Americans voiced their dissatisfaction at US President Barack Obama on Wednesday, after a poll conducted by Gallup showed that only 26 percent of respondents approved of President Obama’s handling of the US economy.
The results was 11 percentage points lower than the last time Gallup measured it in mid-May and well below Obama’s previous low of 35 percent in November 2010.
A week after being named as the world’s most valuable company, new floor plan designs have emerged for Apple’s proposed new headquarters – Apple Campus 2 in Cupertino, California.
In June this year, Apple’s co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs appeared before the Cupertino City Council to pitch his plans for a futuristic new campus that would occupy a 175-acre plot of land in the heart of Silicon Valley.
In his pitch, Steve Jobs described the proposed new building’s design to be “a little like a spaceship landed.”
Manchester United, the English Premier League soccer power that is already the most valuable sports team in the world, is preparing to sell shares on the Singapore stock exchange that could raise about US$1 billion, according to a person familiar with the plan who declined to be identified before the details of the sale were made public.
Bernie Madoff is an incarcerated American felon, former stockbroker and investor, non-executive chairman of NASDAQ, and the figure behind what is considered the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. A new company, Frederick James, now provides sleek new lightweight designs from Madoff’s clothes, to protect iPads.
Google is set to purchase the mobile handset arm of Motorola for US$12.5 billion in a bid to bolster the adoption of its Android mobile operating platform and to mount a sustainable challenge to compete with smartphone rival Apple. In the largest deal to date, Google would pay US$40 per share in cash, a 63 per cent premium to Motorola’s closing price last Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
To analysts, Google’s pricey new toy will help it do everything from build up its nascent tablet business to prop up its ailing Google TV arm.
While most individuals complain about paying too much taxes, billionaire investor Warren Buffett is adamant that his “mega-rich” friends and himself are not paying enough; and is demanding the US government to “stop coddling the super-rich”.
China’s yuan hit a fresh high against the dollar late Friday after the central bank guided its currency upward for the third straight day, marking the yuan’s biggest weekly rise since it was essentially unpegged from the greenback last year.
Reported pirate attacks in the Gulf of Guinea, which stretches from Guinea to Angola, has risen rapidly this year as concerns grow over whether the region might descend into the next Somalia.
The loss of confidence in markets and leadership in key economies like the United States and Europe coupled with a fragile economic recovery have pushed markets into a new danger zone, something that policymakers have to take seriously, the chief of the World Bank said last Sunday.
Speaking at the Asia Society’s annual dinner in Sydney, Robert Zoellick said that the global economy was going through a “multi-speed recovery”.
European regulators will ban short-selling in four countries’ financial stocks from Friday in a co-ordinated effort to restore confidence in a market hit by rumours, higher borrowing costs and a steep rise in emergency financing. In a statement issued close to the end of the day, the European Securities and Markets Authority (EMSA) said Belgium, France, Italy and Spain were set to bring in the ban, which will vary in detail from country to country.
