LONDON: People in nine cities across Britain will be able to make use of WiFi technology beginning March as a city-based firm, The Cloud, is launching its first phase of a proposed nationwide WiFi network. This will mean that users in these cities will be able to access the internet from their laptops outdoors, without cables, and use their mobile phones to make calls over the web.

The eight cities where the WiFi hotspots will be launched are Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge and Liverpool besides the London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Camden and Islington.

WiFi hotspots provide access to the internet for those with a WiFi-enabled computer or mobile phone without having to use the traditional medium of a cable. Several hotspots put together provide blanket coverage of outdoor areas in the city. Mobile phone users will also be able to make use of the hotspots and make national and international calls, send e-mails and transfer documents at a fraction of the existing costs and without having to rely on telecom service providers.

Mobile phones and laptop computers with a WiFi chip can use the internet to make calls or create networks. While most of the laptop computers contain the WiFi chip, some 25 mobile phones come with WiFi chips.

George Polk, chief executive of The Cloud, a firm funded by private equity funds, said he expects voice calls to represent about a third of revenues.

He said the network equipment will be installed on lampposts or street signs and revenue will be share between those who own these street furniture’s, the Cloud and the ISP.

Initially, subscribers of BT Openzone, O2, SkypeZones and Nintendo WiFi will be able to make use of the service while other wireless ISPs will be added soon.

The Cloud operates some 6,000 hotspots throughout the country, Sweden and Germany. It had recently set up a network in Canary Wharf, which is claimed to be the largest WiFi-enabled financial area in Europe.

Polk said providing the ubiquitous wireless broadband access … will have a major impact on the way people communicate, work and play in city centres. “Businesses can use wireless broadband to work more efficiently, local government workers can stay in touch with their office via hand-held devices, and the general public can surf the web, play games, compare prices and make low-cost calls internationally over the internet,” he added.

LONDON – Corner shops in the country could be an extinct animal by the next decade owing to the aggressive expansion of the big four supermarkets, according to a latest report by MPs. This is especially true because independent wholesalers are almost out of the business, says the report. LONDON – Corner shops in the country could be an extinct animal by the next decade owing to the aggressive expansion of the “big four” supermarkets, according to a latest report by MPs. This is especially true because independent wholesalers are almost out of the business, says the report.

Supermarkets will say that they are also providing convenience stores, but the prospect for the independent operator is very, very bleak indeed,” said Jim Dowd, the Labour MP, who is the chairman of an all-party group that tabled this report. “This is a sector that chains were not even in a little more than five years ago and now they have more than 600 stores.”

The report also claimed that this extended domination of the supermarkets would result in the creation of “food deserts” across the country and pose hardship for the old and infirm who would have to travel the extra mile to take care of their needs. The MPs also said that this trend would affect the publishing industry as well and small magazines could be wiped out in the near future.

This corner shop sector is believed to be worth around 120 billion. The latest report will add to the woes of the Government which could be forced to intervene. Smaller shops are disappearing from the retail landscape at a rate of 2,000 per year, the report said. In 2000, there were 30,000 small shops, but this number has currently dwindled to 20,000. This attrition has been unabated and has coincided with the emergence and domination of Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Morrisons.

The big supermarkets do not drag people off the streets into their stores. There is no doubting their reputation for value for money and good-quality produce. But it is a question of what the secondary effects of that are: is it sustainable over the long term when competition is being eradicated so ruthlessly? Mr Dowd asked.

He added that Tesco had informed MPs of its intentions to add 1,200 small shops over the next decade. This report will pressurize the Government to conduct another investigation into the whole issue. Earlier in August, the Office of Fair Trading had rejected the demand to refer the issue to the Competition Commission since it found no violations.

LONDON: Britain’s state-owned Royal Mail will lose its 350-year-old monopoly status in the country Tuesday when the country’s 6.5 billion-pound mail industry opens up for private participation.

A spokesperson for the department said the department is resolved to fight hard for every single letter. “Royal Mail is determined to compete successfully in the open market, but in order to do so we need a fair regulatory regime and the ability to invest 2 billion pounds in the modernisation of the business,” he said.

The system is partially privatised since April 2003 as private companies are allowed to handle bulk mailings of 4,000 items or more. From Tuesday, 14 private operators licensed by industry regulator Postcomm will be able to operate in all the fields. These companies include Deutsche Post unit DHL, UK Mail of Business Post Group and the U.K. arm of TNT NV, TNT Mail.

Postcomm chairman Nigel Stapleton said in a statement that one highly valued aspect of the U.K. mail system will remain unchanged by these new developments, and that is the universal serviced provided by Royal Mail — “the one-price goes-anywhere stamp, plus collections and deliveries every working day for every U.K. address”. The regulator is hopeful Royal Mail, which at present controls 95 per cent of the market, delivering 80 million items six days a week, will continue to have a 90 per cent market till 2010.

The company said there has been a huge rise in the volume of access mail — letters collected and handled by rival firms or customers before being presented to Royal Mail at a lower price — which has risen to 90 million letters a month. It now expects that by the end of the financial year, it would handle more than 1 billion letters compared with only 13 million a year ago.

