Business

Current yellow jersey, Michael Rasmussen has been withdrawn from the 2007 Tour de France by his team Rabobank for lying to the team about his whereabouts in June, saying he was in Mexico while he was, in fact, in Italy. An Italian Tour de France commentator mentioned he had met Rasmussen in June on a training camp in Italy. It has been reported that the hotel, where Rabobank's team was staying, was raided and searched late Wednesday by the police. There is no word on whether the search turned up anything. Rasmussen had come under heavy fire f

Fire ravaged several businesses in Montreal, Canada on Monday evening, despite the efforts of over 150 firefighters to extinguish the flames. The alert reached the so-called "five-alarm" stage, drawing in many firefighters, and it took over twelve hours to extinguish the fire. The fire is suspected to have broken out around 7:00 p.m. EDT (UTC-4) at "Fruits & Passion," a personal care and ambiance products shop, on Saint-Denis street south of Rachel street. Later it spread to the Continental bistro and the L'Barouf bar. The Continental's roof h

A security hole on the Fox News web server Sunday exposed sensitive content to the public, including login information that allowed hackers to access names, phone numbers, and email addresses of at least 1.5 million people. Wikinews has learned that an FTP server belonging to publishing company Ziff-Davis could be accessed with a username and password found on the Fox News site, with customer details among the internal data publicly available. The FTP site, used for collaboration between different global aspects of Ziff-Davis business, conta

Firefox share by continent %1. Oceania 28.9%2. Europe 27.8%3. North America 18.7%4. South America 15.5%5. Africa 14.7%6. Asia 14.3%source:XiTiMonitor The French web survey provider XiTiMonitor reports that in their study conducted from Monday, July 2 to Sunday, July 8, 2007 on 95,827 websites, web browser Mozilla Firefox reached a 27.8% share in Europe, compared to 21.1% during the same period last year. Firefox has its biggest market share in Slovenia and Finland where it amounts to 47.9% and 45.4%, respectively, while only 14.6% of p

The New Zealand dollar (NZD) value rose and, for a short amount of time, was worth US$0.7932, the highest level in New Zealand since the dollar was floated in 1985 — 22 years ago. The value then dropped a little and as of 11.40 a.m. was trading at US$0.7925. This was due to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand announcing that it will intervene next week at their Official Cash Rate review if the dollar continued to rise. Economists are predicting that the NZD will now go above US$0.80. The cause of this rise was mainly due to the release of the Ju

Driving nearly 30 miles (48 km) to visit a convenience store was not out of the question for fans of The Simpsons. Thousands of such fans converged on a 7-Eleven store in Los Angeles to witness that store's transformation for the month of July into a Kwik-E-Mart, a fictional convenience store from the popular animated television show. As part of a marketing campaign for an upcoming feature film based on the long-running TV series, twelve of more than 6,000 U.S. and Canadian 7-Eleven stores were effectively converted into the fictional store: t

Erica Powell OBE, who was the Private Secretary to Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana and later to Siaka Stevens, President of Sierra Leone, died last month at the age of 86. She died at Peterborough on June 5, 2007. She was made an MBE in 1958 and OBE in 1960. Erica was born on March 15, 1921 at Brighton in Sussex England into a middle class family. She trained as a secretary and then as a teacher. She worked with Barclays Bank during World War II. She was the top candidate in the 1940 London Chamber of Commerce Shorthand and Typewriting exams

An oversized delight has been erected in the small town of Springfield, Canterbury, New Zealand, as part of the 20th Century Fox massive worldwide marketing campaign for The Simpsons Movie. The giant, pink frosted doughnut was made locally, and the locals are celebrating the fact that their town shares a name with the fictional town of Springfield in the hit Fox cartoon series. The series screens on both TV3 and Sky 1 locally, with the movie set for release nationwide on July 26, 2007. However, the movie will not be screened locally, with res

Authorities have closed at least 14 Tesco supermarkets located in Lancashire, Suffolk, Dyfed Powys, Fife, Leicestershire, Humberside, West Mercia, West Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Strathclyde and London in the United Kingdom after receiving a security alert. Witnesses say that authorities received a bomb threat and that the stores' car parks have been blocked off by police. "Police came and told us it had received a bomb threat. They suggested we may want to close, but our manager has kept us open," said an unnamed worker at a shop near a T

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed today at a new record high of 13,861.73 as United States stock markets rose sharply. This is the first time the Dow got above 13,700. Today's 2.1% rally is the index' largest single-day percentage gain in nearly four years. Analysts cite earnings reports that exceeded forecasts as a catalyst for the buying spree. Most notably, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest private employer and retailer, which reported that same-store sales increased by 2.4%. "Consumer are still spending so that was something

Mr. Giorgio Napolitano, the President of Italy has completed a three day visit to Ghana. During his visit, he met President John Kufuor at the Osu Castle. They highlighted the bonds between Ghana and Italy and past cooperation such as the building of the Akosombo Hydroelectric Dam and AGIP's involvement in Ghana's petroleum business. Napolitano also visited the Parliament of Ghana, where he paid a courtesy call on the Speaker, Ebenezer Sekyi-Hughes. Napolitano said the European Union had a role to play in the integration of Africa. Sekyi-Hugh

The President of the Swiss Confederation, Mrs. Micheline Calmy-Rey, has begun a 2-day visit to Ghana. The trip is part of an African tour which includes Senegal, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Burundi. She has already been in Benin. She held talks with John Kufuor her host. Mrs. Calmy-Rey praised Ghana's successful democracy and said Ghana has a special role to play in Africa and is partners with Switzerland in that role. She is also keen to see more Swiss investment in Ghana. They also discussed issues such as trade, t