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Sen. Jim Bunning to Retire Due to Slow Fundraising

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Chris Cillizza - Jul. 27 (Breaking News) - Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning bowed to political reality today, announcing that he would not seek a third term in 2010 -- a move that drastically increases Republicans’ chances of holding the seat next fall.

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IBM Aims for a Battery Breakthrough

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Steve Hamm - Jun. 23 (Special Report) - On June 23, IBM announced a multiyear effort to increase the performance of rechargeable batteries by a factor of 10. The aim is to design batteries that will make it possible for electric vehicles to travel 300 to 500 miles on a single charge, up from 50 to 100 miles currently. "We want to see if we can find a radically different battery technology," says Chandrasekhar "Spike" Narayan, who manages the Science & Technology Organization at IBM Research's Almaden lab in San Jose, Calif.

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Sotomayor on Discrimination, Class-Action and Securities Litigation

Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Theo Francis - May. 26 (News Analysis) - Since David Souter said he’d leave the Supreme Court, we’ve made the case that business law doesn’t follow the usual right-left split, and that President Obama’s nominee to replace him, Sonia Sotomayor, looks like the same sort of business pragmatist he has been.

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Unemployment Up in 44 States

Fri, 22 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Moira Herbst - May. 22 (News Report) - Forty-four states lost jobs in April as the recession continued to hit hard, the Labor Dept. reported on May 22. Michigan's April jobless rate was the highest in the country, reaching 12.9%, followed by Oregon at 12%, South Carolina at 11.5%, Rhode Island at 11.1%, and California at 11%. California led in the total number of jobs lost with 63,700, followed by 39,500 in Texas, 38,400 in Michigan, and 25,200 in Ohio. These states faced heavy layoffs in manufacturing, construction, and retail.

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Is the G-20's War on Tax Havens a Sham? - BusinessWeek

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Alexander Neubacher - Apr. 14 (News Analysis) - All a country had to do in order to be removed from the list and accepted into the circle of the supposedly purified was to provide the OECD with the solemn assurance that it intended to abide by international agreements in the future. Whether this is a step forward remains to be seen.

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Greenpeace: Forests don't belong in carbon market - BusinessWeek

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Vanessa Gera - Mar. 30 (News Report) - Environmental group Greenpeace on Monday criticized plans by some countries to tackle global warming by letting polluting industries in wealthy nations offset carbon emissions by replanting tropical forests.

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Twitter Has Potential Buyers Atwitter

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Business Week - By Heather Green, Robert D. Hof - Mar. 04 (News Report) - The microblogging service Twitter has caught on with everyone from celeb Ashton Kutcher to CEOs. Yet for all the buzz, Twitter has always seemed more novelty than business. Many of the 140-character posts, or "tweets," that people send out on Twitter are about topics as mundane as what they had for lunch or when they're going to sleep. Is there any real value in that? It turns out there is. In fact, there's growing evidence that Twitter, a company with no revenues today, could be worth several hundred million dollars. Two sources say social-networking service Facebook offered to acquire Twitter late last year for $500 million in cash and stock. Peter Thiel, an investor in Facebook, confirmed the discussions in an interview with BusinessWeek, though he would not comment on price. He says talks fell apart over questions about the value of Facebook's stock. Facebook's offer is unlikely to be the last. Google (GOOG) has "open lines of communication" with Twitter, says one source, though there are no active deal talks. Yahoo! (YHOO) is another logical buyer, but the price may be too steep for the struggling company. Google and Yahoo declined to comment on acquisition possibilities.

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Carbon: Europe's Lessons for the U.S.

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Business Week - By Mark Scott - Feb. 19 (Special Report) - Widespread government subsidies, for instance, made countries such as Denmark, Germany, and Spain into global leaders in renewable energy. But now, lower subsidies and a lack of project financing from banks due to the credit crisis are whacking investment in clean energy. European green energy investments fell by 13.7% in the second half of 2008 from the same period in 2007, to $21.2 billion, according to researcher New Carbon Finance. In North America, the toll is far worse: Over the same period, clean energy investment there fell by nearly half, to $10.7 billion.

