• diary political and General News Events from Feb 2

FINANCE/BUSINESS

Huawei and ZTE gain in developing world BUSINESS ASIA by Bloomberg

John Liu

Bloomberg News

892 words

19 December 2006

International Herald Tribune

INHT

1R

19

English

© 2006 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights reserved.
Ernest Ndukwe, head of the Nigerian telephone regulator, had personal guides for shopping, sightseeing and dining when he visited Hong Kong this month, all courtesy of Huawei Technologies.
Huawei, the biggest Chinese telephone-equipment maker, and rival ZTE, could be in joint control of more than half the Nigerian cellphone equipment market by 2007, four years after they started operating in the most-populous African nation, Ndukwe said in an interview this month. Their prices in Nigeria are 40 percent lower than those of companies like Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent, he said.
Huawei and ZTE, both based in Shenzhen, are courting officials like Ndukwe as they focus on Africa, Asia and Latin America to expand sales of Chinese technology. Developing nations are expected to drive growth as the global cellphone market adds more than a billion subscribers in the next two years, according to the chief executive of Motorola, Ed Zander.
"Doing business in China has taught ZTE and Huawei to focus on keeping their products simple and cheap," Victor Yip, an analyst with UOB Kay Hian Securities in Hong Kong, said by phone. "People in developing markets don't need fancy - they want something that works."
Huawei, which makes equipment used to build telephone networks, doubled sales in Nigeria last year to $600 million, Zeng Yong, general manager of the company's unit there, said in a Dec. 7 interview. The company has about 400 employees in Nigeria, with offices in Abuja and Lagos.
"We've done really well there and I think we're only going to do better," said Zeng, who traveled to Hong Kong with Ndukwe and other Nigerian officials to attend the International Telecommunications Union conference.
Ndukwe is the chief executive of the Nigerian Communications Commission, which licenses cellphone carriers in the nation. Nigeria, the biggest African cellular market after South Africa, might double subscribers to 50 million by 2010 from 25 million at the end of August, according to Rand Merchant Bank of South Africa.
Huawei and ZTE can fuel the growth of cellphone users in Nigeria by helping to lower costs so services are available to more of the population, Ndukwe said.
"Emerging markets offer better opportunities than Europe or North America because there's less competition and greater growth potential," said Michael Meng, a Citigroup analyst in Hong Kong. "The Chinese are doing better in emerging markets because they've put much more focus there."
Alcatel-Lucent's business in Africa is conducted mostly through its unit Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell, Annie Chen, a spokeswoman for the subsidiary, said. The unit, in which Alcatel-Lucent holds 50 percent plus one share with Shanghai Belling holding the remainder, was established in May 2002. Chen declined to comment on competition with Huawei and ZTE in Africa.
Lungi Tyali, a spokeswoman for Ericsson's sub-Saharan Africa business, did not return calls seeking comment.
ZTE may more than double its number of employees in India next year to 2,000, Cao Qing, vice president of ZTE's cellphone products unit, said in an interview last week in Hong Kong. India, the world's fastest-growing cellphone market, added a record 6.7 million cellphone users in October for a total of 136 million.
ZTE won a contract last month to supply equipment and handsets to Reliance Communications, the second-biggest cellphone operator in India, Cao said, declining to say how much the contract was worth.
ZTE won two $30 million contracts last month to provide phone equipment to the African nations of Lesotho and Ghana. In August, the Chinese company secured a $312 million contract to build a fiber- optic network in Venezuela.
Huawei said in September it won a $50 million contract to supply Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela with equipment for a telecommunications network in Venezuela. In the past six months, Huawei has also won contracts in Columbia, Uruguay, Russia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Morocco, Tajikistan and Saudi Arabia.
The Chinese government has also helped by giving Nigeria and other developing countries loans to buy phone equipment, Ndukwe said. At a China-Africa summit meeting held last month in Beijing, President Hu Jintao of China pledged $3 billion in loans to African nations over the next three years.
"Huawei and ZTE need to expand overseas as Ericsson and other foreign companies pay more attention to China," said Steven Liu, a DBS Vickers Securities analyst in Hong Kong.
China added 55.62 million cellphone users in the first 10 months of this year, taking its total to 449 million, according to government data.
While sales at Huawei and ZTE have been raised by their focus on developing nations, profit margins are being affected by the companies' low prices, Meng of Citigroup said.
ZTE's net income in the quarter to Sept. 30 fell by half from a year earlier, even as sales rose 15 percent. Huawei's annual contract sales may grow 34 percent, compared with 46 percent in 2005, according to a company statement. Lower prices are contributing to the slowdown, Liu Jiangfeng, vice president of Huawei, said in June.
As emerging markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America grow and add users, Huawei and ZTE will be able to sell products at higher prices, Meng said.
Document INHT000020061219e2cj0002x

