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| Saturday,
September 9, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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LONDON, Sept 8 — Former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan have some, John Travolta and Nicole Kidman went for it, and the cast of Star Trek just couldn’t resist. Now Britons can join the illustrious and growing list of so-called “lunar landowners”. Dentist in India, guard in Canada Mr Clean couldn’t escape Bank of Punjab unveils card
Oil prices — a way out for consumers |
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SBI gets
RBI nod
He was in love, she was into business
Micro-chip misery
for grandmother
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Want to buy a plot on moon? LONDON, Sept 8 — Former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan have some, John Travolta and Nicole Kidman went for it, and the cast of Star Trek just couldn’t resist. Now Britons can join the illustrious and growing list of so-called “lunar landowners”. The moon goes up for sale in Britain on Friday. For just £ 10 ($ 14), an acre of the great green cheese could be yours. “The whole concept of owning a piece of the moon is such a cool one,” said Francis Williams, a founder of Moon Estates.com the British real estate agents for the lunar surface. “The moon represents huge potential,” he said. MoonEstates.com was awarded the right to sell lunar plots in Britain by Dennis Hope, an American entrepreneur who laid claim to the entire land surface of the moon 20 years ago. The Outer Space Treaty, signed by the United Nations in 1967, bans any nation from laying claim to the moon. But the treaty does not say individuals cannot own lunar land. After a series of court battles, Hope — known in lunar terms as “The Head Cheese” — filed his claim on the land with the US government, the government of the then Soviet Union, and with the United Nations General Assembly. Who owns the moon? It also warns that his claim is being contested by a German pensioner, Martin Juergens, who says he has a certificate from the 17th century Prussian King Frederick the Great bestowing the moon on one of his ancestors as a reward. MoonEstates says there are already 300,000 lunar land owners. Britons who stump up the £ 10 for an acre get a lunar deed depicting the exact location of their plot. For example, lot number 049/0052 is in area F-4 Quadrant Charlie. For now, owners can visit their plots via the Internet on www.moonestate.com. Real trips to the moon must first be cleared with “The Head Cheese”, who gives landing permission for any owners and guests wanting to stay a while.
— Reuters
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Dentist in India, guard in Canada TORONTO, Sept 8 — Several recent immigrants from India, who are unable to find work in their professions, recounted their tales of woe at a two-day seminar, which discussed the flight of professionally qualified people from South Asia to Canada. “Why can’t a qualified dentist from India find a job even as a dental hygienist or as a technician? This man too is opting for a security guard job,” said an immigrant at the seminar titled: “South Asian Immigration to Canada: Coping and Adaptation”, which was held at the University of Toronto. Panelists and the audience, for the most part, listened in hushed silence. Jagprit Puri, a Chandigarh economist, who immigrated to Canada five months ago, said he had responded to just one interview call from an insurance company, which offered him a job on a commission basis. Dentist Bishan Sood was almost in tears when he started reading his written statement before a hushed audience. “I am down the drain after coming here,” he said. He said he was called for an interview for a blue-collar job in a factory. But there too he had no luck as the employer pronounced him “over-qualified and over-age.” Sood said he has survived for six months since coming to Canada with financial help from relatives who live in Vancouver. But that’s no living, he argued. Prashant Joshi, an electrical engineer with 21 years experience in major companies in India, told Canadian politicians who were amongst the panelists, that “at least I should get an entry-level job. I can’t accept a below entry-level job.” This man too was offered a labourer’s job, which he refused, opting instead for night shift security guard’s job. Liberal Member of Parliament Derek Lee said: “There are real challenges getting settled in a new country. There is no sense in dwelling on personal circumstances of each person. The Canadian government or the government of Ontario does not go out and get people jobs. But there are programmes that assist people who are under-employed.” He was gracious in offering his personal help in putting these people in touch with agencies that get federal funding. Stinder Lal, the Indo-Canadian Deputy Minister in Ontario’s Ministry of Environment, suggested immigrating to Canada is “a leap of faith.” It is a decision “based on your belief that you would succeed in Canada, that you would be able to make a good life for yourself and your family. You come to a promised land. But people forget that you also left behind your promised land,” Lal said. He recounted his own experience of immigrating to Canada 26 years back with a law degree and several years of experience. “The only job that I could get after weeks of trying was that of a filing clerk,” Lal said. Lee said that according to the immigration department, it takes about 24 months to process an immigration application in India. He conceded it was too long a time. This kind of inordinate delay was attributed to India having a single Canadian immigration post in New Delhi where all applicants converge. According to a 1999 report of Immigration Canada, India has become the second largest source of immigration. Approximately 17,000 new Indian immigrants entered Canada last year.
