A decision by Rahm Emanuel to run for mayor of Chicago would leave Obama searching for a top lieutenant at a moment when he is likely to face stronger Republican opposition and thornier political challenges.

Mark Hurd has something he hasn't had in many years: a boss. The ousted Hewlett-Packard chief will be reporting to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and their chemistry is crucial as the company tries to expand.

Mr. Obama has apparently decided to make Mr. Boehner?the likely speaker if the GOP retakes the House?the Republican Party boogeyman.

Hewlett-Packard and other companies are filling the bond market with fresh debt. An estimated $51 billion in corporate bonds and leveraged loans have hit the market in two days. Yield-hungry investors are buying.

Ireland's troubled banking system became the latest flash point in Europe's continuing economic crisis, as the government said it would split up the weakest of its major banks to stave off a run by depositors.

While big banks are showing signs of recovering from the financial crisis, the outlook is worsening for many of the country's smaller community banks.

Toys "R" Us is opening 600 temporary shops this Christmas, making use of mall vacancies to double its number of stores during the holidays. Last year it experimented with 90 such stores.

Goldman Sachs agreed to a fine of nearly $31 million as part of an investigation by the Financial Services Authority that began shortly after U.S. regulators accused the firm in April of fraud.

The economic recovery is advancing unevenly across the U.S., as regions reliant on such industries as manufacturing and farming show progress while those more dependent on housing continue to struggle.

Intel's Paul Otellini says the chip maker is making selective acquisitions as it looks beyond personal computers.

BP's internal investigation into the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig found that the British oil giant bears some responsibility for the disaster but laid most of the blame on its contractors.

The Dow rose 46.32 points as an easing of anxiety about Europe offset mixed signals on the domestic economy from the White House and the Fed.

Securities regulators defended their proposed $75 million settlement with Citigroup, saying it "achieves a fair balance" between the interests of current shareholders and those harmed by the bank's alleged failure to fully disclose its subprime-mortgage exposure.

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has offered $40 a share, or $1.5 billion, to acquire smaller rival Casey's General Stores.

A modest U.K. factory that churns out Burberry's iconic trenchcoats has undergone a major alteration as the luxury brand seeks a more retail-focused business model.

New GM Chief Executive Dan Akerson told employees Wednesday that the auto maker will take an "attacker's stance" against the competition now that it has the resources to do so.

Southwest Airlines Co. said traffic rose in August as a key measure of revenue again jumped by a double-digit percentage as fares remain well above year-earlier levels.

Lockheed Martin said more than 600 executives, or one-fourth of the eligible total, applied to accept financial incentives to leave the company.

J.P. Morgan Chase hired Bank of America's deputy general counsel Greg Baer to deal with a sweeping new set of financial regulatory reforms.

The Obama administration gave a thumbs down to plans by Virgin Blue and Delta Air Lines to coordinate operations on flights between Australia and the U.S.

U.S. gasoline stockpiles have defied gravity this summer, growing by an unprecedented amount at a time when inventories typically fall.

For jittery or bearish investors, the timing may be right to substitute bullish "call" options for stocks.

As CNN reboots in an attempt to revive slumping ratings, the network tapped British TV host Piers Morgan to take over for Larry King, capping months of speculation about a key program in CNN's lineup.

Netflix reached a deal to stream movies online from Nu Image/Millennium at the same time they hit pay-TV channels.

A former Smith Barney broker was sentenced to no jail time after he cooperated with federal prosecutors in a probe into an alleged scheme to misuse brokerage-firm "squawk" boxes.

Canada's Anatolia Minerals Development Ltd. and Australia's Avoca Resources Ltd. have agreed to merger in a deal that will create a gold company with a market value of some $2 billion.

Smithfield Foods returned to the black in the latest quarter from a year-earlier loss and said it will likely sell its 49% stake in Butterball.

Vodafone's $6.65 billion sale of its stake in China Mobile highlights the challenges faced by foreign carriers looking to link up with Chinese telecoms.

As food and consumer-goods companies face problems obtaining the key ingredient palm oil without damaging the environment, Unilever is betting on a promising low-life alternative: algae.

