The news at a glance

Apple: Jobs and iPad 2 put on a show

Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance in San Francisco to introduce the new version of the iPad, “a product that has created a multibillion-dollar business in less than a year and left rivals scrambling,” said Geoffrey Fowler in The Wall Street Journal. Jobs, on indefinite medical leave since January, introduced the

thinner, lighter, faster iPad 2 in a presentation “full of swipes” at the nearly 100 rival tablets introduced since the original iPad was rolled out last year. Early reviews were good. Apple has “pulled a Secretariat,” Hearst Magazines general manager John Loughlin said. “They just left their competitors 31 lengths behind.”

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The iPad 2 “isn’t all that different from the original,” said Troy Wolverton in the San Jose Mercury News, but the new features make it a must-have device. The clinchers for me are the front and rear cameras and the FaceTime video-calling software, which enable me to chat with my far-flung family. I wish Apple had lowered the device’s $499 basic price tag, but it’s still a better value than other tablets. “This is the iPad I plan to buy—and I bet I’m not alone.”

Luxury goods: Bulgari is LVMH’s latest prize

France’s LVMH has added Italian jeweler Bulgari to a stable of luxury-goods brands that includes Christian Dior perfumes, Dom Perignon champagne, and Louis Vuitton handbags, said Michael de la Merced in The New York Times. LVMH, headed by Bernard Arnault, “one of the luxury industry’s most aggressive buyers,” will exchange LVMH shares worth $5.2 billion for all of Bulgari’s outstanding shares—a 61 percent premium over their pre-offer price. Bulgari sales rose 15 percent last year on rapid growth in emerging markets such as China.

Auto recalls: Mazda’s case of arachnophobia

Japanese carmaker Mazda has recalled 65,000 cars to deal with an infestation of venomous spiders, said Jerry Hirsch and Tiffany Hsu in the Los Angeles Times. The yellow sac spiders, whose bites are no worse than a mosquito bite for most people but can cause severe reactions in a small minority, have taken up residence in the tiny rubber hoses that connect fuel systems in the four-cylinder version of the Mazda6 model. In some cases, they could cause gas tanks to crack.

Data storage: Western Digital snaps up a rival

Western Digital extended its lead in the market for computer hard-disk drives this week with its $4.3 billion acquisition of Hitachi’s hard-drive business, said Amy Thomson in Bloomberg.com. Demand for hard drives is dropping steadily, as makers of fast-selling tablet computers opt for lighter, faster storage devices, especially flash memory. Last year Seagate Technology, the No. 2 hard-drive maker, spurned a takeover offer from Western Digital, citing antitrust concerns. Hitachi “is redefining itself as a provider of power plants, trains, and other infrastructure following four years of losses.”

Executive bonuses: A divided SEC plots a crackdown

The Securities and Exchange Commission has voted to craft new rules “that threaten to put the kibosh on oversized pay packages that have been the norm on Wall Street,” said Mark DeCambre in the New York Post. In a 3-to-2 party-line vote, the agency’s Democratic commissioners prevailed in deciding to regulate bonuses at banks with assets of $50 billion or more. Under the proposed rules, those banks would be required to hold back at least half of their bonus payments for at least three years to discourage short-term risk-taking.