Indian `inbox' clogged with spam ; Every 27th email in an Indian's inbox contains a virus,...
BS REPORTER

546 words

19 December 2006

Business Standard

BSTN

10

English

(c) 2006 Business Standard Ltd.
Every 27th email in an Indian's inbox contains a virus, trojan or other form of malware, making our country continually the hardest hit in terms of virus activity.
The seemingly innocuous spam, however, which continues to account for roughly 70 per cent of all e-mail messages on the Internet (over 90 per cent of people in India receive spam) is a bigger threat, indicates a recent report by security firm MessageLabs.
Why is it so? Spam clogs your email box, slows down company networks besides introducing phishing and other threats. Worse, it mutates every 12 minutes with nearly 2,000 unique content changes making it extremely difficult for spam filters to cope, according to Ironport, a spam-filtering firm. "Around 1,500 unique domains are used. They change every 15 minutes and the spam source can be traced to nearly 100,000 infected PCs (zombies) in 119 countries," Patrick Peterson, VP Technology, Ironport, told Business Standard.
Spam levels are expected to continue to rise till the end of 2006. "Cyber criminals are out in full force and utilising the holiday season to their advantage," cautioned Mark Sunner, chief technology officer, MessageLabs, in his November report. And there's more bad news - worldwide spam has doubled to 60 million per day from last year's figure of 30 million, according to Peterson. This despite the assurance of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who when speaking at the World Economic Forum in 2004, said he could crack spam by 2006. Wishful thinking eh!
While the most widely-recognised form of spam is e-mail spam, there's spam in areas like instant messaging, Usenet newsgroups, search engines, blogs and mobile phones too. The barrier to entry is so low that spammers are tempted to try these routes. "Much of the increase can be attributed to more sophisticated forms of image spam," explains Patrick Peterson, VP Technology, Ironport.
Image spam is a technique which spammers use to "call to action" as part of an embedded file attachment (like a .gif or .jpeg) rather than in the body of the email. Most spam filters do not identify these images as spam and hence they escape detection, he explains. For instance, an image spam may invite you to invest in a stock - a joint study by researchers at Purdue University and Oxford University this May revealed that spam stock cons work. Enough recipients buy the stock that spammers can make a 5-6 per cent return in two days. "Image spam increased fourfold from last year and now represents 25 to 45 per cent of all junk e-mail, depending on the day," says Peterson.
Spammers frequently use false names, addresses, phone numbers, and other contact information to set up "disposable" accounts at various Internet service providers. They, notes Peterson, hide themselves or their operations in countries where law enforcement is lax, from Russia and Eastern Europe to China and Nigeria. Moreover, some spammers can churn out 200 million or more messages a day, and because less than one per cent of those need to bring responses from gullible, click-happy users to turn handsome profits, there is little incentive to stop.
Document BSTN000020061218e2cj00014

