Iran offers 20 percent stake in oilfield
New Delhi: Iran has offered India a 20 per cent stake in the Yadevaran oilfield on a nomination basis in order to get New Delhi to buy 5 million tonnes per annum of LNG at $2.57 per million British Thermal Unit (mBtu). Yadevaran is already a oil producing field.

Iran's Energy Minister Bijan Zanganeh made the offer to Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar when the two met on sidelines of the OPEC conference in Vienna last week.

The Yadevaran oilfield is said to have a potential to produce 300,000 barrels per day.

India has insisted on getting liquefied natural gas at $2.40 per mBtu, lower than $2.53 per mBtu price at which New Delhi is importing LNG from Qatar.

With two sides sticking to their position, further round of discussions are slated between the national oil firms of the nations next month.

The $2.40 per mBtu would translate to a delivered price of $3.30 per mBtu, a price considered attractive enough for power and fertilizer customers who have till date not bought any of the LNG being imported from Qatar.

OVL was to compete with multinational giants like Total and Petronas of Malaysia for getting 51 per cent stake in Yadevaran oilfield, recently renamed from Kush-Hossainieh. But Iran has said it would give OVL 20 per cent stake from National Iranian Oil Company's (NIOC) 49 per cent stake after the bidding round concludes.
BaBack to News Review index page  
Phase II trial begins on therapeutic anti-cancer vaccine
Paris, USA: IDM (Immuno-Designed Molecules), a biopharmaceutical company specialized in immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer, has announced that it has obtained FDA approval for an IND (Investigational New Drug) application allowing it to carry out a clinical trial on its therapeutic vaccine, Uvidem, for treatment of melanoma in the United States.

Uvidem is a therapeutic vaccine developed in partnership with Sanofi-Aventis. The vaccine consists of mature dendritic cells loaded with lysates of tumor cell lines. This phase II clinical trial is designed to enroll 37 patients with stage III or IV melanoma where the disease is progressing and with measurable or evaluable lesions.

This is the second clinical trial initiated by IDM in the United States after launching a phase I/II trial on its therapeutic vaccine, Collidem, for treatment of colorectal cancer in 2003.

An estimated 55,000 cases of invasive melanoma will be diagnosed in 2004 in the United States and 7900 patients will die from the disease. Melanoma is the fifth most common cancer in men and the seventh in women.

IDM is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of innovative products to treat and control cancer while maintaining the patient's quality of life. IDM is currently developing two lines of products: one aiming at the destruction of residual cancer cells after the use of traditional therapies, and the other to prevent tumor recurrence by triggering an immune response.
Back to News Review index page  
AMD teams up with Atari for next-generation game
Sunnyvale, USA: AMD has announced the first 64-bit game optimized for AMD Athlon 64 processor-based systems, "Shadow Ops: Red Mercury," is available now on retail shelves. "Shadow Ops: Red Mercury," published by Atari and designed on AMD64 technology, includes specific 64-bit enhancements that enable a richer and more immersive gaming experience.

The power of the AMD64 platform has opened the door for game developers to truly capture the imagination and creativity of artists and industry visionaries.

With the one-two punch of AMD64 processors and "Shadow Ops: Red Mercury," gamers will notice larger and more detailed areas to explore, breakthrough artificial intelligence (AI), and never-before-seen textures that compel players to gawk in amazement.

According to Atari, AMD Athlon 64 technology is revolutionizing game design and, given the tremendous power and freedom AMD64 offers to its game designers, as they are able to create scenes, physics, artificial intelligence, map sizes and graphics detail that they only dreamt of on 32-bit platforms. Using 32-bit code alone, they were unable to offer THX 5.1 acoustic sound with every level of detail enabled and still maintain a playable game; with AMD64 64-bit technology they can now do that and much more.

With time to market being one of the most critical issues facing game developers, Atari leveraged the power of the AMD64 platform to help reduce the development cycle for "Shadow Ops: Red Mercury" from months to weeks. The significant time savings enabled by 64-bit processing provided Atari a competitive edge in bringing this next-generation game to market.

AMD (NYSE:AMD) designs and produces innovative microprocessors, Flash memory devices and low-power processor solutions for the computer, communications and consumer electronics industries. AMD is dedicated to delivering standards-based, customer-focused solutions for technology users, ranging from enterprises and governments to individual consumers.
Back to News Review index page  
Check fraud prevention solution passes FSTC testing
Burbank, USA: ChequeGuard Inc. has announced the availability of Cheque Suite, which secures the check information when it is printed using a patented barcoding technique, and of Cheque Guard, which completes the cycle by using Inlite Research's Clear Image barcode recognition engine to read the barcode, and to then verify the information on the image. Banks can now offer easy to deploy security solutions, dramatically reducing their fraud exposure and their operating costs.

Americans write 48 billion checks each year. Last year, Congress passed the "Check clearing for the Twenty First Century" act, also known as Check 21 which takes effect this October. The act will initiate a gradual yet massive change, because of the focus on the exchange of check images instead of paper checks.

Annually, consumers, businesses and banks suffer over $20 billion in fraudulent check losses. Fraud will become more severe with image truncation. Images are easier to alter, and fraudulent alterations are harder to detect in images. FSTC initiated the project "Controlling Fraud in a Truncated Check Environment" whose purpose was to severely test check image security solutions by realistically simulating the extremes of the exchange process. Cheque Guard's barcode survived, securing the information on the check images and substitute checks, proving the value of using barcodes and encryption solutions to secure information on images, and showing: Easy integration with the printstream output; Compatibility with almost all payables packages from SAP and Oracle at the high end, to QuickBooks and PeachTree at the low end of the market; Better security than positive pay at a fraction of the cost for both bank and enterprise; Self verifying features on the check image allow each institution along the processing path to verify the information for itself, without coordinating with the check originator; Support for IBM AS/400 and for Windows computers.

Cheque Suite, the secure check printing solution, and Cheque Guard, the check information verification solution are available now, as products or virtual hosted services.

Since 1992, Inlite Research offers the Clear Image line of Image Processing and Barcode Recognition technologies to OEMs and Solution Providers in markets that demand the utmost accuracy, productivity and quality in business processes.
Back to News Review index page