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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Globalstar Telecommunications Limited GSAT -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: djane who wrote (6118)	7/26/1999 4:45:00 PM
From: David Wiggins	Respond to of 29987

djane, great call! Re. fanfare - what you all said may be true, but still I'm disappointed that there was so little made of this and I suspect I'm not the only one who feels that way. I suggest Globalstar's website should contain clearinghouse information collected from service providers etc. on start dates, handset and fixed phone availability, etc. That way, they could capture folks like me who look to them for information and send us in the right direction, and not on the possibility of a service provider maybe contacting us, etc. Regards, Dave

To: djane who wrote (6118)	7/26/1999 5:24:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 29987

Wired. Cells Curse the Promised Land updated 1:52 p.m. 26.Jul.99.PDT by Tania Hershman 3:00 a.m. 26.Jul.99.PDT JERUSALEM -- Meyer Siegel lives in an apartment underneath nine cellular phone towers, and he wants them gone. "There is one antenna that is just one-and-a-half meters from an apartment window," he said Wednesday. "They hid some of them, made them look like solar water heaters, but we know what they are because we saw them putting them up." See also: A Call for Public Cell Studies The 84-year-old tenant is one voice among a growing chorus here in Jerusalem and the rest of Israel against the antennas. Almost half of Israel's five million residents own a cellular telephone, but the country's love affair with the technology is coming with a price. Many buildings like Siegel's now bristle with towers. In fact, some 7,000 antennas bounce calls around a country no larger than the state of Vermont. And there is growing concern about the possible health risks of the towers. Siegel and thousands of other Israeli citizens support a Green Party petition, calling for the country's three cell phone companies to take the antennas down. On Wednesday, the party presented its demands to Israel's High Courts of Justice. Israel's three cellular telephone companies -- Cellcom, Pele-phone, and Partner -- responded to the growing controversy by banding together. Last month, the firms hired GCS, a new public relations agency set up by the "dream team" of political consultants who helped lead new Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak to victory in the May general elections. Three of the agency's five partners are well-known American spin-doctors James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Bob Shrum. The firm is expected to launch a massive publicity campaign to improve the image of the telecom towers. "The public is afraid because they are ignorant," said Tal Silberstein, one of GCS' two Israeli partners. "They deserve to know all the facts, the research, and the standards. We intend to bring all the information that is known to every Israeli citizen." GCS will also form a committee to research the long-term effects of the nonionizing radiation. "Our customers are almost half the population of Israel," said Silberstein. "You can never be too careful." Similar research on long-term health effects was conducted by the Israel Union for Environmental Defense. Their recently released position paper noted that there is no conclusive evidence proving that the radiation causes cancer, but the paper also stressed that there is no evidence to the contrary, either. 1 of 2 Next Page >> updated 1:52 p.m. 26.Jul.99.PDT Sponsored by Qwest. Cells Curse the Promised Land Page 2 3:00 a.m. 26.Jul.99.PDT continued The Green Party's petition calls for further research into the long-term health effects of the towers. "We will ... focus on making sure everyone in Israel knows how many antennas there are and where," said the Green Party's Hadas Shachnai. She accused the cellular companies of erecting antennas in secrecy, at night, disguising them as the solar water heaters that can be seen on every Israeli rooftop. The Green Party's petition, a sprawling document addressing 22 separate issues, so overwhelmed the High Court judges Wednesday that they have asked the party to prune its demands and resubmit the petition in 30 days. The Green Party's Shachnai said the revised petition will demand that the companies be forced to keep antennas at least 30 meters from population areas, a figure the party took from a book published by Motorola in 1997 entitled Mobile Communications Safety. The party has also employed more radical tactics to bring the issue to the forefront. In March, an antenna was erected less than 20 meters from a kindergarten in Ra'anana, a town in central Israel. "The kindergarten teacher asked us to get rid of it -- so we decided to do something radical," said Shachnai. Under cover of darkness, she and three other activists climbed the building and hung signs on the antenna, warning of the dangers. They stayed there for 15 hours, until the mayor of Ra'anana promised to look into the matter. The Green Party will have its day in court in a month. In the meantime, environment minister Dalia Itzik said Tuesday that her ministry would no longer issue licenses to antennas that did not have local-authority building permits. It appears that many antennas already in operation were erected illegally, and giving local authorities a say may help resolve the situation. Complicating matters, new communications minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer announced Wednesday he would introduce a fourth cellular telephone operator to the country. A spokesman for Israel's Environment Ministry, which awards operating licenses to antenna owners, said that all of them have been tested at maximum strength and comply with World Health Organization standards. "I understand the people who are worried," said Dr. Shmuel Brenner, the ministry's senior deputy director general. "The problem is that the cellular telephone companies entered the country offensively, [and] not gradually," he said. "They did not explain what they were doing and they created a climate of fear." Copyright © 1994-99 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.

To: djane who wrote (6118)	7/26/1999 5:31:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 29987

*Foreign firms threaten China Unicom IPO Monday July 26, 6:22 am Eastern Time By Matt Pottinger BEIJING, July 26 (Reuters) - Foreign telecommunications firms said on Monday they were threatening to undermine a market listing by China Unicom unless it paid them hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen investments and potential revenues. ''Lots of us are preparing for litigation on this,'' said a Beijing-based executive whose company has money tied up in now-defunct joint ventures with Unicom, China's number two telecommunications service provider. Asked whether his firm would lodge a complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which must approve initial public offerings in the United States, he said: ''You bet.'' China Unicom announced this month it was planning to issue shares for listings in Hong Kong and overseas in October. Market sources said Unicom -- whose officials put the initial public offer at more than $1 billion, making it one of China's biggest -- was hoping to list on the U.S. Nasdaq. But several of more than 20 foreign and Hong Kong firms which invested about $1.4 billion in China Unicom in the mid-1990s said they were irate. The problem centres on a legal loophole that allowed firms including Sprint (NYSE:FON - news), Deutsche Telekom (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: DTEG.F), France Telecom and Bell Canada (Toronto:BI.TO - news) to pour money indirectly into Unicom and skirt an official prohibition on foreign investment in the telecoms sector. China closed the loophole last year and began enforcing a ban on the existing joint-venture contracts in March, barring Unicom from sharing revenues with its foreign partners or repaying them. Over the past few weeks, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, which is underwriting Unicom's IPO, has approached many of the firms offering settlements, the foreign executives said. But some said the offers, which included full reimbursement of original investments plus a few percent in interest, fell far short of what they deemed acceptable. ''I believe they have approached almost everybody. I don't think they've met with a lot of warm responses,'' one executive said. In addition to the repayment of initial investments, the executives say Unicom should foot the bill for marketing costs, maintenance of the joint ventures and lost potential revenues. ''We're providing a long-term investment for 15 or 20 years,'' the executive said. ''Now we're asked to leave in three years. Where are the earnings? Even if they pay 100 percent or 200 percent on the cost, it's not going to cover it,'' he said. Morgan Stanley said it was forbidden by securities laws from discussing the matter. An industry analyst who asked not to be identified said the flap would probably postpone Unicom's share offering. With European, Hong Kong, Japanese and U.S. firms in the imbroglio, there were few stock markets for Unicom to go to for a listing, he said. ''At a minimum it will be postponed, because companies will go to the Securities and Exchange Commission,'' he said. ''Just say the word 'litigation' and you've got a dead IPO,'' he said. More Quotes and News: Bell Canada International Inc (Toronto:BI.TO - news) Sprint Corp (NYSE:FON - news) Related News Categories: Canadian Market News, IPOs, US Market News Help Copyright © 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.