Beware of China-Africa Economic Ties, Mbeki Warns
by Austine Odo

335 words

18 December 2006

05:31 PM

All Africa

AFNWS

English

(c) 2006 AllAfrica, All Rights Reserved
Dec 18, 2006 (Daily Trust/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --
African countries have been warned against a new possible form of colonization resulting from China's heavy investment thrusts into several parts of Africa. South African President, Thabo Mbeki who gave the warning, says Africa must guard against falling into a "colonial relationship" with China.
His comments come as fast-growing China is continuing to increase its push for raw materials across Africa. China is currently pushing heavy investments into Africa, many Chinese firms are handling several projects in Nigeria, including those in energy, telecommunications and the railway.
But Mr Mbeki was quoted by the BBC yesterday as saying that African nations must strive for their relationship with China to be based on equal trade.
Last month, China hosted an Africa summit attended by 50 African leaders including Mr Mbeki. His warning about the risk of a colonial relationship with China was given to a student congress in Cape Town.
Mr Mbeki said that if Africa just exported raw materials to China while importing Chinese manufactured goo-ds, the African continent could be "condemned to underdevelopment".
He said that this would simply mean "a replication" of Africa's historical relationship with its former colonial powers. China, which expects annual trade with Africa to total $100bn (GBP53bn) by 2010, has long said that it wants its growing trade relationship with Africa to equally benefit both sides.
In addition to its growing trade with Africa, China has promised $5bn (GBP2.5bn) in loans and credit for African nations.
However, critics have said China is too happy to support repressive African regimes. Mr Mbeki's latest comments appear to be a hardening of his position on the subject. On a recent visit to Beijing he said he understood that the Chinese leadership recognised Africa's concerns about its increasing trade relationship with China, and wanted to help lift the continent out of poverty.
(With BBC News)
Document AFNWS00020061218e2ci001bo

