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Apple Recalls Sony Batteries
Citing a potential fire hazard, Apple Computer recalls 1.1 million laptop batteries supplied by Sony. |
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US Execs Sentenced to Prison
Dennis Kozlowski, disgraced former head of Tyco and his ex-finance chief Mark Swartz are sentenced to eight-and-a-third to 25 years in prison for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the company. |
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Northwest Airlines Files Chapter 11
Beleagured Northwest Airlines files for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11, just moments after a similar announcement made by Delta Airlines. |
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HP Fires Fiorina
Carly Fiorina, previously one of America's most powerful businesswomen, resigns her post as CEO of Hewlett-Packard following a dispute with the company's board of directors over future strategy and the firm's profitability. Ms Fiorina pushed through a controversial merger with rival Compaq in 2002 and HP has struggled since. Shareholders cheer her departure and lift the price of HP stock by 10%. Her resignation is effective immediately and CFO Robert Wayman replaces her temporarily. |
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Airbus Unveils Double Decker
Airbus President and CEO Noël Forgeard welcomes British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero to witness the unveiling of the A380, the world’s first double-deck passenger aircraft. The plane is unveiled with a fantastic light show at Jean-Luc Lagardère Final Assembly Line in Toulouse. |
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PeopleSoft's CEO Quits
PeopleSoft Inc. announces that its Chief Executive and Chairman Dave Duffield has resigned following its agreement to a $10.3 billion buyout by rival Oracle Corp. earlier this month. |
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US Contractor Quits Iraq
Lt. Col. Eric Schnaible of the Pentagon’s Project and Contract Office in Baghdad announces that Contrack International Inc. of Arlington, Virginia has withdrawn from a $325 million contract to rebuild Iraq’s roads, bridges and railways citing the increased insurgent attacks on reconstruction efforts. |
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EU Court Rules Against MSFT
The Court of First Instance in Luxembourg upheld penalties imposed in March by the European Commission when it found that Microsoft had abused the virtual monopoly of its computer operating system Windows. Microsoft is now required to sell a version of Windows without the Media Player audio visual software, and to share protocols with rival computer-server makers. Competitors such as Apple's Quicktime player, and RealPlayer said they were damaged by Windows when it was sold including its own Media Player. |
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Fannie Mae Fires Execs
Fannie Mae, the US Mortgage financing giant, dismisses CEO Franklin Raines and CFO Timothy Howard in a scandal associated with accounting errors that require a complete restatement of earnings. |
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Boeing Delta-4 Rocket Flies
Boeing's new heavy-lift Delta 4 rocket finally lifts-off from Cape Canaveral after several days of delay. The 230 foot vehicle places a dummy payload and two university research satellites into orbit on its maiden voyage. |
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Sony To End Plasma TV Line?
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun announces, without citing sources, that Sony plans to withdraw from the plasma television business in the first half of 2005 and devote its flat-panel TV operations to liquid crystal display versions. Sony denies the assertion. |
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Wal-Mart's $498 Laptop
Wal-Mart and Linspire announce that they are now offering a basic Linux laptop for under US$500, the first laptop to be offered new below that price point. |
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Pfizer Pulls Ads for Celebrex
After spending $71 million on advertising for its pain-killer drug Celebrex in the first nine months of this year, Pfizer bows to pressure from regulators and agrees to pull Celebrex ads from TV, radio, newspapers and magazines, effective immediately. A clinical trial demonstrated that the painkiller is linked to increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. |
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Pfizer Shares Fall on Celebrex Warning
Pfizer shares plung after the company announces its arthritis drug Celebrex posed "increased cardiovascular risk" when used in high doses. Celebrex is a COX-2 inhibitor drug similar to Vioxx, which Merck withdrew from the market in September over similar health issues. |
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HP Drops Itanium Development
Hewlett Packard announces that it will move HP's Itanium processor design team to Intel in January, thus effectively ending the last microprocessor development effort within the company. To date, Itanium has not beed broadly accepted in the market, but has seen some success as a high-end server processor. |
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Google Library Partnership
Google announces a partnership with libraries at Stanford, Harvard, the University of Michigan and Oxford, and the New York Public Library ?to create digital versions of books that can be searched using the Google search engine. |
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Nextel & Sprint to Merge
Nextel Communications Inc. and Sprint Corp. reach a tentative agreement to merge, a deal that would create the nation's third-largest mobile-phone company with 39 million subscribers. The company will be called Sprint-Nextel. |
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New Diet Coke?
