Trends Hot Topics: business

Showing posts with label business. Show all posts

President Obama again promoted a new package of Wall Street regulations in his Saturday radio address, telling listeners that "we are on the cusp of enacting the toughest financial reforms since the Great Depression."

Taping the address Friday just hours after House and Senate negotiators put together a final bill, Obama said the new plan would "empower our people with consumer protections" and prevent the kind of financial meltdown that gutted the economy in 2008.

Computers Learn to Listen, and Some Talk Back

“Hi, thanks for coming,” the medical assistant says, greeting a mother with her 5-year-old son. “Are you here for your child or yourself?”

The boy, the mother replies. He has diarrhea.

“Oh no, sorry to hear that,” she says, looking down at the boy.

The assistant asks the mother about other symptoms, including fever (“slight”) and abdominal pain (“He hasn’t been complaining”).

She turns again to the boy. “Has your tummy been hurting?” Yes, he replies.

After a few more questions, the assistant declares herself “not that concerned at this point.” She schedules an appointment with a doctor in a couple of days. The mother leads her son from the room, holding his hand. But he keeps looking back at the assistant, fascinated, as if reluctant to leave.

BlackBerry's Retreat Leaves A Sour Taste For RIM

Research In Motion delivered a quarter that showed buckling market share and disappointing sales as the smart phone marker feels the heat from Apple and Google.

Investors didn't take the news well, with shares of Research In Motion ( RIMM - news - people ) tumbling 9.5%, or $5.59, to $52.97, in afternoon trading on Friday.

"RIM is losing market share," says Andy Hargreaves, analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. "Their devices lack an effective browser, especially compared to what Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) and Google ( GOOG - news - people ) have, and they lack an attractive app environment, and that's what people want now. Email is still a valuable piece, but it's only one piece and if you don't have the whole pie you won't be able to capture any of that high-end share."

Toyota Stops Selling Lexus HS250h for Fuel Leak Risk

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest automaker, halted sales of a hybrid Lexus model because too much fuel spilled in crash tests conducted by the government safety agency, the company said today.

Toyota, which paid a record $16.4 million U.S. fine this year for not complying with auto-safety regulations, said in a letter to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today that about 17,000 of the HS250h sedans for the 2010 model year are being recalled.

“We’re working intently to duplicate the noncompliance that NHTSA identified,” Brian Lyons, a spokesman for Toyota’s U.S. unit based in Torrance, California, said in an interview.

Tail Troubles Keep The Dreamliner Down

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner program is again on hold due to a quality problem found in a portion of the tail. The company has already built five of the jetliners, and the problem appears to be found in a portion of the horizontal stabilizer built by Italian manufacturer Alenia.

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner program, already plagued by numerous delays, has been again put on hold due to a quality problem found in a portion of the tail.

The company has already built five of the jetliners, and the problem appears to be found in a portion of the horizontal stabilizer built by Italian manufacturer Alenia. Boeing ( BA - news - people ) stated that the planes "have issues with improperly installed shims and the torque of associated fasteners."

China to Create More Channels for Yuan Use, Central Bankers Say

China must create more channels for investors and companies to use the yuan if it wants to internationalize the currency and put it on a par with the yen and the euro, central bank officials and economists told a forum in Shanghai yesterday.

The world’s biggest holder of foreign-exchange reserves also needs to loosen controls on the use of the yuan for investment and trade outside China, Xie Duo, director of the financial market department of the People’s Bank of China, and Li Daokui, an adviser to the central bank, said.

China, the world’s third-largest economy, is seeking to reduce its reliance on the U.S. dollar and promote the yuan as a global currency. The central bank this week expanded the use of the yuan for cross-border trade settlement to 18 more provinces, allowing companies based in areas including Beijing and the export hubs of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to use the currency to pay for goods and services.

Forecaster: Storm Likely To Cause Threat To BP Oil Collection Efforts

A cluster of thunderstorms in the south Caribbean will likely become the first named tropical storm of the Atlantic basin hurricane season and could pose a danger to BP PLC's (BP, BP.LN) efforts to collect oil spewing from the Macondo well in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, a forecaster said Friday.

"I cannot emphasize enough that this storm will pose a serious threat," to BP's operations at the Macondo well, said Jim Rouiller, a senior energy meteorologist with Planalytics.