Press Release

Imprisoned Burmese Journalist Awarded Prize

Reporters Sans Frontieres

1,282 words

13 December 2006

04:45 PM

Scoop.co.nz

SCCONZ

English

Copyright 2006, scoop.co.nz All Rights Reserved.
http://img.scoop.co.nz/stories/images/0612/c7052dde2fc4b4da5056.jpeg " target="_blank">
Click to enlarge
U Win Tin
12 December 2006
The 15th Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France prize was presented in Paris on Tuesday, 12 December 2006
The 15th Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France prize was awarded to a journalist, a media, a press freedom defender and a cyber-dissident. The 2006 laureates are:
- U WIN TIN (Burma) in the "Journalist" category
- NOVAYA GAZETA (Russia) in the "Media" category
- JOURNALISTE EN DANGER (Democratic Republic of Congo) in the "Defender of press freedom" category
- GUILLERMO FARINAS HERNANDEZ (Cuba) in the "Cyberdissident" category
The 15th Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France 2006 prize is awarded to:
THE JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR who, through their work, attitude or principled stands demonstrated a strong commitment to press freedom.
The laureate is 76-year-old Burmese journalist U Win Tin, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for "subversion" and "anti-government propaganda" in 1989. After more than 17 years in prison and despite faltering health, the country’s most renowned journalist will not give way. In his special cell at Insein jail, near Rangoon, Saya, "The Sage", as his comrades call him, refuses to renounce his commitment to the National League for Democracy, robbed by the military junta of a landslide electoral victory in 1990. He continues to call for the unconditional release of thousands of prisoners of opinion held in the country’s prisons., U Win Tin was one of the political mentors of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, also deprived of her freedom. U Win Tin, who has been weakened by a urinary infection and two heart attacks, is only allowed two visits per month.
The other 2006 nominees in this category were Dawit Isaac (Eritrea) and Hollman Felipe Morris (Colombia).
Learn more on Win Tin and the nominees
A MEDIA which exemplifies the struggle for the right to inform the public and to be informed.
The prize goes to Russian bi-weekly Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper for which Anna Politkovskaya was working when she was murdered in Moscow on 7 October 2006. Novaya Gazeta carries out investigations regularly exposing corruption in the Russian administration. Also highly critical of government policy, the newspaper carried numerous reports by Anna Politkovskaya on Chechnya, but also on developments in Russian society. The founders of the “New Newspaper” set themselves the objective of being independent and of extending its circulation throughout Russia.
The other 2006 nominees in this category were the Democratic Voice of Burma (Burma), Uthayan (Sri Lanka) and An-Nahar (Lebanon).
Learn more on Novaia Gazeta and the nominees
A DEFENDER of press freedom
The prize is awarded to the organisation “Journalist in danger” (JED), based in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Founded in 1997 by journalists Donat M’Baya Tshimanga and Tshivis Tshivuadi, JED is one of Africa’s most active and respected press freedom organisations., JED is particularly combative when it comes to reminding easily corrupted journalists of their duty. It is also in the vanguard of the struggle to get the government to reform unfair and illiberal legislation under which journalists are regularly sent to the capital’s Penitentiary and Re-education centre in the capital.
The other 2006 nominees in this category were the Centre for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET, Mexico), Tadjigoul Begmedova (Turkmenistan) and Anwar al-Bunni (Syria).
Learn more on JED and the nominees
A CYBER-DISSIDENT prevented from informing the public online
The prize is awarded to Guillermo Fariñas Hernández (Cuba), head of the independent news agency Cubanacán Press. In February 2006, he began a hunger and thirst strike to demand access to a “free Internet” for all Cubans. The authorities forcibly hospitalised him and put him on a drip to bring his protest to an end, a step which led to even greater international media interest., Guillermo Fariñas has said he is ready to die so that his compatriots can finally have the right to be informed. He has been in intensive care since 20 August because of kidney and heart problems. The authorities did offer to allow him “limited” access to the Internet, but he refused, explaining that he could not honourably exercise his profession as a journalist by only looking at news that had been filtered by the government. He is continuing his work at Cubanacán and has become one of the leading voices among Cuban opposition journalists.
The other 2006 nominees in this category were Habib Saleh (Syria) and Yang Zili (China).
Learn more on Guillermo Fariñas Hernández (Cuba) and the nominees
Reporters Without Borders pays tribute to Gebran Tuweni
Gebran Tuweni, publisher of the daily An-Nahar, was murdered in a car bombing in Beirut on 12 December 2005. He was the third journalist - after Samir Kassir and May Shidiac - to be targeted during 2005. The investigation into his death has now stalled, because of political obstacles and violence which continues to rock the country.
Dancer Yalda Younes will perform at the ceremony in tribute to this major Lebanese press figure in the play NO, written by Zad Moultaka in honour of the Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir, created in Beirut on 2 June 2006, to mark the first anniversary of his murder.
The Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France prize has been awarded since 1992
In honouring a journalist, a media, a press freedom defender and a cyber-dissident, Reporters Without Borders and the Fondation de France draws the attention of public opinion to the wide range of attacks on the right to inform the public and to be informed and for the need to actively support press freedom.
Each prize is worth €2, 500.
Since it was set up, the Reporters Withotu Borders - Fondation de France prize has been awarded to Zlatko Dizdarevic (Bosnia-Herzegovina - 1992), Wang Juntao (China - 1993), André Sibomana (Rwanda - 1994), Christina Anyanwu (Nigeria - 1995), Isik Yurtçu (Turkey - 1996), Raúl Rivero (Cuba - 1997), Nizar Nayyuf (Syria - 1998), San San Nweh (Burma - 1999), Carmen Gurruchaga (Spain - 2000), Reza Alijani (Iran - 2001), Grigory Pasko (Russia - 2002), Ali Lmrabet (Morocco - 2003), Hafnawi Ghoul (Algeria- 2004), Zhao Yan (China - 2005).
Several winners have been released just a few weeks or months after receiving their prize. Among them was the Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet, awarded the prize on 10 December 2003 and freed on 7 January 2004, Russian journalist Grigory Pasko, laureate in December 2002 and released in January 2003, Burmese journalist San San Nweh, a prize-winner in December 1999 and released in 2001.
The Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France prize is awarded by an international jury made up of the 35 following members:
Ekram Shinwari (Afghanistan), Rubina Möhring (Austria), Nayeem Islam Khan (Bangladesh), Zhanna Litvina (Belarus), Olivier Basille (Belgium), Colette Braeckman (Belgium), Sebastião Salgado (Brazil ), Maung Maung Myint (Burma), François Bugingo (Canada), Carlos Cortes Castillo (Colombia), Miriam Leiva (Cuba), Donat M’Baya Tshimanga (Democratic Republic of Congo), Domenico Amha-Tsion (Eritrea), Francis Charhon (France), Laurent Joffrin (France), Elise Lucet (France), Pierre Veilletet (France), Sabine Christiansen (Germany), Michael Rediske (Germany), Mimmo Candito (Italy), Sailab Mahsud (Pakistan), Ricardo Uceda (Peru), Michel Kik (Qatar), Mircea Toma (Romania), Alexey Simonov (Russia), Omar Faruk Osman (Somalia) Fernando Castelló (Spain), Maria Dolores Masana Argüelles (Spain), Vicente Verdu (Spain), Eva Elmsater (Sweden), George Gordon-Lennox (Switzerland), Gérald Sapey (Switzerland), Sihem Bensedrine (Tunisia) Ethan Zuckerman (United States), Ben Ami Fihman (Venezuela).
ENDS
[e-mail] | 200612141045.628d2b46
Document SCCONZ0020061214e2cd0002t

