Stock prices dropped sharply in Europe and Asia Monday, with fears of economic problems in the United States causing some of the biggest single-day losses in recent years.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index fell 5.5 percent - its biggest fall since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Losses of between three and seven percent were recorded in India, China, Britain, France, Germany and Canada.

While there are many factors linking national economies, analysts blame recent losses on fears of a recession in the United States.

The United States is the main export market for many overseas businesses. Foreign investors also have bought large stakes in U.S. companies.

When American home loan companies began reporting large numbers of defaulting loans in late 2007, the losses spread to other financial institutions, tightening credit markets and sparking worries about Americans’ high levels of debt.

Last week, President Bush proposed a $145 billion stimulus plan to encourage more consumer spending. But analysts say the measure may not be able to prevent a recession - defined as a broad decline in a nation’s economy over a period of at least six months.

U.S. markets are closed for a national holiday Monday, but stock futures trading indicates further losses are expected when markets reopen Tuesday.

Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

LOS ANGELES — Social networking giant MySpace has entered into an agreement with 49 states that includes the elimination of all links to adult websites, according to one state Attorney General who has signed on to the plan.

The move is part of a plan to fight online predators targeting children, and according to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, includes a commitment by MySpace to “Obtain and constantly update a list of pornographic web sites and regularly sever any links between them and MySpace.”

“Kids face a real danger on web sites like MySpace because they never know who they are communicating with online,” Shurtleff said. “This agreement recognizes the intentions of MySpace to make improvements but it is my hope that all social networking sites will find additional ways to protect children.”

Such a move would pose further challenges for legitimate adult marketers that rely on receiving traffic from these popular portals to fuel their websites ? an especially popular option for solo-model and personality website owners.

As part of its agreement with the state attorneys general, MySpace will:

–Strengthen software identifying underage users;
–Retain a contractor to identify and eliminate inappropriate images;
–Allow parents to send their child’s e-mail address so MySpace can restrict the child from signing in or creating a profile;
–Obtain and constantly update a list of pornographic web sites and regularly sever any links between them and MySpace;
–Create a closed “high school” section for users under 18;
–Implement changes making it harder for adults to contact children;
–Dedicate resources to educating children and parents about online safety;
–Provide a way to report abuse on every content page, consider adopting a common mechanism to report abuse and respond within 72 hours to abuse reports.
–MySpace will also create and lead an Internet Safety Technical Task Force; which in conjunction with the attorneys general and other social networking sites, experts and groups will develop improved Internet safety practices.

Reports will be issued quarterly, with a report on the group’s formal findings and recommendations planned for a late 2008 release.

via Xbiz

A statement from the company on Saturday gave no further details on the accident.

Wang joined the company as CFO in September 2004; he’d previously been a partner at the accounting and consulting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

Wang also sat as an independent director and chairman of the board’s audit committee at WuXi PharmaTech
the Shanghai provider of outsourced drug-development services.

Baidu went public on Nasdaq in August 2005 at $27 a share; less than 21/2 years later, it’s trading at nearly 15 times its IPO price. Baidu said the CFO’s duties would be assumed by the company’s senior managers for now.

Today, Microsoft reportedly lost an antitrust case after the European Union court agreed with a prior ruling that the software giant abused its position in the market to squash any potential rivals.

The court upheld the decision that was made in 2004 against the company and will fine them $689.9 million. A lawyer for the company said that the ruling will affect how they market future products; while Neelie Kroes, the EU Competition Commissioner stated in Reuters that the firm should see a “significant drop” in their current 95% market share.

Kroes said in a news conference that, “The court has confirmed that Microsoft can no longer prevent the market from functioning properly and consumers are entitled to benefit from choice and more innovative product.”

The case focused primarily on the applications that were continually released by Microsoft to only operate with Windows. British competition lawyer Chris Bright also said to Reuters, “It’s clearly a major defeat for Microsoft. There is no doubt it will spur the Commission on to regulate Microsoft much more significantly.”

Microsoft is declared by the ruling to give coding or any other pertinent information to their rivals in order to allow Microsoft product to run with other servers than Windows.

Brad Smith, Microsoft General Counsel told the conference that the firm will fully follow their new sanctions and that the company has not decided whether or not to appeal.

Story care of ADOTAS

NEW YORK - A teenager in New Jersey has broken the lock that ties Apple’s iPhone to AT&T’s wireless network, freeing the most hyped cell phone ever for use on the networks of other carriers, including overseas ones.

George Hotz, 17, confirmed Friday that he had unlocked an iPhone and was using it on T-Mobile’s network, the only major U.S. carrier apart from AT&T that is compatible with the iPhone’s cellular technology.

While the possibility of switching from AT&T to T-Mobile may not be a major development for U.S. consumers, it opens up the iPhone for use on the networks of overseas carriers.

“That’s the big thing,” said Hotz, in a phone interview from his home in Glen Rock.

The phone, which combines an innovative touch-screen interface with the media-playing abilities of the iPod, is sold only in the U.S.

Calls to AT&T and Apple for comment were not immediately returned.

The hack, which Hotz posted Thursday to his blog, is complicated and requires skill with both soldering and software. It takes about two hours to perform. Since the details are public, it seems likely that a small industry may spring up to buy U.S. iPhones, unlock them and send them overseas.

“That’s exactly, like, what I don’t want,” Hotz said. “I don’t want people making money off this.”

He said he wished he could make the instructions simpler, so users could modify the phones themselves.

“But that’s the simplest I could make them,” Hotz said.

The modification leaves the iPhone’s many functions, including a built-in camera and the ability to access Wi-Fi networks, intact. The only thing that won’t work is the “visual voicemail” feature, which shows voice messages as if they were incoming e-mail.

Hotz collaborated online with four other people, two of them in Russia, to develop the unlocking process.

“Then there are two guys who I think are somewhere U.S.-side,” Hotz said. He knows them only by their online handles.

Kim Malone, the Google executive in charge of online sales and operations for Google AdSense, doesn’t own a TV. And why should she?

Google today announced a deal with Media Rights Capital (MRC) to distribute original digital content across Web sites in the AdSense content network.

The “multi-million dollar content,” as MRC described it in a statement, will include new animated shows from Seth MacFarlane, creator of animated hits Family Guy and American Dad!, as well as a “How To” series by Raven-Symone and Disney’s “That’s So Raven.”

All the content in the deal will be developed exclusively for digital distribution. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Google will present MacFarlane’s and Symone’s programming bundled with banner ads and in-stream video advertising, which users must click to view the content.

This is a crucial element of Google and Malone’s philosophy that advertisements should invite potential customers, not intrude upon them. The idea is that if users have control over how much advertising they consume, marketers will in turn know which types of ads work and which do not.

As broadband penetration has deepened in the U.S., it’s made Web video as technically feasible for many Americans as cable TV. But so far, the mystery of how to monetize high-quality Web video content has gone largely unsolved.

But MRC Co-CEO Asif Satchu thinks his company may have an answer after first approaching Google a year ago.

“We feel this partnership answers the question of how best to reach viewers online, because the Web is fragmented into millions and millions of viewing destinations,” Satchu said in a statement.

“AdSense connects all of those fragments and offers us access to them in one simple and powerful distribution solution.”

Malone is equally optimistic.

“This combination allows for the creation of original content that was historically too expensive to produce for Internet distribution and connects advertisers with high-quality content,” she said in a statement.

Last summer, Google signed a similar deal with Viacom to distribute MTV content. Given Viacom’s $1 billion suit against Google, it’s perhaps not surprising that a Viacom spokesperson told internetnews.com “That test program concluded. It’s no longer in place.”