April 10, 2012 Edition

Overnight, 3 billion dollar deals were signed charting the past, present and future.  The first sealed was AT&T selling the Yellow Pages to Cerberus Capital Management for $950 million in cash & debt.  Soon after, Microsoft announced it would buy AOL patents for $1 billion, and near dawn Manila time, the bet of the future was announced by the CEOs of Facebook and Instagram.  Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook posting said his company would buy the 1 and half year old photo-sharing site, Instagram, for $1 billion.  Instagram has 13 employees, putting the value per employee at a whopping $77 million a head!

Read more about the Facebook-Instagram deal and whether it was worth it on Rappler.  

Read more about the Microsoft deal on the New York Times and about the Yellow Pages deal on the Wall Street Journal.  

It’s not stopping with a planned, controversial rocket launch set this month.  Intelligence reports from South Korea say its maverick neighbor is planning a nuclear test in the same area where it has carried out atomic blasts in 2006 and 2009, violating a 2005 agreement that it would abandon its nuclear ambitions.  The United States is calling the rocket launch which may happen as early as this week “a very provocative act that would be, if it were conducted, done in direct violation of North Korea’s international obligations.”  Japan announced it’s preparing its missile defense system.  

Read more about the rocket launch on Rappler and about the nuclear test on CNN.  

Tuesday is the troops pullout deadline for Syria, but it looks like a UN-brokered peace is falling apart.  On Monday, The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced that at least 105 people were killed – a sign, said analysts, that Syria had no intentions for peace.  Assad’s government also said it would only agree to peace if rebels gave written guarantees it would stop the conflict.  Also, on Monday, clashes spilled over into neighboring Turkey, increasing tensions in the region.

Read more on Rappler.  

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen for 4 straight days erasing gains from the past month.  It’s the deepest pullback in 2012.  In 2 days, the Dow fell by triple digits, a rare event.  Although the Philippine market was closed Monday, Asian stocks followed and are again expected to follow Monday’s Dow decline of 130. 55 points or 1%.  The trigger was a disappointing jobs report released Friday when the markets were closed so some say this is nothing more than a needed correction.

Read more on the Wall Street Journal and on Rappler. 

Long a fixture in the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton will not be attending perhaps for the first time since 1968.  Her spokesman pointed out this is because of a federal ban prohibiting the US Secretary of State from being involved in partisan politics.  Still, attention is on Clinton now because of the high popularity she is enjoying and repeated calls from fellow democrats for her to consider another presidential run. Clinton has stated several times she plans to retire from politics.  A Hillary Clinton political meme in the Texts from Hillary Tumblr blog has also captured media attention.

Read more about the text-meme on Rappler and about the DNC on the Global Post.  

What happens when the Vice President of the Philippines begins to put together a list of senatorial candidates for 2013 separate from his former running mate?  Most likely, it means another political alliance will split and a new opposition will emerge.

Read more on Rappler. 

Two recent studies in 2012 – the Global City Competitiveness Index (GCCI) and the Global Cities Index (GCI) rank Manila low in terms of importance to the global economic system.  What’s wrong with Manila?  Check the answers here while you compare and contrast what we have – and don’t have – with other cities around the world.

Read more on Rappler.

Good people commit evil because they accept small compromises which can become Truth.  Mika Ortega, the daughter of slain radio broadcaster, environmentalist and anti-corruption activist Gerry Ortega, compares her family’s quest for justice, their cries for help, with Shirley Jackson’s disturbing short story, “The Lottery” – when a town gathers together in a ritual and accepts its paradigms as they stone someone they know to death.

Read more on Rappler.

Sending teenagers to fight to the death is a disturbing theme, but one that’s been part of human existence since the Roman coliseums.  The American Library Association listed the Hunger Games trilogy among its list of “top 10 frequently challenged books” – ranking 3rd on the list of books that people have tried to ban in the US.  Despite that, Hunger Games (the movie) tops the box office for the 3rd straight week in a row, with $33.1 million.

Read more about the “book ban” on CBS and about the list of top 20 movies in the US & Canada on the Washington Post.  

Singer and entrepreneur Rachel Alejandro has been living in New York City the past few months.  When a YouTube video of an irate American man complaining about the Philippines went viral, she watched it and thought he had some points.  Still, she was offended and it made her list the 10 things she loves about her country.

Read more on Rappler.