The company, now struggling with a 4 billion-pound deficit in its pension fund, said it needs a 2 billion-pound investment in order to complete a process of modernisation in sorting operations in order for it to compete on a level playing field.

Analysts see competition to intensify in “end-to-end” services spanning collection to delivery as well as niche postal services, particularly within the business sector.

However, there could not be a scenario immediately of multi-coloured post boxes alongside Royal Mail’s red ones or of multi-uniformed delivery people alongside the local postmen. The private operators will largely rely on agreements over access to Royal Mail’s delivery network, with existing postmen and women handling the final delivery.

AN JOSE: The world’s biggest chip maker, Intel Corporation, is scrapping its present logo and the rhyming tagline ‘Intel Inside’ as part of a major overhaul of its brand, putting emphasis away from its PC business and on to home entertainment products.

The 37-year-old Intel logo, with the “e” slightly lowered, will be replaced by one having an oval swirl around the company’s name and the phrase “Leap Ahead” instead of Intel Inside.

Brand watchers recall the existing logo and the tagline, created in the 1990s as being responsible for the Silicon Valley hardware major’s leap to become a global giant. It is world’s No 5 brand with an estimated value of $36 billion.

The company said though the Intel Inside will go, it will introduce a marketing programme with that theme to help PC makers advertise products using Intel chips.

The new logo as well as details of the marketing programme will be unveiled by Intel’s chief executive Paul Otellini at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Intel believes that its thrust now should be on digital media and networking business as the PC market has slowed down to some extent and its rival Advanced Micro Devices has captured part of its laptop and server markets. Besides, it wants to emphasise on the new internal face it has gained since Otellini took over in May 2005.

Brand watchers see the attempt as Intel’s intention to focus on platforms rather than individual processors. These platforms will facilitate the integration of Intel-based systems with digital media and networks in homes, businesses and schools.

Intel insiders reveal that the proposed campaign will centre on the company’s Centrino line of processors for laptops, instead of its venerable Pentium range, and a new concept it calls Viiv, which is essentially the platform to integrate PCs and home entertainment systems.

Intel has also revealed its new chip for laptop computers, which it calls Core, and which will be a key part of the Viiv concept. It is set for launch early next year and will be a key product in the mobile market to take on rival AMD.

Core, once called Yonah, is a 32-bit dual core microprocessor chip with the ability to conserve power and run cooler than earlier Intel chips. It is purely an Otellini venture aimed at taking AMD head-on.

Intel now has a new chief marketing officer, Eric B. Kim, formerly of Samsung Electronics and credited with making the South Korean company a global brand. The rebranding and the new programme launch will be done under his supervision.

LONDON: Spanish bank Banco Santander Central Hispano SA is planning to take back the control of the credit card operations of its U.K. unit Abbey National, which is now being handled by U.S. credit card operator MBNA under a 2001 deal. Abbey National, then, was not a part of Santander. The agreement is set to end next year.

According to estimates, it may cost the bank around 300 million pounds.

Santander is known to be inducting its Parternon payment platform in Abbey National’s new IT systems, which is clear indication that it wants to run the credit card business.

Abbey National had outsourced the credit card business to MBNA for 289 million pounds before Santander acquired it in 2004 for 8.5 billion pounds. Sources in the know say MBNA will insist on a similar payment to return the business as it owns the assets and customer base.

The Spanish bank is a major player in the credit cards business and issues some 15 million cards worldwide and most of the business is managed in-house as it is its core business.

Santander and Abbey National confirmed the agreement is under review and a buyback is one of the options. It said a final decision could well be sometime in the first quarter of 2006.

MBNA too said it is discussing future plans with Abbey National.

When Abbey struck the deal with MBNA, it had 500,000 customers and a loan book of 244 million. MBNA had paid a premium of 45 million pounds. The customer base now is 1.27 million.

LONDON – Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart has reiterated the government’s intent to affect a major crackdown on prostitution and has said that though the issue was on a backburner, it was not abandoned.

“I’m not tolerant of the view that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world and there’s nothing we can do to reduce it,” Ms Mactaggart was quoted as saying on The Guardian. “Prostitution blights communities. We will take a zero tolerance approach to kerb crawling.”

The Tony Blair government had asked for a consultation on the issue of prostitution and the then home secretary David Blunkett had proposed setting up licensed “red light” areas where prostitutes could carry on the sex trade. But Ms Mactaggart said that this plan was no longer being debated upon and that the whole operation would be banned altogether.

“”Men who choose to use prostitutes are indirectly supporting drug dealers and abusers. The power to confiscate driving licenses already exists. We want the police to use that power more,” she said. “It is a form of child abuse – most women who are prostitutes started being prostitutes at the age of 13 or 14 and we have got to have strong mechanisms to reduce prostitution.” She added that she could not accept the premise that prostitution was the oldest profession and must be allowed to be a part of the society.

