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/ 11 February 2008
Holed up in a caravan on the campus of Stanford University in California, two graduate students were supposed to be finishing their doctoral studies. Instead, Jerry Yang and David Filo began messing around on something new called the world wide web. Yang and Filo started fiddling with quirky home pages. Yang put up his golf scores, his name in Chinese characters and a list of his favourite websites.
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/ 6 February 2008
The sheer scale of the misery wreaked by the United States sub-prime mortgage crisis became clear on Tuesday in research showing that more than 1% of Ameri- can households were hit with some stage of repossession proceedings last year. About 2,2-million foreclosure docuÂments — including default notices, auction sale notices and repossession papers — were filed on 1,28-million properties last year.
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/ 2 February 2008
With a market value of -billion, Google’s power has become awe-inspiring. Its profits rocketed by 40% to ,2-billion last year and it swallowed the popular video-sharing website YouTube. Through Microsoft’s ,6-billion takeover bid for Yahoo!, the technology establishment hit back at Google’s seemingly unstoppable rise.
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/ 18 December 2007
Conrad Black was sentenced on December 10 to six-and-a-half years in a United States prison for abusing shareholders’ trust money through a sophisticated plot to embezzle $6,1million from his Hollinger media empire.
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/ 3 December 2007
United States house prices have suffered their worst plunge for two decades as defaults on sub-prime mortgages have shattered homebuyers’ confidence and lenders have withdrawn cheap loan deals. According to the key Standard & Poor’s housing index, released on Tuesday, third-quarter US prices were down 4,5% on 2006.
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/ 12 November 2007
A new generation of super-size wind farms could be on its way to a field near you. General Electric (GE) is developing wind turbines with blades longer than the tip-to-tip wingspan of a jumbo jet. In a move likely to dismay activists who view wind farms as a blot on the landscape, the American company has taken the wraps off a project to develop power-generating windmills with blades of 70 metres.
Concerns about Google’s dominance in online advertising have prompted the United States Federal Trade Commission to investigate its $3,1-billion takeover of internet marketing company DoubleClick. The purchase of DoubleClick, announced last month, is intended to give Google enhanced software and stronger relationships with agencies.
A huge shift in global capital flows is forecast after the Chinese government’s acquisition of a $3-billion stake in the sprawling United States private equity group Blackstone, owner of Café Rouge restaurants, Madame Tussauds and Center Parcs. The purchase is likely to be only the starting point of a $200-billion foray into world stock markets and private companies by the communist government in Beijing.
Few treats are guaranteed to delight New York’s gay community more than a juicy bit of gossip, seasoned with a sprinkling of righteous indignation. The latest edition of Out magazine has provided just that, courtesy of a feisty, plain-talking British editor.
A proposal to give American shareholders a vote on executive pay was overwhelmingly approved by the lower house of Congress last week as DemoÂcrats fought to tackle increasingly lavish multimillion-dollar boardroom handouts. American unions, politicians and institutional investors are angry about telephone number-sized sums.