Bill and Melinda Gates, Bono are Time’s 2005 ‘Persons of the Year’
Time magazine has chosen Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, and his wife Melinda, as well as Irish rock star Bono as its 2005 “Persons of the Year” for being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice and for making mercy smarter.

Sudden disasters get the big headlines. However, day after day other tragedies of avoidable dimensions unfold such as the one child who dies of malaria in Africa every 29 seconds, the one person who is infected with HIV every 6.4 seconds, the 8 million who die every year because they are too poor to stay alive.

And who is proving most effective in figuring out how to eradicate those calamities? In different ways, it is Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono, the Irish rocker. Time also named as “Partners of the Year” former US Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton -- the onetime rivals who joined forces to raise relief money for those who suffered in the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

The founder of computer giant Microsoft whose personal fortune of $46.5 billion topped Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest again this year and his wife were named for their work in the Gates Foundation, the world’s biggest charity with a $29 billion endowment. Bono was described as the rocker who has made debt reduction sexy.

Apple offering Intel-based iMacs ahead of schedule
Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off Macworld 2006 by announcing that new Apple iMac computers, based on Intel Corp.'s Core Duo processor, are available immediately, six months ahead of schedule.
As rumoured, Jobs also announced a new Apple notebook computer, also based on the Core Duo, which will begin shipping in February.

Apple stunned the computer world last June when, after weeks of speculation, the company confirmed that it would end its long-standing relationship with IBM Corp. and transition from the PowerPC processor to Intel x86-based processors. The two companies had said they expected the transition to be complete by June of this year.

Delivering the keynote address at Macworld, both Jobs and Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini — who made a surprise appearance clad in a bunny suit and holding a silicon wafer — praised the hard work done by Apple and Intel engineers that enabled Apple to deliver Core Duo iMacs ahead of schedule.
"It's been incredible how well this has gone," Jobs said.

Otellini added that more than 1,000 Intel personnel worked on the project. Jobs said the new iMac is as much as three times faster than its immediate predecessor, the iMac G5, in key specification areas. Other aspects of the new iMac, including the price, design, sizes and features remain the same, he said.

As had been rumoured by analysts and Apple Web sites, Jobs also unveiled the MacBook Pro, a new line of notebooks based on the Core Duo, the dual-core Intel processor that had gone under the codename Jonah.
Jobs said the new notebook offers a four-fold increase in "performance-per-watt" and performance speeds of up to five times better than the PowerBook G4, Apple's most recent notebook.

Jobs said Apple has been working to ensure that its software will be "universal," running on both Core Duo and PowerPC Macs. Many of Apple's consumer applications already run on both, he said, and the company's professional applications will be universal by March.

However, most software developed by third parties is not yet universal. Jobs said a technology known as Rosetta is incorporated into Core Duo iMacs to allow them to run legacy applications until development is completed by third parties

iPod demand sparks record Apple revenue
Thanks largely to the remarkable success of the iPod MP3 player, Apple Computer Inc. recorded record quarterly revenue of about $5.7 billion during the fourth quarter of 2005, according to CEO Steve Jobs.
Apple sold roughly 14 million iPods during the holiday quarter, Jobs, said, more than three times the 4.5 million the company sold during the fourth quarter of 2004. To put this number in perspective, Jobs said the 14 million sales were equal to more than 100 units of every minute of the fourth quarter.
In total, Jobs said, Apple has now sold about 42 million iPods, including roughly 32 million in 2005 alone.

Apple's 135 retail stores logged more than 26 million visitors during the fourth quarter and posted more than $1 billion in revenue for the first time ever.
Apple's iTunes Web site, which sells digital downloads of individual songs or albums, is now selling on average 3 million song downloads per day. All told, iTunes has sold more than 850 downloads, Jobs said, and maintains an 83 percent market share of the song download market.

"We are well on our way to hitting that billion song market in the next few months," Jobs said. "We are really happy with how iTunes is doing."
Though it's been only 90 days since Apple announced the fifth generation iPod with video capability, Jobs said, the company has already sold more than 8 million videos, including television programs and sporting events. Just last week, he said, Apple began offering sports programming with 15-minute condensed versions of college football Bowl games. The 15-minute version of last week's Rose Bowl, which decided college football's national championship, has already risen to become the top selling iTunes video.
Jobs announced that iTunes would now offer downloadable versions of Saturday Night Live episodes.