Dana Petroleum said that a hostile $2.87 billion bid by Korea National Oil Corp. significantly undervalues the company.

Global banking regulators appear poised to demand larger reserves, which they believe will prevent a future financial crisis, and reserves of higher quality, under so-called Basel 3.

GlaxoSmithKline chose Simon Dingemans, a Goldman Sachs M&A specialist, to be its next chief financial officer.

Airgas rejected the latest takeover offer from Air Products & Chemicals, saying the $5.48 billion bid continues to undervalue the company.

Martin Sullivan, the former CEO of AIG, has been hired by Willis Group to be its deputy chairman and to build a new global unit.

Roche is increasing its investments in China to accommodate the country's growing health-care needs, its chief executive said.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said the agency is looking at a practice others have called "quote stuffing" to assess whether it violates "existing rules against fraudulent or other improper behavior."

Plenty of university graduates are working in low-skilled jobs

Young people often worry whether the qualification for which they are studying will stand them in good stead in the workplace. According to the OECD, college and university leavers are better placed in the labour market than their less educated peers, but this advantage is not even in all countries. Young graduates living in Spain are particularly likely to end up taking low-skilled work, while those in Luxembourg rarely take anything other than a graduate job. American and British students appear to have the biggest incentive to study: British graduates aged 25-34 earn $57,000 on average. Their Swedish peers earn $37,400.

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Working days lost due to labour disputes

WORKERS on London's underground rail network begin a strike on Monday September 6th, while across the channel French workers are also on strike in protest at attempts by the government to change the retirement age. Both countries come fairly high on the list of countries that lose working days to labour disputes. South Africa, where Cosatu, a federation of unions with some 2m members, has been on strike since August 18th, also scores highly on this measure. But all of these places are left in they shade by the Canadians, who lost 2.2m working days to strikes last year. Greece, which is also fond of striking, does not appear on this chart as its numbers are not comparable.

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The internet has become too important for governments to ignore

GOVERNMENTS are increasingly finding ways to enforce their laws in the digital realm. The most prominent is China’s “great firewall”. But China is by no means the only country erecting borders in cyberspace. The OpenNet Initiative, an advocacy group, lists more than a dozen countries that block internet content for political, social and security reasons. They do not need especially clever technology: governments go increasingly after dominant online firms because they are easy to get hold of. In April Google published the numbers of requests it had received from official agencies to remove content or provide information about users. For more on how governments and companies are erecting borders in cyberspace see article.

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Galloping inflation in American college fees

FOR decades, college fees have risen faster than Americans’ ability to pay them. Median household income has grown by a factor of 6.5 in the past 40 years, but the cost of attending a state college has increased by a factor of 15 for in-state students and 24 for out-of-state students. The cost of attending a private college has increased by a factor of more than 13 (a year in the Ivy League will set you back $38,000, excluding bed and board). Academic inflation makes most other kinds look modest by comparison. Students may not be getting a good deal in return (see story). ...

China now has more warships than America, according to the IISS

THE International Institute for Strategic Studies (better known as the IISS), reckons China now has more warships than America, which long possessed the biggest fleet. As it can be hard to distinguish a warship from other boats, the IISS uses its own definition of what counts and what does not. This striking trend is yet another manifestation of the rise of China. But it also reflect the cost of warships and other weapons built by America (see article). Philip Pugh, author of “The Cost of Seapower”, a 1986 study of shipbuilding costs since the end of the Napoleonic wars, argues that the industrial revolution made the problem more acute: the rapid pace of technological change set off a race to build bigger, more powerful, more heavily armed and better-protected battleships. At some point, as unit prices rise, one of two things must happen: countries must either scale back their ambition, or seek game-changing technology, as they did when the battleship gave way to the submarine and aircraft-carrier.

