Business news for Mon, 17 Dec 2007 & with word channel. 4 news.

BAIDU.COM has teamed up with Huawei Technologies and Intel to strengthen its servers and search technologies to expand its lead in the domestic market over rivals including Google, Nasdaq-listed Baidu said yesterday. Baidu announced it will build a joint lab with Huawei to explore "next-generation" online search and test 3G-related mobile phone services, just one month after Google launched mobile search services in China. "Baidu has to break the bottleneck of the server capacity as the demand for search surges in China," William Chang, Baidu's chief scientist, said. "Baidu has to triple its existing capacity to reach the global level of services." In the third quarter, China overtook the United States to become the world's largest search traffic, with 10 billion hits per month, Baidu said. Baidu has launched a series of new services, such as an Olympics channel, game channel, Baidu TV and online music streaming (partnered with Rock Music Group).

Rates charged for piloting ships through the Houston Ship Channel will go up 6 percent on Jan. 1, with increases of 7 and 8 percent to follow in 2009 and 2010. The Houston Pilots requested the increase, which received unanimous approval by the Port of Houston Authority Commission Tuesday.

TV host Regis Philbin is saluting caring Americans in 2008--with Hallmark Channel's help. Developed in partnership with Omnicom's Full Circle Entertainment, the net will launch "Hallmark Heroes with Regis Philbin." The show targets ordinary Americans who make extraordinary contributions to their communities.

Community officials throughout Metro Detroit are up in arms over a state law that will allow the cable conglomerate to change the public access channel lineup.