July 29, 2009

Internet search deal:

Microsoft and Yahoo! are teaming up for a deal in an attempt to grab Internet search market share from Google.

A release Wednesday from the companies said Yahoo! will sell ads while Microsoft shares its Bing search technology to help searches via Yahoo! The agreement is expected to be worth billions of dollars.

It also could cut into the stranglehold that Google has on the search market. An estimated 65 percent of Internet searches go through Google. Yahoo is second at slightly less than 20 percent and Microsoft is at less than 10 percent, industry data indicate.

Google and Yahoo! had tried to cut an advertising deal in 2008 but it ended after federal regulatory concerns were raised.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer, in the release, said the agreement will provide Microsoft's search engine, Bing, the scale necessary to more effectively compete, attracting more users and advertisers, which in turn will lead to more relevant ads and search results.

China-U.S. talks:

The Strategic and Economic Dialogue between Chinese and U.S. officials ended with the usual diplomatic small steps for a first such meeting.

There weren't any big agreements from the two days of meetings but issues including nuclear proliferation, the U.S. debt, trade imbalance between the countries and climate change were touched upon.

The latter was indicative as the officials signed a document promising to cooperative on climate change but the memorandum didn't include specifics, The Washington Post noted.

China said it would try to address the large trade advantage it enjoys over the United States while the U.S. officials said they would take steps that would protect China's vast investment in U.S. securities.

Housing prices tick up:

For the first time in three years housing prices in the United States showed an increase, analysts' figures indicate.

The Standard and Poor's/Case-Shiller home-price index was up 0.5 percent in May and the year-over-year decline of 17.1 percent from May 2008 figures was the smallest such fall in nine months.

"The pace of descent in home price values appears to be slowing," said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's. "There is a clear inflection point in the year-over-year data, due to four consecutive months of improved rates of return, after the steep decline that began in the fall of 2005. … This could be an indication that home price declines are finally stabilizing."

However, he also said, "(W)e should remember that on a year-over-year basis home prices are still down about 17 percent on average across all metro areas, so we likely do have a way to go before we see sustained home price appreciation."

Further dampening turn-around enthusiasm, The Conference Board on Tuesday said its measure of consumer confidence dropped to 46.6, marking a second consecutive month of declines after it hit a low of 25.3 in February.

Tanning bed cancer risk:

Tanning beds have been deemed a cancer risk and have been linked to a deadly form of skin cancer.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a World Health Organization panel, issued a report that called tanning beds "carcinogenic to humans." The agency said a person younger than 30 using the devices had a 75 percent greater risk for developing melanoma.

The report puts the use of tanning beds on the same level of threat as smoking or exposure to asbestos.

The IARC's report is set for publication in The Lancet Oncology.

Swine flu:

Five pages at the U.S. Capitol reportedly flu-like symptoms and the young people may be infected with the H1N1 virus.

The pages, who work the Senate side of the building, have been quarantined. It hasn't been confirmed as to what strain of flu the pages have but the cases serve as a reminder that swine flu is still around and officials expect it to flourish once flu season hits the Northern Hemisphere in a few months.

The World Health Organization ended its daily updates and has changed its country-by-country report to one divided by large regions instead. The latest figures show 134,503 confirmed cases of swine flu with 816 deaths linked to the disease. Officials say the actual number of cases is likely much higher since many slight illnesses and those in areas without good access to medical care go unreported.