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The best-selling political memoirs in Britain

TONY BLAIR, Britain's former prime minister, published his memoirs on Wednesday September 1st. The few people who have already read them cover to cover report that, in addition to the familiar stuff about how awful his relationship with Gordon Brown was, Mr Blair admits to being manipulative and to having a developed sense of his own destiny. The book is likely to sell well, though it seems that British book buyers are rather more interested in American politicians than in their own. Three of the four bestselling political memoirs in Britain (since barcodes made such things easier to count) are by Americans. The Brit who separates the Clintons near the top, comedian John O'Farrell, was never really a politician: he stood for election once (in Maidenhead) and then made some rather archaic puns about the experience.

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How America's opinion of the Iraq war has changed

OVER seven years after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, America's direct military involvement is now coming to an end. President Barack Obama will set out his new policy in a speech from the Oval Office on Monday August 31st. American public opinion on the war has changed enormously during that time. When George Bush prematurely declared an end to major combat operations in May 2003 most Americans were behind the war, with only a quarter saying it was a mistake according to Gallup polling data. But the public's mood turned when allegations of torture by US soldiers came to light in early 2004. The bloody terror campaign by Sunni militia groups, which began in earnest in 2006 and killed Iraqis by the thousands and American troops by the hundreds, also had a profound effect on opinion.

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China's traffic jam was inevitable

CHINA tends to do everything a bit bigger than the rest of the world, including traffic jams. One snarl up this month along a highway leading into Beijing was at one point over 100km long and left traffic gridlocked for eleven days until it mysteriously vanished on Thursday August 26th. Roadworks and booming demand for coal and other goods sent thousands of lorries heading for China's capital. Beijing is set to spend 80 billion yuan ($11.8 billion) on transport infrastructure in 2010—but it may not be enough. In recent years rising vehicle ownership has outpaced the growth of China's express highway system by a distance. China's new motoring class may have to get used to spending many more hours behind the wheel than they might otherwise intend.

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Who has most freedom to travel?

THE ability to visit a foreign country without the cost and hassle of obtaining a visa is a welcome bonus for any traveller. It is also a barometer of a country's international alliances and relations. A report released on August 25th by Henley & Partners, a consultancy, shows that Britons have the fewest visa restrictions of the 190-odd countries (and territories) for which data are available. British citizens can enjoy a three-day stay for business or pleasure to 166 destinations without needing a visa. Generally, citizens of rich countries and trade-based economies have more freedom to travel than those of countries suffering from war or repression. Compare, for instance, the restrictions on South Korea with North Korea and Hong Kong with those on China.

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Where has all the plastic gone?

THE amount of plastic thrown away by Americans increased fourfold between 1980 and 2008. It is a reasonable assumption that as more plastic is produced and discarded, this will affect oceanic pollution. But a study of the north Atlantic and the Caribbean, just published in Science, suggests things are not getting worse. Between 1986 and 2008 there was no increase in the concentration of plastic in the areas looked at despite a steady rise in the amount discarded. Kara Law and her colleagues at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts have no explanation for this lack of accumulation. A programme by the American plastics industry that resulted in a decrease in the number of pellets in the water is still insufficient to explain the data. Nor does the missing plastic seem to have sunk; trawls at depth show no sign of it. The Sargasso Sea of legend, and its modern equivalent, the Bermuda Triangle, are supposed to be places where things disappear without trace. Dr Law seems to have come up with a real example.

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Bankruptcies rise in America

BANKRUPTCY filings rose 20% in the year to June 30th compared with the previous 12-month period, according to statistics released on August 17th by the Administrative Office of the US Courts. This takes quarterly filings to their highest point since tougher bankruptcy laws were introduced at the end of 2005. That change brought a spike of bankruptcies, as companies and individuals rushed to declare themselves broke under the more lenient old regime. The data suggest that an older trend is reasserting itself. This is could be more bad news for America—or it could just mean that creative destruction is alive and well.

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Asia overtakes Europe, in beer terms

CHINA;S remarkable growth is as apparent in beer consumption as it is in more formal economic indicators. In the space of a couple of decades the country has gone from barely touching a drop to become the world;s biggest beer market, a considerable distance ahead of America. And beer drinking in China is growing fast, by nearly 10% a year according to Credit Suisse;s World Map of Beer. This might seem like good news for the four big firms that dominate global brewing. Between them ABI, SABMiller, Carlsberg and Heineken have nearly half the world market. But unlike America and other hugely profitable mature markets where beer drinking has levelled off or is in decline, China;s drinkers provide slender profits. Still it remains a market with huge potential, though foreign brewers must now be rather tired of hearing that.

