Category Archives: Buxiness
USA:Record Imports Widened Trade Deficit
The US trade deficit widened in December to its biggest gap since June. Figures from the Commerce Department showed that the overall deficit rose by 3.7% to $48.8bn (£31bn), up from a $47.06bn figure for the month earlier. Imports rose 1.3% to a record $227.56bn, boosted by demand for foreign cars and machinery. US exports grew slightly, by 0.7%, helped by the weak dollar, with records set for petrol, services and advance technology goods. The widening of the trade gap was bigger than had been expected.
For the whole of 2011, the US trade gap rose 11.6% to $558.0bn, the highest since 2008. The economically important deficit with China for the year jumped to a record high $295.5bn.
Barclay’s Profit Fall 3% to £5.9bn
Barclays has reported a 3% fall in profits to £5.9bn for last year, hit by a slowdown at its investment bank arm. The bank also said the bonus pool at the investment banking division was down 32% to £1.5bn in 2011. Chief executive Bob Diamond declined to discuss his own bonus during a news conference. But senior executives will see bonuses cut about 48%, which BBC business editor Robert Peston says would give Mr Diamond about £3m. Barclays’ total bonus pot for the year will now be about £2.15bn, down 25%, with cash bonuses capped at £65,000. The average bonus payout for a Barclays’ employee fell 21% year-on-year to £15,200.
Income at investment bank arm Barclays Capital (BarCap) fell to £1.8bn in the fourth quarter of last year, down 19% on the previous three months. The eurozone debt crisis hit the division’s bond trading activity.
Twitter thinking to allow censorships in countries
Twitter, a tool of choice for dissidents and activists around the world, found itself the target of global outrage Jan. 27 after unveiling plans to allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws.
This is Twitter blog post of Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012, in which the company announced it has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis. The additional flexibility is likely to raise fears that Twitter’s commitment to free speech may be weakening as the short-messaging company expands into new countries in an attempt to broaden its audience and make more money. But Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or “tweets,” remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a gauntlet of different laws around the world.
Three protesters detained for being Topless
Topless Ukrainian protesters demonstrated at the entrance to the congress center where the World Economic Forum in taking place in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. In freezing temperatures three topless Ukrainian protesters were detained Saturday while climbing a security fence outside the economic forum to draw attention to the needs of the world’s poor. The protesters had their papers checked and will be released later from custody, Davos police spokesman Thomas Hobi said Saturday.
Interesting Math Facts
- 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000 ways to play the first ten moves in a game of chess!
- 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
- A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
- 1 and 2 are the only numbers where they are the values of the numbers of factors they have.
- ‘Forty’ is the only number that has all its letters in alphabetical order.
- ‘FOUR’ is the only number in the English language that is spelt with the same number of letters as the number itself
- Multiply 37,037 by any single number (1-9), then multiply that number by 3. Every digit in the answer will be the same as that first single number.
- 1×9 +2 = 11 , 12×9 +3 = 111 , 123×9+4 = 1111 etc
- 2 and 5 are the only primes that end in 2 or 5.
- The 772-778 digits of pi are 9999998, the greatest sum of 7 consecutive digits in the first 1,000,000 or so digits.
- There are 2,598,960 five-card hands possible in a 52-card deck of cards.
- The largest prime number is 13,395 digits long; more than the number of atoms in the universe.
- 142857 is a cyclic number, the numbers of which always appear in the same order but rotated around when multipled by any number from 1 to 6. 142857 * 2 = 285714 142857 * 3 = 428571 142857 * 4 = 571428 142857 * 5 = 714285 142857 * 6 = 857142
- Tycho Brahe, a 16th century astronomer, lost his nose in a duel with one of his students over a mathematical computation. He wore a silver replacement nose for the rest of his life.
- If you multiply 1089 x 9 you get the exact reverse, 9801.
- ?=3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 58209 74944 59230 78164 06286 20899 86280 34825 34211 70679 82148 08651 32823 …
BlackBerry maker CEOs step down
Research In Motion’s Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have bowed to investor pressure and resigned as co-CEOs and co-chairmen, handing the top job to an insider with four years at the struggling BlackBerry maker.
Thorsten Heins, a former Siemens executive who has risen steadily through RIM’s upper management ranks since joining the Canadian company in late 2007, took over as CEO on Saturday, RIM said on Sunday.
The shift ends the two-decade partnership of Lazaridis and Balsillie atop a once-pioneering company that now struggles against Apple and Google.
Activist investors have clamored in recent months for a “transformational” leader who could revitalize RIM’s product line and resuscitate its once cutting-edge image. But Heins, as a longtime lieutenant, got a wary reception.
Barbara Stymiest, an independent board member who once headed the Toronto Stock Exchange, will take over as chairman, a role that Lazaridis and Balsillie had also shared.
The pair, who together built Lazaridis’ 1985 start-up into a global business with $20 billion in sales last year, have weathered a storm of criticism in recent years as Apple’s iPhone and the army of devices powered by Google’s innovative Android system eclipsed their email-focused BlackBerry.