— IANS |
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Mr Clean couldn’t escape TOKYO: He came in as Mr Clean, promising to make his company open and accountable, but outgoing Mitsubishi Motors President Katsuhiko Kawasoe was unable to escape the fate that befell his predecessor: resigning over scandal. The architect of Mitsubishi Motors Corp’s alliances with DaimlerChrysler AG and AB Volvo, Kawasoe was close to tears on Friday as he said he would step down to take responsibility for his firm’s cover-up of customer complaints for more than 20 years. “I am resigning as President to wipe away 20 years of corporate dust and grime,” he told a news conference. He will, however, stay on as an advisory board member. Kawasoe (63), whose friendly and approachable manner scored high marks with reporters and analysts, came to the top post in 1997 after his predecessor Takemune Kimura, resigned over a racketeer payoff scandal. With that embarrassment coming on the heels of a high-profile class action sexual harassment suit at its Normal, Illinois plant, Kawasoe pledged a more accessible company, opening up shareholder meetings to the Press and taking pains to meet reporters. Kawasoe said that, while he had no knowledge of his company’s decades-long cover-up of complaints, it showed he had not done enough. “All I can say, perhaps as one excuse, is that my time was taken up by one goal: the alliances with Volvo and DaimlerChrysler,” he said. Meanwhile, the Transport Ministry has filed a criminal claim against Mitsubishi for concealing at least 64,000 complaints about vehicle defects.
— Reuters |
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Bank of Punjab unveils card CHANDIGARH, Sept 8 — The bank of Punjab today launched a Global Debit Card in collaboration with MasterCard International. “The bank is entirely focused on retail banking and technology to expand its business to Rs 10,000 crore by March, 2003 from the current Rs 3,909 crore,” Bank of Punjab Executive Director Tejbir Singh said while launching the debit card. In a statement here today said the bank also plans to come out with a co-branded credit card by the first quarter of the next fiscal. The new card called “Maestro deposit access program”, will help the bank’s customers to access savings account to purchase goods and services at all point-of-sale terminal locations having MasterCards affiliation. Mr Tejbir Singh hinted at sharing ATM facilities with smaller banks saying “without merging balance-sheets you can still merge business through technology”. The bank targets more than half a million e-card holders in two years or so, he said. Maestro card could be used in 16 countries in Asia and Pacific. MasterCard International Country Manager Sameer Vakil said the growth of debit card holders would be faster than the credit card holders. “We are talking to MTNL and Delhi Vidhyut Board for bill payment cards,” he said. The card major had earlier introduced petro cards with Indian Oil. The bank will install more than 3000 merchant terminals all over India at establishments ranging from local grocery stores to large departmental stores. The bank did a total business of Rs 4,000 crore (deposits of Rs 2,600 crore and advances of Rs 1,400 crore) during 1999-2000 and reported a net profit of Rs 33 crore during the year.
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Oil prices — a way out for consumers A BRITISH Labour government chucks money at a lame duck in the shape of the Millennium Dome in London. Fawlty Towers is named as the greatest British television programme of all time. The world holds its breath as petrol prices soar ahead of a meeting of
OPEC ministers in Vienna. There has been more than a whiff of the 70s in the air this week. The blockades of refineries and fuel depots in France show that oil has lost none of its ability to cause economic and political waves since
OPEC's heyday a quarter of a century ago. Saudi Arabia’s announcement on Thursday that it would increase oil production by 3 per cent came after quite blatant arm-twisting by Washington, but is almost certainly too little too late. Oil prices dipped slightly after the news, but in the short term, the increase will do little to correct the imbalance between demand and supply. Analysts believe that the price of a barrel of crude could hit $40 over the next few months, particularly if the rich countries of the north experience a hard winter. According to devotees of the new weightless economy, none of this is much to worry about because the technological revolution of the past decade has made the global economy much less vulnerable to oil shocks than they were in the past. But governments in the West are right to be worried. Rising oil prices have meant big trouble three times in the past 30 years — in 1973, 1979 and 1990 — and they could very well spell trouble this time too. Since the start of 1999, global oil prices have increased almost fourfold, and are now starting to have an impact on economic activity. In the USA, the higher cost of fuel is reining in the boom; in Europe it has pushed inflation above 2 per cent and prompted the European Central Bank to raise interest rates. Japan, only just emerging from a 10-year recession, is especially vulnerable to higher energy costs. It would indeed be ironic if it was the symbol of the old economy that finally put paid to the overblown claims of the disciples of the new paradigm. Governments are also right to expect a backlash from both producers and consumers as business costs rise and living standards are squeezed. One reason the Clinton administration has been calling in favours with Saudi Arabia is the fear that dearer energy will cost Al Gore votes in November’s election. In France, the Jospin administration has already felt the effects of the direct action by road hauliers which has paralysed large parts of the country and forced Paris to offer them concessions. In the end, however, this is not a rerun of the 70s and eventually prices will come down. As Sheikh Yamani — another blast from the past — warned
OPEC earlier this week, the recent surge in prices is probably the oil cartel’s last hurrah. Why? Because higher prices will lead not only to the discovery and exploitation of new fields, but also the search for alternative energy sources. “The stone age came to an end not for a lack of stones and the oil age will end, but not for a lack of oil,” he said.
