See the totally wild posters designed for Tokyo's 2020 Olympics:There's a long tradition of artist-designed posters appearing ahead of the Olympics. See the latest crop for Tokyo 2020.
NEWS.ARTNET.COM
See the Riotous Posters Designed for Tokyo's 2020 Olympics by Chris Ofili, Viviane Sassen, and Other Artists | artnet News
Some have resisted Chinese takeovers. But a Swiss agrichemicals-maker has spurned an American firm in favour of a Chinese suitor
ChemChina continues its overseas shopping spree
The deal marks the biggest Chinese foreign takeover ever
ECON.ST
Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight
By MOTOKO RICH
Publishers have managed to take some control — at least temporarily — of how much consumers pay for their content.
For Small Employers, Shedding Workers and Tears
By MICHAEL LUO
The often personal task of laying off workers can inflict a large emotional toll on small-business managers.
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"I couldn’t get it out. It just killed my soul."
CHARLIE THOMAS III, vice president of a Mississippi lumberyard, on a speech to his employees about why he was laying off nearly a quarter of them.
All the papers lead with a report showing the U.S. economy shrank at a rate equivalent to 5.1 percent last fall--the worst contraction since 1982. Businesses failed to cut production fast enough after the financial crisis hit in October, so now they're stuck holding vast inventories of unsold goods. (Truly vast: If you count unsold goods as GDP growth, the rate of shrinkage was only 3.8 percent.) In order to correct, they've begun aggressively closing factories and shedding workers.
VeriSign will shed several operations to focus on its core Internet registry and e-commerce security services, reversing course on a major acquisition spree.
VeriSign 公司一反其大型併吞(購).....
...riot of joy...
riot n.
- A wild or turbulent disturbance created by a large number of people.
- Law. A violent disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled for a common purpose.
- An unrestrained outbreak, as of laughter or passions.
- A profusion: The garden was a riot of colors in August.
- Unrestrained merrymaking; revelry.
- Debauchery.
riot
VERB
Phrases
Derivatives
Origin
Middle English (originally in the sense 'dissolute living'): from Old French riote 'debate', fromrioter 'to quarrel', of unknown ultimate origin.
riotous
adjective
noun [C]a short period of doing a particular, usually enjoyable, activity much more than is usual:
I went on a drinking/shopping/spending spree on Saturday.
Twenty people were shot dead in the city making it the worst killing spree since the riots.━━ n. 浮れ騒ぎ.
on the spree 浮れて.
━━ vi. 飲み浮かれる.
Flush with petrodollars, oil-producing countries are buying up assets all over the world. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority's $7.5 billion investment in Citigroup is just the latest example, and it's not likely to be the last.
Experts estimate that oil-rich nations have a $4 trillion cache of petrodollar investments around the world. And with oil prices likely to remain in the stratosphere, that number could increase rapidly, The New York Times writes. Thanks in large part to the flow from the Mideast, the volume of deals by sovereign wealth funds, which governments use for direct investments, is up 32 percent this year from the same period in 2006.
For Abu Dhabi, this week's investment in Citi was likely driven by the falling dollar, a growing pile of oil revenue and an interest in not being overshadowed by neighboring Dubai's increasingly high profile. Abu Dhabi controls the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, with assets estimated at $650 billion.
Go to Article from The New York Times»
Go to Related Item from The New York Times»
Go to Item from DealBook»
bout
n.
shed (GET RID OF) Show phonetics
verb [T] shedding, shed, shed
1 (often used in newspapers) to get rid of something you do not need or want:
900 jobs will be shed over the next few months.
Psychotherapy helped him to shed some of his insecurity/inhibitions.
I'm going on a diet to see if I can shed (= become thinner by losing) a few kilos.
2 to lose a covering, such as leaves, hair or skin, because it falls off naturally, or to drop something in a natural or accidental way:
The trees shed their leaves in autumn.
They ran down to the sea, shedding clothes as they went.
UK A lorry had shed a load of gravel across the road.
spree
noun [C]
a short period of doing a particular, usually enjoyable, activity much more than is usual:
I went on a drinking/shopping/spending spree on Saturday.
Twenty people were shot dead in the city making it the worst killing spree since the riots.
I went on a drinking/shopping/spending spree on Saturday.
Twenty people were shot dead in the city making it the worst killing spree since the riots.━━ n. 浮れ騒ぎ.
on the spree 浮れて.━━ vi. 飲み浮かれる.
TOP STORY
Experts estimate that oil-rich nations have a $4 trillion cache of petrodollar investments around the world. And with oil prices likely to remain in the stratosphere, that number could increase rapidly, The New York Times writes. Thanks in large part to the flow from the Mideast, the volume of deals by sovereign wealth funds, which governments use for direct investments, is up 32 percent this year from the same period in 2006.
For Abu Dhabi, this week's investment in Citi was likely driven by the falling dollar, a growing pile of oil revenue and an interest in not being overshadowed by neighboring Dubai's increasingly high profile. Abu Dhabi controls the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, with assets estimated at $650 billion.
Go to Article from The New York Times»
Go to Related Item from The New York Times»
Go to Item from DealBook»
bout
n.
- A contest between antagonists; a match: a wrestling bout.
- A period of time spent in a particular way; a spell: "His tremendous bouts of drinking had wrecked his health" (Thomas Wolfe).
[From obsolete English bought, a turning (influenced by ABOUT), from Middle English, from bowen, to bend, turn. See bow2.]
verb [T] shedding, shed, shed
1 (often used in newspapers) to get rid of something you do not need or want:
900 jobs will be shed over the next few months.
Psychotherapy helped him to shed some of his insecurity/inhibitions.