Beverage Digest announces that Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company will introduce a new diet soft drink in 2005 that will have no calories and be sweetened with sucralose and another artificial sweeter. Although sucralose is very popular with consumers, most health professionals recommend avoiding Coke and cola products completely, with the possible exception of Dasani bottled water. |
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Penn: Celebrex Risks Less Than Vioxx
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say the arthritis drug Celebrex does not carry the same heart attack risks as the drug Vioxx. Research showed that the chances of having a heart attack are nearly three times greater in Vioxx users than in Celebrex users, but other studies are still being done. |
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FBI Investigate Halliburton & KBR
Attorney Michael Kohn, who represents US Army Corps of Engineers Whistle-Blower Bunny Greenhouse, indicated that his client had met for a full day with the FBI and an investigator from the Pentagon's Criminal Investigative Division to discuss contracting abuses at Halliburton and KBR. |
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McDonald's Execs Face Health Issues
McDonald's announces that CEO Charlie Bell has resigned to focus on his battle with colorectal cancer. McDonald's names vice chairman Jim Skinner as its new CEO, and the board chose Mike Roberts, CEO of McDonald's USA, to the position of president and chief operating officer. Charlie Bell, only 44 years old, was diagnosed with colon cancer soon after succeeding heart-attack victim Jim Cantalupo in April. |
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Trump's Next Bankruptcy
Under a voluntary bankruptcy filing, Trump Atlantic City Associates, which is 99% owned by Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc., listed $1.3 billion in debt and $1.5 million in assets. It is the second bankruptcy for Donald Trump's casino empire. |
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Nike's Phil Knight Resigns
Worldwide athletic-goods giant Nike, Inc. announced Thursday that University alumnus and current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Philip H. Knight will step down as CEO, effective Dec. 28. |
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Karmazin to Head Sirius Satellite Radio
Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. names former Viacom Inc. President Mel Karmazin as its chief executive officer. |
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Sears and KMart Merge
Kmart announces the acquisition of Sears, Roebuck & Co. for $11 billion in a deal that will turn two of the nation's oldest retailers into the third largest retailer in the country. Kmart was originally founded as S.S. Kresge in Detroit in 1899. The new company, known as Sears Holdings, will be based at Sears headquarters outside Chicago. |
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Spitzer Sues Universal Life
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sues California insurance broker Universal Life Resources for taking kickbacks from MetLife, Prudential and UnumProvident. |
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Coke Lowers Sales Targets
Neville Isdell, the new CEO at the Coca Cola Company, announces that the soft drink maker is lowering its sales targets. |
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Paul Otellini is New Intel CEO
Intel's board of directors elects current president and chief operating officer Paul Otellini as the next CEO to succeed Craig Barrett. Barret will be the new chairman of the board. |
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Oracle's Offer for Peoplesoft
PeopleSoft's directors are advising shareholders that Oracle's latest takeover bid of $9.2 billion falls well below the company's real value. Oracle's latest hostile takeover offer is $24 per share (or $9.2 billion). |
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More Halliburton Corruption Found
U.S. State Department documents are revealed showing that Richard Jones, U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, intervened in December of 2003 to ensure that Halliburton, the oil services company once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, retained a Kuwaiti business as a subcontractor to deliver fuel to Iraq. "My ethics will not allow me to direct KBR to go sole source to a contractor when I know there are other potential sources that can provide the fuel to the people in Iraq," Army Corps of Engineers contracting officer Mary Robertson wrote an official of KBR. |
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