Western governments could and should be doing more to hasten this process. To the extent that they have been levying ever-higher taxes on oil but refusing to recycle the proceeds into real investment in wave and solar power, they really have only themselves to blame if the voters turn nasty.
— By arrangement with The Guardian
NEW DELHI, Sep 8 (PTI) — The State Bank of India (SBI) has obtained RBI’s clearance for entering life insurance sector with a majority 74 per cent stake and is in the process of finalising its foreign partner. Confirming the move, SBI chief General Manager H. Lal said the bank obtained RBI clearance for floating a life insurance company with a foreign partner. “Sbi, obtained the apex bank’s clearance for holding 74 per cent stake in the proposed venture,” he said. Officials in Mumbai could not be contacted for comments. Medium sized banks like Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India and Canara Bank are going for consortiums along with a foreign partner as RBI norm for banks’ entry to insurance stipulates that more than 50 per cent holding would be considered selectively. Lal said the bank was yet to choose its foreign partner.
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He was in love, she was into business NEW YORK: Chirinjeev Kathuria (35), president and founder of New World Telecom,
LLC, always wanted to be an astronaut as a child. He is fulfilling these dreams today with his investment in
MirCorp, a joint venture with Russia’s Energia, making commercial space travel a reality. When Kathuria and his old time friend Walt Anderson were watching a show on the building of an international space station, they hit upon the idea of leasing the Mir, the Russian space station that was on the road to being decommissioned. “We took Anderson’s private plane, flew to Russia and proposed the idea to
Energia. They thought we were crazy,” Kathuria said. The Russian venture defines Kathuria’s eclectic personality that combines self-confidence, innovation, and a reckless but business-sensitive streak. When he came with his parents to Chicago as an 8-month-old child in 1964, they were among the first 10 Indians in that city. Today, he is globally recognised as a serial entrepreneur in the telecommunications industry. While in high school, Kathuria told IANS that his dream of being an astronaut was effectively killed when he found he had to wear glasses. But he persisted, studying space exploration along with economics and business in college, before going on to Brown University, where he studied medicine and to the Stanford Business School to get a masters degree. “Studying came very easy for me,” says “doctor”
Kathuria. Many of his ventures, he confessed were inspired by women who crossed his path. When in Stanford, he had a friend. “I was probably in love with her then, though she never gave me the time of day,” Kathuria laughs. Her family had a stake in Philippines Telephone and Telegraph. “She said she wanted to go to build a telephone system in India. I thought she might fall in love with me,” Kathuria recalled. So he got involved as a minority shareholder in 1993, forming a consortium, which he says, won one-third of the telecommunications services in India, particularly in eastern and western Uttar Pradesh, western Orissa and
Bihar. Kathuria’s company develops and operates major telecommunications and Internet projects throughout the world. These projects evolved when he met someone in an English pub. They compared notes and she liked the idea of having free Internet access paid for by advertisers. He formed New World. “We took a stake in an English Internet service provider (ISP) and soon became the third largest in Britain. And we pioneered the ad-paid ISPs in 1996-97,” he said. He has also set up other companies, including X-Stream Networks, Inc., which he started in the USA. The company was acquired by Liberty Surf and went public four months ago and was valued at $10 billion, he said. — IANS
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Micro-chip misery for grandmother FROM the outside, Joan Stock’s neat, white bungalow in a village on the outskirts of Bristol, in the west of England, looks like the ideal retirement home. Step inside, however, and you enter something of a technological time warp. Instead of a colour television and video, a 12-inch black and white port-able sits on a stand designed for something much bigger. The telephones belong to an earlier era. Even the washing machine and tumble drier have long been overtaken by advances in white-goods technology. The lack of modern conveniences does not reflect an unusual form of asceticism. Nor is it due to parsimony, but to a rare hypersensitivity to micro-chips that has made Mrs Stock’s life a misery for more than 25 years. Mrs Stock says that if she goes near a computer or sits in a modern motor car she quickly begins to suffer with a pain that she likens to a pencil boring through the back of her head. “I have earache and toothache and my vision goes distorted. It is just as though you are drunk and you don’t know what you are doing,” she said yesterday (thurs). “I find it very