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Profile of a Social Entrepreneur

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Business Week - By Marshall Goldsmith - Dec. 25 (Interview) - My friend Pamela Hawley is a global social entrepreneur, devoted to creating Web-based marketplaces that make a social impact. A practitioner of social entrepreneurship, Pamela is committed to marrying the compassion of the nonprofit world with the effectiveness and efficiency of business. She is the founder and CEO of UniversalGiving, which helps people give and volunteer with the top-performing projects across the world, and which helps Fortune 500 companies manage their corporate social responsibility programs. I thought the holidays were a good time to talk to her about real "giving"—not just the buying of presents but truly helping others, an idea that feels especially pertinent during these tough times.

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Russia: Putin vows to protect Russia's economy

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By By Megan K. Stack - Nov. 22 (News Report) - The crisis goes straight to Putin's Achilles' heel, raising the long-muttered question of whether it was keen policy or simply record-breaking oil prices that allowed him to preside over a period of growth and prosperity.

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Russia's Economy: How Bad Will It Get? - BusinessWeek

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Business Week - By Jason Bush - Nov. 19 (News Report) - "Today it is clear that the crisis is spreading, unfortunately from the financial sector into the sectors of the real economy," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev admitted on Nov. 18.

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GM Cuts Costs to the Bone

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By David Welch - Oct. 23 (News Report) - Cash is getting so tight at General Motors (GM) that management has launched another wave of cost-cutting. The company is even scrutinizing the electricity bills. Auto sales are in their worst slump in decades, resulting in a cash burn rate of about $1 billion a month at GM. The company is selling assets to raise money, but as the economic slump appears to be gaining traction, GM is now delaying new models, cutting benefits, laying off salaried workers, and looking at even small items like utility bills. The latest round of cuts show just how quickly the world has changed around GM and how much pressure the company is under. In July, Chairman and CEO G. Richard Wagoner announced a plan to boost cash by $15 billion through cost-cutting, asset sales, and some borrowing. He said that the $15 billion would be enough even if sales fell to 14 million vehicles in the U.S. Last year, Americans bought 16.2 million vehicles.

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High Rate of H-1B Visa Fraud

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Moira Herbst - Oct. 15 (News Report) - A report released Oct. 8 by the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) reveals that 13% of petitions filed for H-1B visas on behalf of employers are fraudulent. Another 7% contain some sort of technical violations.

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UAW: health care trust needs automakers' cash

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Jeff Karoub - Oct. 07 (News Report) - United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said Tuesday that the union isn't willing to accept more overtures by cash-strapped Detroit automakers to delay payments to a trust fund that will take over retiree health care costs in 2010.

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Wall Street Bailout Could Crimp CEO Pay

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Theo Francis - Sep. 23 (News Report) - As Congress and the Bush Administration negotiate over the terms of a financial rescue bill, Democrats on Capitol Hill are drafting language designed to rein in executive compensation, in particular controversial severance packages at foundering companies. And for politicians concerned about the growing backlash on Main Street over what many see as a bailout of Wall Street fat cats, executive pay is a ripe target. After all, average total pay for a CEO at one of the 500 biggest companies last year was $12.8 million, double what it was a decade ago. But compensation attorneys and experts say many of the restrictions could prove tough to enforce.

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Pelosi promises to protect Fla. from oil drilling

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Brendan Farrington - Sep. 11 (News Report) - As Republicans increasingly call for more domestic offshore drilling, Florida's Democratic House members said they convinced Speaker Nancy Pelosi to make sure drilling off the state's gulf coast isn't included in energy legislation being considered in her chamber.

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A Roadblock to Russian Oil and Gas

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Steve LeVine - Aug. 12 (News Report) - Washington has spent more than a decade of diplomacy and arm-twisting to erect what it calls an East-West Energy Corridor connecting the countries of the Caspian Sea with NATO ally Turkey. The result has been a network of oil and natural gas pipelines, ports, and tankers that can feed a million barrels a day to the world market. Washington has sought to expand and link that network directly to Europe, where Russia is currently the dominant supplier.

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As Olympics Open, China's Economy Slows

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:13:09 -0700

Business Week - By Frederik Balfour - Aug. 07 (News Report) - In a worrisome sign that China's growth streak is losing more steam, the latest official statistics on manufacturing show the output of Chinese factories may have actually contracted in July. The Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell to 48.4 in July, the first time it has dropped below the 50 boom-bust line since the government introduced the measure three years ago. That fall suggests manufacturing is shrinking, as levels of both new orders and production fell month over month. "China's manufacturing sector is facing tough challenges due to the slowdown in the global economy, rising production costs, tight credit conditions, power shortages, and currency appreciation," Lehman Brothers (LEH) economists wrote in a recent research note.