The National Hurricane Center gives the low pressure area centered between the northeast coast of Honduras and Grand Cayman a high chance, 70%, of becoming a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours.

The system is likely to become a tropical depression before it reaches the Yucatan Peninsula in a couple of days. An Air Force reconnaissance plane is scheduled to investigate this disturbance later Friday to determine if a tropical cyclone has formed.

G-20 Protesters Expand Rallies as Toronto Braces for Summit

Protesters and community groups aim to intensify their demonstrations in Toronto today as businesses in the downtown of Canada’s largest city start to close ahead of this weekend’s Group of 20 summit.

“There’s going to be a rally, a march, a block party and a tent city that’s going to go overnight,” Syed Hussan, spokesman for the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, said in an interview.

The network, which has been behind protests for the past week including yesterday’s downtown march of 1,200 people in support of indigenous groups’ rights, is planning a “feminist picnic” and a “Free the Streets” march this afternoon, a day before the start of the G-20 gathering.

G-20 leaders facing worries about rising deficits

World leaders who addressed a severe economic crisis with an unprecedented show of strength last year are finding it harder to maintain their solidarity in the face of new challenges.

Despite U.S. appeals to refrain from removing stimulus measures too quickly, country after country is rushing to slash spending and raise taxes to avoid suffering the same fate as Greece, which found itself on the brink of bankruptcy last month.

After maintaining remarkable unity at three previous summits, the leaders of the world's major economies will come to Canada facing a good deal of tension over the best approaches to take to make sure that the global economy continues to emerge from the worst recession in decades.

Robot nudge foils Gulf oil collection for a day

One nudge by a deep-sea robot, and BP had to back off its most effective method so far for containing the Gulf of Mexico oil leak.

After being removed for much of the day Wednesday, engineers using remote-controlled submarines repositioned a cap that had captured 700,000 gallons of oil in 24 hours before one of the robots bumped into it late in the morning.

Bob Dudley, BP's new point man for the oil response, said crews had done the right thing to remove the cap because fluid seemed to be leaking and could have been a safety hazard. The logistics coordinator onboard the ship that has been siphoning the oil told The Associated Press that the system was working again but it would take a little time before for the system to "get ramped back up." He asked not to be identified by name because he was not authorized to provide the information.

Google's YouTube wins Viacom copyright case

Google has won a landmark ruling as a judge threw out a $1bn lawsuit brought by Viacom accusing the internet giant of allowing copyrighted material on its YouTube service without permission.

Viacom had accused Google of "massive intentional copyright infringement".

But the Manhattan judge said Google and YouTube could not be held liable merely for having a "general awareness" that videos might be posted illegally.

Media conglomerate Viacom said it planned to appeal against the decision.

Google called the ruling "an important victory".
'Safe harbour'

BP CEO May be Trying to Get Fired, Really

Commentary: Hayward's compensation pales against those of American oil execs

Is BP PLC's Tony Hayward actually trying to get fired?

You might think so after his latest stunt. The hapless honcho, already slammed as "the most hated man in America," skipped out on the Gulf gusher over the weekend to participate a yacht race in England.

A yacht race? Are you kidding? Paging Thurston Howell III!

OK, maybe Hayward's critics are being hypocritical. After all, if his hour-by-hour presence in the Gulf of Mexico is absolutely essential, why was it appropriate to drag him away for that ridiculous circus up on Capitol Hill last week?

Nonetheless, from the point of view of spin — and we live now in the age of spin, to the point where almost nothing else seems to matter — the move seems crass, even for "Tone-Deaf Tony," the gaffe-prone chief executive.

As Russian president visits Silicon Valley, Cisco announces $1B investment

Cisco Systems today announced a $1 billion initiative to drive entrepreneurship and innovation in Russia at a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

"Simply put, we're all in," Cisco CEO John Chambers told Medvedev.

Medvedev was joined by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at a demonstration of Cisco's video conferencing, business social networking and sports casting technology.

Analysis: Obama couldn't give McChrystal a pass

President Barack Obama had little choice. Already weakened by the seemingly insolvable Gulf oil spill and his party's dicey prospects in the coming congressional election, Obama could not afford to give his Afghanistan commander a pass for his inflammatory public words.

In essence, Gen. Stanley McChrystal fired himself. It fell to Obama to make the announcement.