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China's economy overtakes Japan's in real terms

CHINA has become the world's second biggest economy according to data released on Monday August 16th. Japan's economy fell behind China's at market exchange rates in the second quarter (it has been number three in PPP terms for some time). These numbers are not strictly comparable: Japan's data have been seasonally adjusted while those for China have not. Quibbles aside, Japan will surely be eclipsed soon, if it has not been already. Data compiled by Angus Maddison, an economist who died earlier this year, suggest that China and India were the biggest economies in the world for almost all of the past 2000 years. Why they fell so far behind may be more of a mystery than why they are currently flourishing.

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The jobless recovery, long prophesied, is here

FEARS that the recovery of America's economy after the financial crisis would fail to spur an increase in employment are being realised. In July, 52,000 fewer people were employed on non-farm payrolls than in July 2009, the month in which it is estimated the American economy climbed out of recession. Comparing the latest recession with previous ones is unflattering. The American economy has seen downturns this severe and recoveries this jobless, but never one on top of the other.

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Shadow economies have grown since the financial crisis began

A NEW estimate of the size of shadow economies around the world sheds light on a worrying trend. Friedrich Schneider, of Linz University in Austria, reckons that, for the first time in a decade, transactions taking place outside the taxable and observable realm of the official economy captured by GDP numbers are increasing. Shadow economy does not mean ill-gotten gains here, but legal economic activity that is not taxed. Mr Schneider attributes this reversal to the financial crisis, which seems to be pushing more people in OECD and EU countries to avoid the extra burden of taxation by resorting to informal transactions. The shadow economy, in other words, can act as a cushion when times are tough.

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The world's biggest broadband providers

THE ten largest broadband service providers in the world gained over 23m subscribers in the year to the end of March. Together they have 191m subscribers, or almost 40% of the world’s 492m broadband customers, according to TeleGeography, a research firm. The lion's share is taken by China Telecom and China Unicom, which together account for a fifth of all global broadband subcribers. Both companies gained around 9m more subscribers over the past year, equivalent to the entire broadband subscriber base of Verizon.

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In which European countries are people least likely to attend religious services?

THE proportion of people who regularly attend religious services has declined steadily throughout Europe in recent years. But habits vary widely across countries. According to the latest European Social Survey conducted in 2008 and 2009, over 60% of Czechs say they never attend religious services, with the exception of “special occasions” such as marriages and christenings. France, Britain and Belgium are also secular nations, with over half of respondents never going to services. The most regular attenders among the 28 countries polled are in Cyprus and Greece, where only 2.4% and 4.9% respectively say they do not go to church.

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How long can corporate America’s profit rebound continue?

THE quarterly results season that is drawing to a close has revealed that corporate profits are back within a whisker of the all-time highs achieved before the downturn in late 2008. American profits are already back to 11% of GDP. Corporate America is reaping the rewards from cutting costs, especially in capital investment and labour, through an unpleasant mix of redundancies, reduced hours and lower pay. The great squeeze cannot go on forever, of course, but it shows no sign of slackening. Figures released on Friday August 6th show the unemployment rate remained steady at 9.5% in July, but non-farm payroll employment fell by 131,000, some 65,000 more than expected. The great decoupling of profits from jobs could last for a long time.

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Who produces most diamonds?

AMID much media interest, Naomi Campbell, a model, gave evidence on Thursday August 5th at the special court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. Charles Taylor, the former dictator of Liberia, who is on trial for war crimes in neighbouring Sierra Leone, is accused of giving Ms Campbell a “blood diamond” in 1997. Ms Campbell admitted receiving a gift of “dirty looking stones”. Since 2000, the governments of over 75 countries have signed up to the Kimberley Process, which certifies that diamonds produced for foreign markets have not helped to fund violence. The Process has its critics, who point out that diamonds from the huge Marange mine in Zimbabwe have just been cleared for sale, despite much evidence of government-sponsored violence there.

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