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NGOs: China Is Breaking Olympics Promises

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:40:00 -0700

Business Week - By Bruce Einhorn - Jul. 31 (News Report) - As thousands of journalists arrive in China, authorities are blocking Web sites of Amnesty International and other groups. In the months preceding the Beijing Olympics, officials from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) assured wary journalists they would have unfettered access to the Internet while reporting the Games. In April, for instance, IOC official Hein Verbruggen, who was head of the inspection team in Beijing this spring, told reporters the Chinese government would not impose Internet censorship on Olympics journalists. Now, as athletes are arriving and the media center is up and running in Beijing, thousands of journalists are realizing that their fears have been confirmed: Chinese authorities are indeed blocking Web sites of Amnesty International as well as Tibetan and Taiwanese groups. "The Chinese government won't allow the spread of any information that is forbidden by law or harms national interests on the Internet," the official Xinhua news agency reported on July 31. "If a few Web sites are difficult to browse, it's mainly because they have spread content that is banned by the Chinese laws," Xinhua quoted Sun Weide, the Beijing Olympics spokesman, as saying at a press conference in Beijing's Olympics media center. "The Internet is regulated according to law in China, just like in other countries."

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Bloggers: Big Media Is Watching

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Peter Burrows - Jun. 26 (Special Report) - the dustup between the AP and bloggers was just an early skirmish in what's likely to become a protracted war over how and where media content is published online. On one side are bloggers and other Web sites eager to ensure continued access to information. On the other are media companies intent on controlling or cashing in on the dissemination of their stories, videos, and other digital media. One reason: For the first time, content owners are able to track exactly where and how their words and images show up, thanks to an emerging class of technology called content recognition systems.

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Oil Traders Face New Regulation

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:30:51 -0700

Business Week - By Moira Herbst - Jun. 09 (News Report) - The dramatic surge in oil prices--including a $16-per-barrel jump in just two days last week--has left Washington regulators scrambling to exert new oversight on futures trading in oil and other commodities. The US regulatory agency's ...

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Exxon: Profit Pirate or Tax Victim?

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Moira Herbst - May. 02 (News Report) - With gas prices averaging $3.63 a gallon, consumers understandably aren't cheering Exxon Mobil's latest profit report. On May 1, Exxon Mobil announced first-quarter 2008 earnings of $10.9 billion--a figure that marks the second-largest U.S. quarterly profit ever, even if it slightly missed Wall Street's expectations. Perhaps more surprising was this figure buried in the Exxon (XOM) report: $9.3 billion. That's how much Exxon paid in worldwide income taxes in the first quarter of 2008, representing a 49% tax rate on its gross income of $20.2 billion. While not generating as much heat as the income figure--which prompted Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to call once again for tax hikes on oil profits--it did prompt a vigorous discussion in the blogosphere.

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Meet a Pirate's Best Friend

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By Mark Scott - Mar. 20 (Special Report) - With a simple design and powerful technology, YouTorrent has become an underground Web sensation less than three months after its debut. It attracted 2.7 million unique visitors in February, making it more popular than ballyhooed video startups Joost.com and Hulu.com, according to researcher comScore (SCOR). It already gets about one-tenth as many visitors as Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) iTunes store. It has become a bit like the Google (GOOG) of pirated content.

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What Would Buffett Buy?

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Business Week - Mar. 07 (Special Report) - Author Robert Hagstrom tried to compile Buffett's key investing strategies ... With Hagstrom's book as a source, Standard & Poor's Portfolio Services analyst David Braverman put together a stock screen that picks companies using criteria similar to those that fit the legendary investor's growth-oriented style.

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Airline Safety: A Whistleblower's Tale

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Business Week - By Stanley Holmes - Feb. 04 (Special Report) - In the two years after Lund blew the whistle on the unaddressed problems he perceived at Northwest, he says, the FAA made his life uncomfortable. Now Lund is returning the favor. On Sept. 27, 2007, the Inspector General released a report on the episode that lambasted the FAA for its treatment of Lund, who held on to his job despite what he claims was an effort to fire him. At the request of the Inspector General, the agency is now in the process of modifying the procedures it uses to review safety allegations raised by inspectors. The FAA is bracing for more scrutiny on this issue. In March, the House aviation subcommittee plans to hold a hearing on an alleged incident of retaliation involving an inspector for Southwest Airlines.

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