SYDNEY--2 Oct--AsiaNet/InfoQuest RIDGE ANNOUNCES... WASHINGTON - Tom Ridge, the First U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and a two-term governor of Pennsylvania, today announced the launch of Ridge Global LLC, a global advisory firm that provides strategic and operational guidance to clients worldwide. http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20071001/CLM013LOGO http://photoarchive.ap.org http://www.ridgeglobal.com PARTYPOKER WINNER... GIBRALTAR - 22-year-old James McManus from Dublin, Ireland was the big winner of PartyPoker.com's 'The Grind' promotion, winning a Mini Cooper S Convertible in the prize draw, a Nintendo Wii when he came sixth at the final table of a Grindroll, and, if this wasn't enough, less than two months before he won US$52,000 on the famous PartyPoker.com Bad Beat Jackpot!! http://www.PartyPoker.com http://www.PartyCasino.com http://www.PartyBingo.com http://www.PartyBets.com http://www.PartyGammon.com http://www.Gamebookers.com http://www.EmpirePoker.com VELUX AWARD... HORSHOLM - The International VELUX Award 2008 opens for registration on 1 October and encourages students of architecture worldwide to work with daylight in architecture. http://www.velux.com WISAIR RECEIVES... YOKOHAMA, Japan - CEATEC JAPAN -- Wisair, a leading provider of Ultra Wideband (UWB) and Wireless USB (WUSB) chipset solutions, has received Japanese regulatory certification for its WSR601 Wireless USB CMOS single chip. http://www.wisair.com BOSTON SCIENTIFIC... PARIS - Boston Scientific Corporation announced that the Apex Monorail and Over-The-Wire (OTW) PTCA dilatation catheters have received CE Mark approval. http://www.heartstats.org/datapage.asp?id=754 http://www.heartstats.org/temp/ESspTabsp3.2spweb05hs1hs.xls http://www.bostonscientific.com DAIWA SECURITIES... NEW YORK - Sagent Advisors, a leading independent M&A advisory firm, announced that the Daiwa Securities' North American M&A team has formally joined Sagent. FANNIE MAE... WASHINGTON, D.C. - Fannie Mae will redeem the principal amount of seven securities issues amounting to a total of US$1.09 billion on October 11 at a redemption price equal to 100 percent of the principal amount redeemed plus accrued interest. http://www.fanniemae.com EUROPEAN COMMISSION... LONDON - Broadcom, Ericsson, NEC, Nokia, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Texas Instruments welcome the continuation of the investigation by the European Commission into complaints regarding anti-competitive practices by Qualcomm. HORIZON SEMICONDUCTORS... HERZLIYA - Horizon Semiconductors, a leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enable secure video and audio compression & transmission for the consumer electronics and home entertainment markets, has announced the immediate availability of the industry's first universal System-On-a-Chip solution enabling dual channel true 1080/60p decoding for next generation mediaplayers/recorders supporting the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray optical disc formats, as well as legacy red laser DVD format. http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070912/HORIZONLOGO http://photoarchive.ap.org http://www.horizonsemi.com WACHOVIA OPENS... CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Wachovia announced the opening of a remote check image capture site in Korea. http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/314125.html http://www.wachovia.com PRINTSOFT LAUNCHES... MELBOURNE, and BARCELONA - PrintSoft a business of Australia Post and established leader in hybrid mail technology and personalized mail solutions,launches a new service, DeskDirect Global, to provide e-delivery of mail worldwide. http://www.printsoft.com/ GREENLINE FINANCIAL... CHICAGO, IL. - Leading electronic trading solutions provider, Greenline Financial Technologies Inc., announced the release of the latest version of its FIX Protocol Testing Suite -- VeriFIX(R) 4.5. VeriFIX(R) is the most comprehensive electronic trading regression and performance testing system available in the marketplace today. http://www.greenlinetech.com BOVIR NAMED... NAAS - A highly sensitive, easy-to-use test that accurately detects bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) was selected as the Best New Veterinary Product for Diagnostics in the annual Animal Pharm Awards. http://www.enferdiagnostics.com http://www.animalpharmawards.com http://www.andiatec.com JAPANESE PM... TOKYO - Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda delivered a general policy speech in a plenary session of the Diet on October 1, 2007. http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/hukudaspeech/2007/10/01syosin_e.html MICREL INTRODUCES... SAN JOSE, Calif. - Micrel Inc., an industry leader in analog, high bandwidth communications and Ethernet IC solutions, launched the MIC2299, the industry's smallest and most powerful LED driver for portable applications. http://www.micrel.com JAJAH BUTTONS... MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - JAJAH, the world's most innovative phone company launched their new service JAJAH Buttons. http://www.jajah.com THOMSON EXTEL... HONG KONG and LONDON - Thomson Financial, an operating unit of The Thomson Corporation and leading provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community, announced results of the 2007 Thomson Extel Asia Pacific and Japan Equity Surveys. www.thomson.com SYNAPTICS CHIRALMOTION... SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Synaptics Inc., a leading developer of human interface solutions for mobile computing, communications and entertainment devices, announced the availability of its ChiralMotion(TM) technology, an advanced gesture that provides an innovative alternative to conventional scrolling. http://www.synaptics.com/technology/chiral.cfm www.synaptics.com OMNIVISION LAUNCHES... CHIBA - CEATEC -- OmniVision Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: OVTI), a leading independent supplier of CMOS image sensors for high-volume applications, launched the OV2650, its third generation 2-megapixel CameraChip(TM) sensor. http://www.ovt.com MACAUABC.COM LAUNCHES... MACAU - MacauABC.com announces the launch of Macau's first multilingual real estate search engine and international advertising portal to facilitate the listing and advertising of all types of property in Macau, where the property market, ignited in part by the booming gaming and tourism industry, is set to reach unprecedented levels of growth over the coming years. 1000 ENTRIES... TOKYO - UNIQLO announced 1000 preliminary entries selected in the UNIQLO global T-shirt competition "UT GRAND PRIX 08" on the UT GRAND PRIX website on October 1, 2007. http://ut.uniqlo.com/utgp AsiaNet is a consortium of leading news agencies distributing unedited, translated news releases for worldwide clients. Visit www.asianetnews.net for full-text versions.