I'm going on a diet to see if I can shed (= become thinner by losing) a few kilos.
2 to lose a covering, such as leaves, hair or skin, because it falls off naturally, or to drop something in a natural or accidental way:
The trees shed their leaves in autumn.
They ran down to the sea, shedding clothes as they went.
UK A lorry had shed a load of gravel across the road.
spree
noun [C]
a short period of doing a particular, usually enjoyable, activity much more than is usual:
I went on a drinking/shopping/spending spree on Saturday.
Twenty people were shot dead in the city making it the worst killing spree since the riots.
shed
v., shed, shed·ding, sheds. v.tr.
shed blood
- To cause to pour forth: shed tears.
- To diffuse or radiate; send forth or impart: shed light.
- To repel without allowing penetration: A duck's feathers shed water.
- To lose by natural process: a snake shedding its skin.
- To rid oneself of (something not wanted or needed): I shed 25 pounds as a result of my new diet.
- To lose a natural growth or covering by natural process.
- To pour forth, fall off, or drop out: All the leaves have shed.
- Something that sheds, especially an elevation in the earth's surface from which water flows in two directions; a watershed.
- Something that has been shed.
shed blood
[Middle English sheden, to separate, shed, from Old English scēadan, to divid
e.]
spend (MONEY) Show phonetics
verb [I or T] spent, spent
to give money as a payment for something:
How much did you spend?
I don't know how I managed to spend so much in the pub last night.
We spent a fortune when we were in New York.
She spends a lot of money on clothes.
We've just spent £1.9 million on improving our computer network.
We went on a spending spree (= We bought a lot of things) on Saturday.
spend
noun [S] UK INFORMAL
the amount of money that is spent on something:
The total spend on the project was almost a million pounds.
spender
noun [C]
someone who spends money:
Tourists are often big spenders (= they buy a lot of things).
spending
noun [U]
the money which is used for a particular purpose, especially by a government or organization:
government spending on health
spending cuts
Consumer spending has more than doubled in the last ten years.
From
February 23, 2008
Big-spending Chinese eye up Japan's energy 'champion' in $10bn drive for investment
China's increasingly aggressive sovereign wealth fund is poised to unleash a $10 billion (£5 billion) investment spree in Japan and is initially expected to set its sights on the energy sector.
Sources in the Japanese Government told The Times that the China Investment Corporation (CIC) may be considering the purchase of a “sizeable stake” in one of the country's largest oil and gas companies, Inpex.
The CIC is also understood to be actively recruiting in Japan to find a domestic fund manager to monitor its investments on the Tokyo stock exchange. The manager selected for the job is expected to be announced by the end of the month.
The CIC's plans to invest what could be as much as $10 billion across a range of Tokyo-listed stocks comes as Yoshimi Watanabe, the Japanese Financial Policy Minister, described the attention of the Chinese wealth fund as “most welcome”, when many traditional foreign investors have abandoned Japanese stocks in disgust.
Sources close to the minister added that the CIC would, after initially concentrating on buying stock exchange-listed shares, branch out into more direct investments - most probably real estate.
But a CIC stake of any size in Inpex would have particularly toxic political overtones. As a net importer of nearly all its energy, Inpex is among a handful of listed groups that are of critical strategic importance to Japan, although that does not officially place an upper limit on the size of any stake held by a foreigner.
Inpex is also the company expected to be Japan's “national champion”, as the country pushes to develop resources in the East China Sea. The search for oil and gas in that disputed section of ocean has already proved bitterly contentious and the source of heated diplomatic showdowns between Beijing and Tokyo.
The squabble arises over a nominal dividing line in the sea and how to divide fairly any resources that may eventually be discovered beneath it.
Analysts speculated that the discussion of a possible CIC stake in Inpex might portend a “friendship” investment ahead of the visit to Tokyo this year of Hu Jintao, the Chinese President. That visit is expected to yield an agreement on joint development of the East China Sea. The investment plans are understood to have been formed after a trip by the senior management of the CIC to Tokyo - the fund's first official visit to Japan since its creation late last year.
One Japanese MP close to the visit said that the “entire purpose” of the trip was to discuss how the CIC might invest in Japan and the various obstacles that it would encounter as it attempted to do so. The visit is also thought to have included discussions with relevant Japanese politicians and bureaucrats about how Tokyo might go about creating its own sovereign wealth fund - a project now officially under way.
But attempts to establish a fund to manage a portion of the country's $1trillion of foreign currency reserves is certain to meet strong opposition from conservative quarters. The Ministry of Finance is understood to be particularly opposed to the idea of a fund, viewing sovereign wealth
funds as the preserve of developing countries, rather than that of full Group of Seven members such as Japan. The planned investment in Japan comes as the United States has grown increasingly defensive about the activities of sovereign wealth funds. Lou Jiwei, the CIC chairman, indicated this month that the fund most likely would avoid markets in Europe because it had not been made to feel welcome there.
Sovereign power
June 2007 CIC takes a $3 billion stake in US private equity firm Blackstone
September 2007 The fund officially launches with initial capital of $200 billion
December 2007 Spends about $100 million on a stake in Hong Kong's China Railway Group
December 2007 Takes a 9.9 per cent stake in Morgan Stanley worth $5 billion
February 2008 Reports suggest that CIC is in talks about investing $4 billion in a JC Flowers vehicle set up to buy ailing financial groups
February 2008 CIC and China Shenhua Group have been in informal talks to buy a 15.85 per cent stake in Australia's Fortescue Metals Group in a deal worth $2 billion, reports suggest
February 2008 Considers the purchase of a “sizeable stake” in Inpex, one of Japan's largest oil and gas companies
沒有留言:
張貼留言