scary, especially when the eyes go. They can be like that for hours and I worry that they may not become all right again. The pains in my head can last for days.” Mrs Stock, a sprightly 79, says that she first noticed the problem in the mid-1970s when an electronic typewriter was introduced to the office where she worked as a secretary. But life has become increasingly problematic as the years have progressed because of the widespread use of microchips in everyday items. Supermarket checkouts have become a no-go area; modern telephones with their number storage facilities are out of the question; and even a trip to a favourite local pub is no longer a possibility since they installed electronic bar equipment. Mrs Stock’s problem has been attributed to a rare sensitivity to electro-magnetic fields of a particular frequency given out by some modern electronic goods. — The Guardian
Direct-to-customer selling by Dell The company, however, has no immediate plans to set up manufacturing facility in India. The company has already registered a 100 per cent subsidiary in India which would be formally launched on September 28 by the Chief Executive Officer of Dell Computer Corporation, Micheal Dell. Dell, which has projected a turnover of $ 32 billion during the current financial year, is mainly known for its strategic model, direct-to-customer, without any intermediary chain and thus should benefit the consumers. Under the direct-to-customer model the computer would be supplied to customer within five to seven days anywhere in Asia. Anupam Info floats Net business The e-business platform, ‘anupam.net’ would enable the members to conduct end to end transactions on-line and allow them to create their virtual front office through an interative e-commerce enable web site. Rediff launches Olympics channel Shantha Biotech to raise $ 50-100m Within six months of its Nasdaq listing, the company would seek a secondary listing on the BSE without raising any capital, MD of Shantha Biotech Varaparasad Reddy said at a press meet to announce the formation of two new joint ventures by the company. Shantha Biotech has formed a joint venture
(JV) company with us-based East West Laboratories Inc called Shantha West to aid its advance into r&d in the field of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. The Indian company had invested Rs 1.95 crore to pick up 51 per cent in the
JV, Reddy said and added that East West had developed four anti-cancer monoclonal antibodies and also held exclusive worldwide licence agreement for an antibody for the treatment of lung cancer. DCM Consolidated enters IT |
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Electric pump in heart Peter Houghton (61) had been told by doctors he had less than six weeks to live when he volunteered to have the thumb-sized device inserted into his left ventricular wall. After six weeks the symptoms of his heart failure had disappeared, with his heart muscle — only pumping at a tenth of its potential after a heart attack three years ago — dramatically repairing itself, his kidneys working more efficiently, and with him losing 15 kg of weight. His ability to exercise had also drastically improved. Before the operation, on June 20, walking 10 yards made him breathless. Now he strides out for two miles each day. “We’re very excited by the outcome,” said Stephen Westaby, the cardiac surgeon who operated on him at Oxford’s John Radcliffe hospital, and who believes that, within 10 years, the pumps could be as common as pacemakers. The pump was inserted in Mr Houghton’s heart, with a fine electric wire threaded through the chest to the neck, where a titanium button was screwed into the skull. The pump is run by batteries and a controller, both the size of a portable phone, which are carried on a belt. A wire connects these to the titanium button, protruding from behind the ear. The operation is revolutionary because, while three Jarvik 2000 pumps have been inserted as an aid for patients awaiting heart transplants in Houston, Texas, this is the first time one has been intended to be used permanently.
— The Guardian Doctor accused
of insensitivity Arepalli Krishnamurthy is alleged to have used the pen-knife after first asking for a carving knife from the daughter of Edna Everson who had died at her home in Bramhall, Greater Manchester. South Manchester coroner John Pollard, who was notified by a shocked undertaker that he found an unstitched wound when he arrived to collect Everson’s body, has ordered an inquiry. Pacemakers are routinely removed from bodies prior to a cremation to avoid them exploding, but the job is usually done by undertakers as part of the embalming process. A spokesman for the British Medical Association says it is unusual for a pacemaker to be removed immediately after death in a patient’s home. The pen-knife was borrowed from one of Everson’s neighbours, Geoffrey Conely, who described what happened: “The doctor simply made an incision and took it out. It took between 10 and 30 seconds. He turned round and put the pacemaker in my hand. I put it on the chest of drawers.”
— IANS |
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