IMF clears debt relief for nineteen countries
Washington: The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday agreed to write off US$3.3bn (1.9 billion pounds) owed to it by 19 of the world's poorest countries under a Group of Eight debt forgiveness deal.

IMF directors, however, delayed granting debt relief to one country, Mauritania, pending "satisfactory progress in a few policy areas," a fund spokesman said.

Those approved for IMF debt relief are Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

The IMF said the 19 countries should receive the debt relief in early 2006.
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Lenovo lures away Amelio from Dell
Mumbai: Lenovo chief Yang Yuanqing said the company has hired William Amelio, head of Dell's Asian operations until yesterday, to oversee the next phase of Lenovo's international push, which will include product design, marketing and improving supply chain efficiency.

"William Amelio has a good background and the appropriate experience, and is capable of leading Lenovo in its next phase," Yuanqing explained.

Lenovo late Wednesday announced that Amelio will replace IBM alumni Stephen Ward as CEO. Before working at Dell, Amelio spent a few years at IBM in its ThinkPad division, which Lenovo now owns.

Lenovo, formerly Legend, tried to become an international brand for years, but quality problems, brand recognition and internal financial issues stymied the effort. Until the IBM merger, Lenovo sold only a token number of systems outside of China. The influx of western brands into China has also dented the company's growth.
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BlackBerry enthused about recent patent office rulings
New York: Research In Motion, the Canadian manufacturer of the iconic BlackBerry wireless e-mail device, currently locked in a patent infringement dispute with US-based NTP, claimed on Wednesday it had been vindicated by recent rulings by the US Patents and Trademark Office.

Last week RIM received a boost after the PTO took the unusual step of notifying both companies that it expected it would reject the five patents held by NTP in its final rulings and described NTP's arguments as "non-persuasive". The office has issued preliminary rejections of all five wireless e-mail patents.

Meanwhile Judge James Spencer, the US district court judge overseeing the infringement case, has set a timetable for hearings on issuing an injunction against RIM that could coincide with the timing of the patent office's final rulings, now expected as soon as mid-February.

Even if the US court rules against RIM and re-imposes an injunction, RIM says that it has prepared a software "workaround" that would enable it to continue to sell BlackBerry in the US.

RIM has added 645,000 BlackBerry customers in the third quarter, boosting the total number of BlackBerry users worldwide to 4.3mn.

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Seagate to buy rival Maxtor for US$1.9bn
New York: Seagate Technology on Wednesday said it would buy smaller rival Maxtor Corp. for US$1.9bn to gain market share and bolster its No. 1 position in the notoriously cutthroat hard disk drive market.

The deal would give Seagate, which makes disk drives for Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 gaming console as well as for personal computers, a more than 40 per cent share of the disk drive market. It currently has about a 30 per cent share.

Maxtor's strength is in providing disk drives for workhorse desktop personal computers used by businesses. Analysts say that Maxtor, which has about 12 per cent of the market, was losing market share to competitors such as Seagate and Western Digital in consumer electronics, one of the fastest-growing businesses for computer storage companies.

Seagate's Chief Financial Officer Charles Pope acknowledged on a conference call that an antitrust review meant the transaction was not likely to be completed until the latter half of 2006.
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