Also during Tuesday's keynote, Jobs announced that the first iMacs based on Intel Corp.'s Core Duo processor are available now, six months ahead of schedule.
PSA confirms offer to acquire P&O

SINGAPORE’S PSA International has confirmed making an offer of £3.5Bn ($6.1Bn) to take over UK’s Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company or P&O. "PSA International confirms that it has made an approach to The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O),” a PSA spokesperson told Fairplay today. PSA’s offer to acquire the whole of P&O’s deferred stock at 470 pence per unit is higher than Dubai rival DP World’s offer of 443 pence per unit. PSA’s offer for concessionary stock and terms of cancellation of preferred stock are also on the lines of DP World’s offer. Late yesterday P&O had stated that PSA would be allowed a limited period of time to fulfil its pre-conditions which included “final” approval from the PSA Board. “As a result, the Board intends to adjourn the stockholder and court meetings scheduled for 20 January, 2006 for approximately two weeks,” P&O has announced. PSA is fully owned by the Singapore government’s Temasek Holdings and the offer is a clear signal that it is determined to upstage Hong Kong’s Hutchison as the world’s leading port operator.

China Revises 2004 Economic Growth Rate Upward to 10.1 Percent
China has revised its 2004 economic growth rate to 10.1 percent from 9.5 percent following the recent completion of an economic census. China's gross domestic product grew a feverish 9.8 percent for all of 2005, the official Xinhua News Agency reported citing the National Development and Reform Commission. That estimate likely will be revised when official data are released months later.

China had reported in late December that based on the census, the size of the entire economy was about 20 percent bigger than previously thought because it had underestimated the services sector. Since then, the government has gradually released figures for various years.

The figures show the economy growing even faster than expected, resisting government efforts to curb growth that has strained energy supplies and transport systems, while generating massive pollution problems. The estimated size of China's economy in 2004 was revised upward by 16.8 percent to 15.988 trillion yuan ($1.98 trillion), from the previously reported 13.688 trillion yuan ($1.7 trillion), the Statistics Bureau said.

The statistics bureau also revised GDP data for the years 1993 to 2003. Based on the revisions, China's GDP grew by an average annual rate of 9.6 percent between 1979 and 2004, 0.2 percentage point higher than originally reported.

Strong export growth and massive flows of foreign investment have helped support continued robust growth, despite efforts by regulators to rein in spending on excess factory capacity and real estate development and other construction projects that they say could lead to financial problems.

WiMax could help bridge India's telecom divide
It is 30 times faster than the much-touted 3G or third generation mobile technology. It is 100 times faster than the wireless data rates offered by today's cellular solutions in India. And it may be able to solve the "last mile" connectivity problems that have created a huge divide between the urban and rural access to Internet.

WiMax — the faster, longer range version of WiFi (the technology to wirelessly access the Net) — might just turn out to be something that will allow India to harness broadband for its objectives.

Government and industry were in rare agreement that WiMax was the way to go — if the hardware was available at an affordable price. J.S. Sarma, Telecom Commission Chairman and Telecommunications Secretary, said Wimax could build on the huge base of copper-wire and fibre-optic connectivity available with BSNL and extend its reach to inaccessible areas by using wireless for the "last mile."

Leading Indian providers — Sify, Reliance and Tata/VSNL — expressed their readiness to deploy WiMax as soon as spectrum and regulatory issues were in place.
But they felt the solution would first emerge in the fixed personal computer arena before being adopted for mobile platforms.

Alok Sharma, chief executive of Telsima Communications, the first Indian company to provide solutions in the broadband wireless arena, said India, with its huge installed base of cable TV subscribers, was a potential market for the WiMax technology.

But there was need to set up solar-power backed base stations to penetrate the hinterland. The summit was co-sponsored by Beceem Communications, a U.S. and India-based start-up that has become a key player in developing hardware to exploit the WiMax technology.

The company's Bangalore centre has created the world's first chipsets for mobile WiMax platforms, which are expected to roll out commercially within months. It has also been instrumental in helping to create the technical standard — 802.16e — that underpins WiMax.