Business news for Mon, 17 Dec 2007 & with word people. 32 news.

Winnipeg's Fort Garry Brewing has launched production of a new, gluten-free beer called Nubru, brewed without barley for people with celiac disease.

Across the globe, thousands of people found themselves suddenly cut off from Twitter when the microblogging site shut down for a scheduled maintenance Sunday night.

Research In Motion Ltd. has picked the telecommunications hub of suburban Dallas as the site of its U.S. headquarters, with a plan to employ more than 1,000 people in the city of Irving within the next several years.

PRODUCTION of China's first home-made regional jet is expected to be completed this week, Xinhua news agency said yesterday, citing the Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense. The ARJ21-700 commercial passenger jet, which seats 78 to 90 people, will make its first flight in March and be delivered to the first customers in 2009. The plane was designed and made by the China Aviation Industry Corp.

MERRILL Lynch & Co, the securities firm that reported a record US$2.24-billion third-quarter loss, told fixed-income managers to cut 2007 bonuses by an average of 40 percent, according to two people briefed on the matter. Payments may fall by as much as 80 percent for traders who specialize in the mortgage bonds and collateralized debt obligations that posted the steepest losses, said the people, who declined to be named because the decisions aren't public. Bonuses may drop 20 percent for interest-rate traders and 60 percent in the New York-based firm's corporate bond unit, the sources said, according to Bloomberg News. Chief Executive Officer John Thain, who took over from Stan O'Neal on December 1, said he will reward good performers while cutting payouts for people who caused losses. He has to placate investors by trimming wages while making sure the most valuable employees don't leave, said Russ Gerson, head of New York-based recruiting firm Gerson Group. On Wall Street,

BRITISH insurance company Norwich Union was fined 1.26 million pounds (US$2.54 million) yesterday for a data-protection failure that allowed criminals to cash dozens of policies held by customers. Fraudsters gained access to the company's databases and cashed 74 policies worth 3.3 million pounds, the Financial Services Authority said. "Norwich Union Life let down its customers by not taking reasonable steps to keep their personal and financial information safe and secure," said Margaret Cole, the enforcement director of the Financial Services Authority. Norwich Union, a unit of Aviva PLC, said all of the canceled policies had been fully reinstated, and 11 people had been arrested on suspicion of carrying out the fraud. Anti-fraud measures have been updated following an independent review of the company's operations, it said. "Whilst the number of customers affected is very small, any breach in customer confidentiality is clearly unacceptable," said Mark

Dramatic rises in international food prices are threatening millions of people in poor countries, the UN warns.

Officials from Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns and other major banks are in talks to bail out a struggling bond insurance company that has guaranteed $26 billion in mortgage securities, according to two people briefed on the situation, because the insurer's woes could force the banks to take on billions in losses they had insured against.

More than a fifth of people who have come off fixed-rate mortgages have found it hard to meet their repayments.

Less than half of people who watch a recorded program fast-forward through the ads during playback, says a new study by Santa Monica, Calif.-based media buying company, Palisades MediaGroup.

Facebook's popularity in the United States has made it a hot subject for many types of research; now, scholars in the social sciences are using it as a tool for understanding how people are connected.

Bob Dhillon, who is well on his way, to becoming the first Sikh billionaire in North America, shares the secrets of his success.

The government appeared finally to have settled a four-year dispute involving more than 120,000 people who lost their pensions when their employers went bust ahead of the creation of the Pension Protection Fund

Would you vote for a female, black Mormon? THE 2008 presidential race is being fought by a wide variety of candidates. Mitt Romney, a Mormon, vies for the Republican presidential nomination against thrice-married Rudy Giuliani, among others. Democratic voters might choose Barack Obama, a black man, or the first woman candidate, Hillary Clinton. But is the public ready? A recent Gallup poll suggests people would more readily vote for a well-qualified nominee who also happened to be black than a well-qualified Mormon one. And it may be some time before an atheist homosexual announces his candidacy. ...

[Telecom] Mark Fewell, senior director of business development at Boosted, says the space is intended to provide a venue "for the artists whom we work with to display their work in a good, cool location. Second, it is a venue to display new products we are coming out with under the Boosted label. Primarily, it's about getting people to see what we are doing. It's our way of extending, in a credible and authentic way, into areas outside wireless."

The life insurer Norwich Union was hit with a £1.26 million fine today after a failure to protect customers' confidential details exposed almost seven million people to fraud.

Provident Financial, which lends money door-to-door in the UK to people with a poor credit history, is gaining customers from the high street banks as they impose stricter lending criteria in the wake of the credit crunch.

Turkish warplanes targeting Kurdish rebels bombed villages deep in northern Iraq, killing one woman and forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes, local officials said

People taking out home mortgages may gain new protections soon against shady lending practices as the Federal Reserve seeks to back even the riskiest borrowers, already hit hardest by the housing and credit crunches.

About half of the online adult population has looked up themselves or someone else online, according to a survey released Sunday. A good 36 percent said they have searched the Web for someone with whom they've lost touch, and 9 percent have dug up information...