Raytheon Company has been selected to support facilities used to train astronauts and flight controllers on critical mission skills at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) under a five-year contract valued at $79 million including options.

Under the contract, which includes a two-year base period and three one-year options, Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC (RTSC) and teammate Oceaneering International, Inc., will provide real-time mission support,procedure development and verification, work-load limitations and hardware design and validation, as well as operation, maintenance and sustaining engineering for two human space flight training facilities-the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility-both at JSC in Houston. The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory supports astronaut training for space walks using underwater mockups and pressurized suite to simulate weightlessness. Full-scale mockups in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility are used to train astronauts for space flight.

RTSC also provides development, maintenance, operations and sustaining engineering for the Space Station Training Facility, which is used to simulate flight activities for both astronaut and flight controller training.

Oceaneering is an advanced applied technology company that provides engineered services and hardware to customers who operate in marine, space and other harsh environments.

Telecom Egypt and the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology have signed a five-year frame agreement with Nortel Networks - estimated at approximately US$60 million - for expansion and modernization of Egypt's national telecommunications infrastructure.

Telecom Egypt's objectives for this expansion are to drive reduced capital and operating expenses, to make available a full set of high-quality voice services, and to build a foundation for future delivery of new multimedia and packet voice services.

Key elements of this network expansion are expected to include Nortel Networks Univity CDMA2000 1X Wireless Data Network solutions, Nortel Networks Succession* Communication Server 2000 superclass softswitches, and Nortel Networks DMS circuit switches.

Telecom Egypt expects to deploy Univity CDMA2000 1X solutions to offer fixed wireless services.

With Succession Communication Server 2000 superclass softswitches and DMS-100 local switching systems, Telecom Egypt will be positioned to migrate to voice over packet technology at its own pace. Voice over packet enables voice traffic to be broken down into smaller pieces and sent as data packets, allowing carriers to operate more cost-effectively and efficiently by using a common packet network to carry voice, data and video traffic. In addition, it will allow Telecom Egypt to offer new, revenue-generating multimedia services in the future.

Nortel Networks Succession Communication Server 2000 is part of a comprehensive voice over IP (Internet Protocol) portfolio that provides solutions across all four carrier voice over IP market segments: cable, local, long distance and wireless.

Representatives of EDS have announced a new executive management team, naming Michael H. Jordan as chairman and chief executive officer and Jeffrey M. Heller as president and chief operating officer, effective immediately.

Jordan, the former chairman and CEO of CBS Corporation, replaces Richard H. Brown.

Roger Enrico, an EDS director, said the board believes the new management team of Jordan and Heller has the opportunity to move EDS forward unencumbered by past events. He called Jordan a "proven leader and strategist with a track record of building shareholder value."

Jordan retired as chairman and chief executive officer of CBS Corporation (formerly Westinghouse Electric Corporation) in December 1998, after leading it through one of the most comprehensive transformations in corporate history. Before joining Westinghouse, Jordan was a partner with Clayton, Dubilier and Rice, a private equity firm in New York. Previously, he spent 18 years with PepsiCo, Inc. During this time, he served in numerous senior executive positions, including CFO of PepsiCo, Inc. and President and CEO of PepsiCo WorldWide Foods, which includes Frito-Lay. From 1964 to 1974, he was a consultant and principal with McKinsey & Company.

Heller retired from EDS in February 2002, after 34 years with the company, most recently in the position of vice chairman. Heller returns as president and chief operating officer, a role in which he served from 1996 to 2000. Heller joined EDS in 1968 as a systems engineering trainee.

Due to the management change, EDS will reschedule its 2003 Annual Shareholders Meeting from April 22 to May 20.

Representatives of Perot Systems Corporation and Tufts-New England Medical Center have announced an agreement for Perot Systems to provide complete information technology (IT) management services, including application, program and project management, systems implementation, and infrastructure services.

As part of the agreement, Perot Systems is assisting Tufts-NEMC and its Floating Hospital for Children as they separate from their former corporate partner, Lifespan. The separation requires Tufts-NEMC to establish IT services that were previously provided by the Rhode Island-based health system.

Perot Systems will assist Tufts-NEMC in the execution of a strategic IT plan designed to maintain the Medical Center's position as a provider of world-class patient care and the home of leading edge clinical research.

During a visit to The University of Texas-Pan American, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Edinburg City Mayor Joe Ochoa, announced the opening of a new teleservices company that will bring more than 500 new jobs and an economic impact of $17.3 million to the area.
Merkafon Teleperformance - a leading provider of Spanish and bilingual teleservices in Latin America - selected the City of Edinburg to house a new call center operation that will provide bilingual and Spanish teleservices to the growing Hispanic market in the United States.

Merkafon representatives chose Edinburg as their new location because of the many advantages the city provided including a bilingual workforce and a large call center facility - the vacant Albertson's grocery store on Closner.

Roland S. Arriola, UTPA vice president for External Affairs, said the University has helped create successful economic opportunities for the area, and will continue to do so in the future.

Merkafon Teleperformance is a division of Sr. Teleperformance out of Paris, France - a worldwide customer relationship management expert that employs more than 20,000 people in more than 30 countries and is ranked among the world's top five Customer Relationship Management (CRM) outsourcers.