Thu, Feb 13, 2003 page12

• World Business Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ Anti-trust

  Microsoft rivals seek split

  European regulators are being urged by leading technology companies to restore competition in software and services markets by splitting up Microsoft Corp, the world's largest software maker, the Wall Street Journal said, citing the association, Microsoft, antitrust regulators and lawyers. "If ever you had a case that this was appropriate, this could well be the case," said Ed Black, president and CEO of the Washington-based Computer & Communications Industry Association, it reported. In a complaint filed in Brussels on Jan. 31, the group of telephone, computer and consumer-electronics companies including Nokia Corp and AOL Time Warner Inc, alleges that Microsoft used its Windows XP operating-system to gain illegal access to new markets including for music and video-editing software.

  ■ Semiconductors

  FeRAM chip unveiled

  Semiconductor giants Toshiba of Japan and Germany's Infineon said yesterday they have invented a tiny chip with a vast memory capacity, marking the first fruit of a joint development plan launched in 2001. The 32 megabit ferroelectric random access memory (FeRAM) chip has the highest memory capacity ever reported, equalling that of a similar service unveiled by Samsung a year ago, a spokesman from Toshiba said. FeRAM, a non-volatile device with low power consumption, combines the fast operating characteristic of dynamic random access memory and static read only memory, with flash memory ability to retain data while switched off. The new FeRAM reduces the overall area of the chip to only 96mm2, half the size of a conventional device, the two firms said.

  ■ Tourism

  Number of visitors jump 4%

  The number of tourists visiting Malaysia grew by 4 percent last year, with visitors pumping more than US$11 billion into the economy, government figures showed yesterday. The increase to some 13.3 million tourists came despite a downturn after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US and last October's Bali bombing in neighboring Indonesia, Tourism Minister Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir said. He warned, however, that a war against Iraq could see a drop this year in arrivals from the Middle East, which has been a growing market for Malaysia after fallout from the Sept. 11 attacks led Muslims to look for alternatives to holidays in Western countries.

  ■ Debt

  Potential leader draws fire

  Kurds working in the mountaintop town of Salahuddin are reluctant to support the man often mentioned as a successor to Saddam Hussein for one simple reason: They say he owes them money. Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, has returned from exile to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq ahead of a potential US-led military attack -- only to face hundreds of lawsuits for unpaid debts from the group's last guerrilla campaign in the 1990s. "He was here for a while and he owes a lot of people a lot of money," said Khaled Ismail Amad, a former driver for the congress who says he's owed 50,000 dinars (US$6,250). Although Chalabi enjoys support in the US Congress, his relations with successive American administrations have been rockier, reflecting doubts, especially in the US State Department, about his effectiveness as a national leader.
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