British Airways' profits soar.
(AP Photo/Michael Sohn)
Annual profit doubles at British Airways as the carrier woos trans-Atlantic business fliers. Yahoo and Carl Icahn lock horns over Microsoft. And a smoking ban in Britain is taking an especially steep toll in Little Cairo.
Retirement plans calculated with projected returns of about 10 percent “rest on two decades of outsize returns,” says Sandra Block in USA Today. General Electric is joining the “small but high-profile club” of companies that have shed “businesses once synonymous with their brand names,” says Matt Vella in BusinessWeek.com, and it could be a smart move.
GOOD DAY FOR: New Windows, after Microsoft joined the One Laptop Per Child project, potentially boosting orders for the $188 laptops. Adding the Windows operating system to the XO laptops, which currently run a Linux-based system called Sugar, will add up to $20 per laptop. Project founder Nicholas Negroponte said he hoped the change would ease skepticism among education ministers in potential client nations. (AP in Yahoo! Finance)
BAD DAY FOR: Puffed rice, after the price of rice dropped for a fifth day, for a total weekly decline of 14 percent. That marks the grain’s steepest fall in price since July 2004. New supplies of rice from Pakistan and Japan eased concern about a global shortage of the staple. “The wheels are in motion for lower food prices,” said UBS analyst John Reeve. (Bloomberg)
U.S. Business
With the economy the way it is, “peddling luxury in 2008 is no enviable task.”Lesley M.M. Blume/Slate
Personal Finance
Is there really a housing crisis going on?George F. Will/The Washington Post
U.S. Business
The NFL draft should teach us that “the best economic solution when it comes to antitrust would be to scrap the concept altogether.”John Tamney/Real Clear Markets
World Business
“Should we be scared” that “Foreign governments are investing large sums of money in American companies”?Daniel Drezner/The American
Week of May 23
Controversy of the week
Israel at 60: Has the promise been fulfilled?
Main stories
Party leaders swinging to Obama despite a Clinton win
Talking points
$4-a-gallon gas: The new normal?
Best columns—International
Russia: Lighting a 'powder keg' in the Caucasus
Business
Issue of the week: Is the government cooking economic data?
Film
Music
Food & Drink
Recipe of the week: Spicing up Mexican cuisine with poblano chilies