BANKING & INSURANCE

‘Phishing’ expedition reels in a few bank customers

Robert Smyth

1,345 words

12 December 2006

Budapest Business Journal

WBBJ

English

(c) 2006 Budapest Business Journal
Customers of Raiffeisen Bank Zrt, Szigetvár Co-op, Erste Bank and GE Budapest Internetbank had an opportunity last week to familiarize themselves with “phishing” when would-be web thieves sent out e-mails trying to trick the banks’ clients into verifying account information by threatening to delete the accounts of those failing to “comply.”
It is the goal of “phishermen” to be able to take out money when enough information is available about an account that has been phished.
All of the attacks appear to have come from abroad, and although some experts allege that the Netherlands is the source on the IP addresses used, it is nonetheless difficult to generate such assumptions, said Tamás Fórján, technical director of IT security specialists 2F 2000 Kft. His company distributes IT security software from Kaspersky, F-Secure and TrendMicro.
“These kinds of e-mails are sent out by ‘zombie computers’ – computers that are infected with malware and remote controlled without the owners’ knowledge,” he said.
Spammers also establish their networks in this way, or else they hire somebody to create a zombie network. Certain groups in Russia are known to have these types of networks – largely because they have not been made illegal.
In any case, the main advantage of such an enterprise is that attackers cannot be properly traced. In fact, the perpetrators themselves don’t appear to know who their targets were.
“They’re sending out another round of mass e-mails to try and identify some of these targets, and some might fall for this tactic,” said Fórján.
For their part, the “phishermen” are hosting an effectively untraceable website and sending out pretty convincing looking e mails. Raiffeisen Bank and Szigetvár Co-op were initially contacted in English, while GE Budapest Internetbank customers received mails in Hungarian. By the time the BBJ went to print, two more Hungarian-language attacks had been launched against Raffeisen and Erste. Fórján observed that the e-mail texts were identical, while graphics and presentation were customized to conform to the banks’ visual identity.
As of now, only a handful of people have given up their account details, but it’s difficult to say how much money will end up being lost, as the banks involved are keeping the matter secret and may in future cancel any suspect transactions quickly should the need arise, Fórján explained.
Emese Horváczy, spokesperson for the National Bureau of