Venezuela's Chavez gives us an island, Microsoft takes a step back
Good day for upgrading gifts, Bad day for making company history
GOOD DAY FOR: Upgrading gifts, after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez formally returned to the U.S. a small, uninhabited island in the Delaware River that Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, purchased in 1990. PDVSA has mostly used Petty Island, in New Jersey, for fuel storage and refining. Chavez announced the move at the Summit of the Americas; Petty Island is widely believed to be more valuable than his other gift to President Obama: a copy of the leftist book “The Open Veins of Latin America.” (BBC News)
BAD DAY FOR: Making company history, after Microsoft reported its first fall in year-over-year quarterly earnings since it became a public company 23 years ago. Microsoft was hit by a contraction in the PC market and a consumer move toward small, portable netbooks, which run cheaper versions of Microsoft’s older operation system Windows XP. The division that makes the Xbox 360 and Zune mp3 player swung to a loss. (AP in Yahoo! Finance)
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Wikipedia: Is ‘neutrality’ still possible?Feature Wikipedia struggles to stay neutral as conservatives accuse the site of being left-leaning
-
A House of Dynamite, After the Hunt, and It Was Just an AccidentFeature A nuclear missile bears down on a U.S. city, a sexual misconduct allegation rocks an elite university campus, and a victim of government terror pursues vengeance
-
Book reviews: ‘Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife’ and ‘Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It’Feature Gertrude Stein’s untold story and Jane Leavy’s playbook on how to save baseball