However, campaigners are not so sure that the government’s crackdown is beneficial to the prostitutes, Carrie Mitchell, of the English Collective of Prostitutes, said that banning prostitution in Sweden had resulted in compounding the misery of the women who lived on it, “Neither the poverty that forces women into prostitution to support themselves and their families – or any of the grave injustices in the existing legislation – have been addressed,” she alleged, adding that the government was missing the point entirely in embarking on this “zero tolerance” policy.

Mark Oaten, the home affairs spokesman of the Liberal Democrats said that the announcement was a rehash of earlier proclamations, “Prostitution is likely to remain Britain’s oldest profession and the most effective approach to the problem will require managing it rather than attempting to completely end it,” he observed.

EDINBURGH: Patients covered under the National Health Service (NHS) in a part of Nottinghamshire are being told to desist from smoking at their homes when the health workers come visiting.

The new rules being introduced by Ashfield and Mansfield Primary Care Trust from the new year are part of a zero tolerance policy towards smoking. The rules prescribe that patients who will not stop smoking will have to approach another venue for treatment.

The Primary Care Trust does not allow patients and staff to smoke in all its building, grounds and community health centres. It says it indeed wants to protect its staff from the hazards of passive smoking. It also plans to ban health workers from smoking in cars when they are on a visit.

Primary Care Trust’s senior public health manager Barbara Brady said tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals in the form of particles and gases and some of the immediate effects of passive smoking include eye irritation, headache, cough, sore throat, dizziness and nausea.

The proposal had drawn criticism from some quarters. Tory MP Richard Bacon, himself a non-smoker, said people should be allowed to do what they like at their homes.

Simon Clark of pro-smoking group Forest, said the very idea that anybody is at serious risk from smoke by going into someone’s home for a short time is utter nonsense and part of the anti-smoking hysteria. He felt this could be a first step towards a campaign to ban all smoking in the home.

Green tea extract known as epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) seemed to have improved the condition of four patients having chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) in the Mayo Clinic in the United States.

In CLL, a blood and bone marrow cancer, white blood cells are affected. This is supposed to be the most common type of leukemia and normally occurs in persons above the age of 60.

The findings published online in Leukemia Research revealed that the patients showed signs of improvement after they took tablets containing EGCG.

At least, three of the four CLL patients showed signs of their cancer abating.

In fact, a Mayo Clinic study earlier found that EGCG kills leukemia cells which were taken from patients having CLL.

Study author and hematologist Dr. Tait Shanafelt said: “The experience of these individuals provides some suggestion that our previously published laboratory findings may actually translate into clinical effects for patients with the disease.”

He, however, said it was too early to draw any conclusions based on these results. He felt more studies needed to be carried out.

He added: “We do not know how many patients were taking similar products and failed to have any benefit. We also do not yet know the optimal dose that should be used, the frequency with which patients should take the medication, and what side effects will be observed with long-term administration.”

U.S. National Cancer Institute is sponsoring this study at Mayo clinic.

There is no cure as of now for this leukemia.

“The findings are interesting, but we cannot say yet this is a new treatment for cancer,” says Ken Campbell, clinical information officer at the Leukaemia Research Fund.

LONDON: Britain has signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia for the sale of an unspecified number of Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft. The British embassy in Riyadh issued a statement saying, “Under the terms of the signed document, Typhoon aircraft will replace the Tornado Air Defence Variant aircraft and others currently in service by Royal Saudi Armed Forces.”

No other details were given as the embassy said specific details of the arrangement is governed by the “existing confidentiality agreement”.

Sources in Riyadh said the deal covers at least 48 Eurofighter jets with an option to increase the number to 72 later.

The agreement follows high-level talks between visiting British defence minister John Reid and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Wednesday. Reid had talks with the Saudi Arabian defence minister Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz, earlier.

This will be the first order for the aircraft outside Europe. In Europe, Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain are buying 620 Eurofighter planes in three batches. Austria has placed an order 18 jets.

Munich-based Eurofighter GmbH is a consortium formed by British defence company BAE Systems, European aerospace group EADS Co. and Italy’s Finmeccanica SpA. The Saudi deal provides for BAE Systems to transfer technology and invest in Saudi companies, while providing local training to Saudi nationals. The London-based company had provided Tornado planes, parts and airbase management to Saudi Arabia under the Al Yamamah programme since 1985. It employs 4,600 workers in Saudi Arabia, more than half of them Saudi nationals.

Defence deals between Saudi Arabia and Britain date back to the 1960s and are mostly governed by the arms-for-oil principle.

Reid said in an e-mailed message from Riyadh that BAE Systems, as prime contractor, and its many UK sub-contractors will benefit from the work, which will help sustain several thousand U.K. jobs over the next 10 years.

Analysts estimated that the deal could secure 10,000 jobs, which rely directly or indirectly on BAE’s Eurofighter’s Lancashire plant. Another 4,000 Rolls-Royce jobs will also be secured because the jets use its EJ200 engine.

BAE issued a brief statement welcoming the deal and hoping the agreement will be signed in the next few months. It did not put a value to the contract, but analysts said it could be in the range of 6 billion pounds to 20 billion pounds over a 10-year period.

The Al-Yamamah programme had contributed 215 million in profit on sales of 1.3 billion pounds for the company last year.