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Print Story: Global equity meltdown costs investors $2 trillion on Yahoo! News

Print Story: Global equity meltdown costs investors $2 trillion on Yahoo! News: "Global equity meltdown costs investors $2 trillion

By Chris SandersTue Jun 13, 5:27 PM ET

The month-long slide in global stocks has wiped out at least $2 trillion in wealth, leaving investors few alternatives to preserve their holdings aside from bonds and money markets.

Investors have been dumping stocks, commodities and emerging market assets on growing concerns that economic growth will suffer from higher inflation and interest rates.

'It is essentially one consistent story worldwide, starting here in the U.S. There is a fear that the Fed's repeated commitment to limiting inflation demonstrates a willingness to risk economic activity,' said Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York.

Stock markets have been punished since the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates for 16th time in a row on May 10 and issued a hawkish statement saying it may need to do so again to fight inflation. Investors had expected some sign of an end to the tightening cycle.

Global markets have suffered since, and strategists show little agreement about how deep and how long the sell-off will go. Bonds have been the most direct beneficiary of the equities route, with benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasuries staging their longest rally of the year since mid-May.

MARKETS FALL INTO THE RED ON THE YEAR

The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI - news) is off 8.2 percent since mid-May and as of Tuesday's close had erased its gain for the year. The Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC - news) is off 12.75 percent from its high for the year on April 19 and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (^SPX - news) has fallen by nearly 8 percent from its May peaks.

On Tuesday, Tokyo's Nikkei average booked its biggest one-day percentage fall in two years, tumbling 4.14 percent, wiping out more than 16.56 tril"

Sderot: Rocket siren used as ringtone - News from Israel, Ynetnews

Sderot: Rocket siren used as ringtone - News from Israel, Ynetnews: "Sderot: Rocket siren used as ringtone



(VIDEO) Reuters photographer turns tune of siren, used to alert Sderot residents of Qassam rocket, into mobile phone ringtone
Shmulik Hadad


VIDEO - The Red Dawn alert system's tune has in recent days become a hit among youths in the rocket-stricken town of Sderot.



The tune, perhaps being used in a humorous way to deal with the tense situation, has been turned into a mobile phone ringtone."

BREITBART.COM - MySpace May Be Linked With Search Engines

BREITBART.COM - MySpace May Be Linked With Search Engines: "MySpace May Be Linked With Search Engines
Jun 13 9:38 PM US/Eastern
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CHICAGO

News Corp. could let one of the larger Web search engines, like Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. or Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, take over the search function on popular social networking site MySpace.com, a News Corp. executive said Tuesday.

Speaking at the Deutsche Bank Media & Telecom Conference, Peter Chernin, News Corp.'s chief operating officer, said such a move would be one of the most lucrative ways to monetize MySpace, the popular online destination that News Corp. acquired last year.

Since News Corp. bought MySpace last year for $580 million, interest in the site has been high, with analysts and investors hoping it will drive growth at the company. The site has been wildly popular among younger users and has more than 75 million members. But thus far, News Corp. is still looking for ways to profit from its many users without looking 'uncool.' Chernin has said he is 'extremely bullish' on the company's new media initiatives.

Chernin said Tuesday that News Corp. is 'probably too late' to make a significant mark in the search arena, but plans to find 'some strategic combination' of the user traffic generated by its Internet sites and its vast array of entertainment content to get the most revenue out of its Web-based properties.

MySpace is one of the most visited sites on the Internet, but the site's search function isn't so dominant. In April, MySpace's search function made up 0.6 percent of all U.S. online searches, according to comScore Networks, which specializes in measurement and analysis of consumer behavior and attitudes.

Class A shares of News Corp. fell 34 cents, or 1.8 percent, to close Tuesday at $18.39 on the New York Stock Exchange. The media company is based in New York. "

Google's not-so-very-secret weapon - Technology - International Herald Tribune

Google's not-so-very-secret weapon - Technology - International Herald Tribune: "Google's not-so-very-secret weapon
By John Markoff and Saul Hansell The New York Times

Published: June 13, 2006
THE DALLES, Oregon On the banks of the windswept Columbia River, Google is working on a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the next generation of Internet computing. But it is hard to keep a secret when it is as big as two football fields, with twin cooling towers protruding four stories into the sky.

The towers, looming like an information-age nuclear plant, mark the site of what may soon be one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, helping to supply the ever-greater horsepower needed to process billions of search queries a day and a growing repertory of other Internet services.

And odd as it may seem, the barren desert land surrounding the Columbia along the Oregon-Washington border - at the intersection of low-cost electricity and readily accessible data networking - is the backdrop for a multibillion-dollar face-off among Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that will determine dominance in the online world in the years ahead.

Microsoft and Yahoo have announced they are building giant data centers upstream in Washington State, 130 miles to the north. But Google is doing something radically different here. The very need for two cooling towers, each connected to a football field-sized data center, is evidence of its extraordinary ambition.

As imposing as Google's new Oregon data center is, when it opens it will only a piece of a worldwide computing system known as the Googleplex, which is tied together by strands of fiber optic cables. A similar computing center has recently been completed in Atlanta.

'Google has constructed the biggest computer in the world, and it's a hidden asset,' said Danny Hillis, a supercomputing pioneer and the cofounder of Applied Minds, a technology consulting firm, referring to the Googleplex.

The design and e"