Thu, Feb 19, 2004 page12

• World Business Quick Take　

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ Internet

  New Bagle bug hits Web

  A new variant of the Bagle Internet worm, dubbed Bagle.B, was on Tuesday spreading quickly by e-mail throughout the world, Internet security experts said. "It was initially spread through spamming, which gave it a good start, and now it's picking up speed and spreading quite rapidly," Mikael Albrecht, with the Finnish Security firm F-Secure, said. The worm seemed to have appeared first in Germany, and was on Tuesday afternoon spreading quickly in Italy, Poland and the UK as well, he said. Few details of the new bug were yet available, as it was still being analyzed, but Bagle.B seemed to be installing a so-called backdoor function on infected computers, Albrecht said.

  ■ Entertainment

  Disney to buy the Muppets

  The Walt Disney Co said it will buy the "Muppets" characters, including Kermit, Miss Piggy and others, as well as the "Bear in the Big Blue House," franchise from the Jim Henson Co. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal, which is expected to close in about two months, culminates a decades-long pursuit of the Muppets by Disney, which came close to acquiring the characters in 1990. The deal fell apart shortly after the death of company founder Jim Henson. The company then was bought by German media company EM.TV, which sold it back to the Henson family last year. The deal does not include the Sesame Street characters, such as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, who were sold earlier by EM.TV to the Sesame Workshop.

  ■ Banking

  Loose talk hurts Saga Bank

  A young woman's e-mails to friends with false information about a regional bank's financial difficulties caused the bank to lose ?50 billion (US$476 million) of its account deposits, Japanese police authorities said yesterday. According to authorities, the Japanese woman in her 20s in southwestern Saga prefecture was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly sending the slanderous e-mails to her friends saying that Saga Bank would soon be bankrupt. The woman, whose name was withheld, sent the e-mail to 26 people in December who forwarded it on to others. Due to the false rumor, Saga Bank lost ?50 billion in its account deposits from customers in December, resulting in its total account deposits to fall by 4.2 percent from a year earlier. The woman admitted to the act, but said she did not expect to create such a big commotion.

  ■ Semiconductors

  Wafer sales slow to 5.5%

  Global growth in sales of silicon wafers that are used to make semiconductors such as computer chips slowed to 5.5 percent last year, an industry group said. Sales rose to US$5.8 billion last year from US$5.5 billion in 2002, when revenue grew 5.8 percent, Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) said in a press release. Shipments grew 10 percent to 5.15 billion square inches last year from 4.68 billion in 2002, when shipments rose 19 percent, SEMI said. In the fourth quarter, shipments rose 23 percent from the year-earlier period and 6.5 percent from the previous quarter, it said. Samsung Electronics Co, the world's second-largest semiconductor maker, last month reported that last year's net income fell 15.5 percent to 6 trillion won (US$5.2 billion) after a glut drove down prices of computer memory chips.

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