The real surprise Wednesday was that Obama persuaded four-star Gen. David Petraeus, who steered U.S. military fortunes in Iraq out of a dark place, to take over from McChrystal. Petraeus was instrumental in the naming of McChrystal 13 months ago to shoulder the burden of the lagging U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.

UPDATE 1-Oil firms want ruling lifting drill ban enforced

Hornbeck Offshore Services (HOS.N) and other companies that won an injunction blocking a six-month U.S. moratorium on deepwater drilling have asked thejudge to enforce his ruling after an Obama administration official said he would try to keep the ban in place.

In a federal court in New Orleans on Tuesday, Judge Martin Feldman granted an injunction blocking the moratorium on the grounds that it was too broad, arbitrary and not sufficiently justified despite the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama officials said they would quickly appeal but have yet to do so, or request a stay of the ruling pending the appeal.

Additionally, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Wednesday he would try to reformulate the moratorium and would include criteria for ending it, prompting the request by Hornbeck and the other companies.

10 Ways to Score an iPhone 4 on Launch Day

With the iPhone 4 launching on Friday, Consumers and even some enterprise customers are undoubtedly excited to finally get their hands on Apple's new smartphone. Such excitement is understandable. The device is arguably the best iPhone, at least on paper, that Apple has ever released.

Not only does it run the company's new iOS 4, which boasts multitasking, it includes a new feature called Face Time, which allows users to place video calls over Wi-Fi. Further, thanks to a new and improved display, the fidelity of the iPhone 4's touch screen should be second to none.

But most folks already know that. Now, they want to know how they can get their hands on an iPhone 4 on June 24. For some, pre-ordering was the way to go. Those that were lucky enough to get through the trials of pre-ordering an iPhone 4 on June 15 should have their smartphones in-hand that day.

China resource demand to falter if yuan fails to jump

One factor, a top HSBC analyst says, is that the yuan's rise will likely be much slower than when China first loosened its currency in July 2005. At that time, a virtuous cycle of rising real-estate prices and inflows of speculative capital put upward pressure on the yuan.

But this time, HSBC's Hong Kong-based co-head of Asian economics research Qu Hongbin said in a research note: "We believe the pace of appreciation against the U.S. dollar will be much slower than the pre-crisis rate."

A key difference between the current environment and that of the previous revaluation is the state of China's property market.

In 2005, property values were just beginning their long march upwards, but today's bubble-like valuations make it more likely that real-estate prices -- in major cities at least -- will decline in coming months, as tighter policy and other administrative measures to curb speculation take effect, Qu said.

Anti-homelessness strategy expands programs to assist veterans, families

The Obama administration released a strategy Tuesday to end homelessness that would expand programs to secure housing for veterans and families with young children, and build on efforts to help chronically homeless Americans.

With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq highlighting the needs of veterans and the economic crisis straining more families, the administration's plan widens the role envisioned for the federal government in curbing -- and ending -- homelessness. But it does not provide a significant infusion of federal money to combat the problem.

Michael Jackson has 'made $1bn' since his death

The magazine says Jackson's album sales have generated about $383m (£259m), while revenue from the film This Is It has hit nearly $400m (£271m).

Profits from publishing rights, licensing and touring are also included in the total.

A new recording contract is estimated to have made $31m (£21m) so far.

The Sony Music Entertainment deal will see 10 albums of the late singer's music released over the next seven years, including one of previously unreleased material.

The estate is guaranteed between $200m (£135m) and $250m (£169.5m) for the deal but Billboard believes approximately $31m (£21m) of this will have been paid in the last 12 months.
Publishing profits

Apple's iOS 4 Benchmarked: Is It Faster?

The new iOS 4 for the iPhone and iPod touch promises 100 new features, but we weren't sure if one of them would be speed. We're still not sure. After running some preliminary benchmarks on an iPhone 3GS and an iPod touch (3rd generation), we found mixed results with iOS 4, which made some tests run slightly faster and others slightly slower.

Part of the ambiguity may be because the two native benchmarking apps we use, BenchTest and Benchmark, haven't yet been updated for iOS 4. So they aren't using the latest features. Along with those two native apps, we also tried two tests of Web browser processing power and checked how long it took to launch a complex game.

The Demo Site

Hot Rank

Categories

.