s foreign-policy choices, including military interventions in Haiti, Kosovo, and his continuation of military actions in Somalia. To use their own rhetoric — while President Clinton was in office, Republicans openly called for surrender to our enemies, advocated cut-and-run military strategies, and undermined troop morale by being publicly critical of the commander in chief during time of war… If he were gutsy, he would have told his Republican Party handlers in the other Washington to take a hike last year and voted in those rights as his was the single vote that could have done this. It’s hard to understand why The Times would be so laudatory of his character when the only real reason we have for his reversal of position last year was his submission to the mean-spirited polarization of the electorate favored by his new party. With a serious challenge in his home district, Finkbeiner suddenly “gets religion. — Robert Horn, WoodinvilleA jolt to the systemOh please! Ex-GOP Minority Leader Sen. Bill Finkbeiner’s new-found enlightenment that gays and lesbians deserve equal anti-discrimination protection as anyone else is hardly “bold” or “gutsy,” more than it is a clear indication of all that is wrong with the GOP, when its leaders have to remove themselves from a leadership role, or simply sense that their seat is in peril from a real progressive challenger (Eric Oemig), before they can vote their “conscience. Just think how much could be achieved if the GOP in Washington actually stood for something other than backward and antiquated policies meant only to produce legislative gridlock and block common-sense law. — Daniel Kirkdorffer, RedmondNobody’s homeThe main supports for our communities, the family with a mom and dad bringing up their kids, have been under fire, with divorce and single parenting, for some time, causing a list of social ills that hurts everyone in our culture.