ABS-CBNNEWS.COM By Mark Krikorian:

During the Iraq war, much was made of the accomplishments of noncitizens in the US military. To speed the granting of citizenship to these 'green-card soldiers,' President Bush waived the three-year residency requirement for naturalization. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, and others have introduced legislation to ease citizenship requirements for immigrants in the service or their families.

But no one seems to have stepped back and questioned the underlying policy: Is it a good idea to allow noncitizens to enlist?

There now are more than 37,000 lawful permanent residents -- green-card holders -- in the military, accounting for about 3 percent of active-duty personnel. (Illegal aliens are prohibited from enlisting -- for now). They make up 4 percent to 5 percent of all new enlistees, and their numbers have grown by one-third since 2000.

10:18:32 PM    

Taiwan News by Lisa Wang:

Financial services sector and government departments are hunting for secondary office space fearing the spread of sever acute respiratory syndrome infection could cause the suspension of business activities, said office leasing agents and a government official yesterday. ...

SARS jitters have forced corporations and government departments to take further steps against the illness - many are searching for a secondary office to guarantee operations can continue if departments or buildings that are normally used are quarantined.

9:12:34 PM    

The Financial Expressby N Chandra Mohan:

Management gurus and market researchers have a somewhat different vision on what is happening in rural India than social scientists. The gurus convey a sense that rural India is approaching the inflection point where demand for consumer goods is set to boom. Market researchers recommend a redefinition of what is rural as town and country differences are blurring. But studies based on the Census of India 2001 point to a slowly changing rural India.

Credit must go to C K Prahalad, Harvey C Fruehauf Professor of Corporate Strategy, University or Michigan, for consistently hammering home the need to view the hundreds of millions of poor people in rural India as a business opportunity than a threat. Addressing the Confederation of India's National Conference, Professor Prahalad outlined familiar examples to illustrate how successful entrepreneurship is transforming rural India.

9:04:05 PM    

Contra Costa Times by Lisa Vorderbrueggen :

Martinez, CA - Contra Costa County may soon join communities that bar super-sized retail grocery giants known for paying low wages and luring customers with bargain prices.

The draft law under review by the planning commission would prohibit Wal-Mart or comparable retail firms from opening full-service grocery stores to go along with selling televisions and bath towels.

It mirrors similar super-center laws adopted recently in Martinez, Oakland, several Southern California cities and elsewhere in the nation.

The regulation would prohibit a retailer with a store in excess of 90,000 square feet from devoting more than 5 percent of its sales space to groceries. A typical super-center exceeds 120,000 square feet.

8:50:23 PM    

HispanicBusiness.com by Elliott Almond:

The latest evidence of the changing American fabric is the fact that a fourth-generation Mexican-American is expected next week to become the first Latino to own a major U.S. sports franchise.

Arturo Moreno's impending $180 million purchase of the Anaheim Angels already has become a symbolic transaction that underscores the burgeoning Hispanic population's growing influence -- one that can be charted through baseball.

8:40:28 PM    

USA TODAY by Nanci Hellmich, :

What if you lived in a world in which your boss handed you a bonus if you lost 20 pounds, or gave you extra time off if you took daily walking breaks? What if every time you bought a Twinkie or a soda you had to pay an extra tax, and the money paid for public awareness campaigns on better nutrition? What if your company offered free fruits and vegetables in the cafeteria and charged extra for chips, fries and other fatty foods?

These tactics might sound drastic to some, but they are the types of strategies needed to help the USA curb an epidemic of obesity, experts say.

8:36:12 PM    

NewsMax.com :

Although the etiology of SARS, the disease, with its mysterious "super-carriers" and penchant to strike down more men than women is not fully understood, some economists are beginning to flesh out how the fear of the disease can spread through a global market -- potentially triggering harm as devastating as the modern plague[base ']s clinical fallout.

Asian Development Bank chief economist Ifzal Ali explains the basic scheme, "When SARS hits an economy, it causes uncertainty generated by fear and this has direct and indirect effects like a loss of consumer confidence, tourism suffers, investment drops and government revenue also drops."

The fact that the dreaded disease has struck hardest at China is most unfortunate for the big economic picture, according to a report in Business Week. If and when a consumer implosion of the magnitude that has hit Hong Kong (50 percent fall) takes root on the Chinese mainland, the ripple effect will travel far and fast.

8:29:46 PM    

Daily Yomiuri:

The M-5 rocket carrying the space probe MUSES-C (Hayabusa), which is designed to retrieve samples from the surface of an asteroid, was launched successfully Friday.

Hayabusa, launched by the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science (ISAS) under the Education, Science and Technology Ministry, is a highly ambitious probe. It is designed solely to travel the universe in search of an asteroid about 500 meters in diameter and about 300 million kilometers from Earth so that it can collect the samples.

It will take four years for the probe to make the trip to and from the asteroid. With its state-of-the-art technology, the probe must approach the asteroid, land on it, collect the samples and return to Earth.

A U.S. probe has made an observation of the surface of an asteroid. But this will be the world's first attempt for a probe to retrieve samples from an asteroid.

8:13:45 PM    

Financial Times by Alan Beattie:

Rarely can a central bank's decision to leave interest rates unchanged, accompanied by a statement of fewer than 200 words, have had such an impact.

The Federal Reserve's warning on Tuesday of too-low inflation was hailed as a fundamental reorientation of policy designed to cope with a world where, for the first time in decades, deflation had become a real threat. Its counterpart, the European Central Bank, also acknowledged a modest danger.

8:00:10 PM