Business news for Mon, 24 Dec 2007 & with word told. 5 news.

UNITED States Internet sales rose at the slowest pace on record as discounts cut revenue in the final days of the holiday shopping season. Online spending from November 1 through December 21 increased 19 percent from the same period a year earlier to $26.3 billion, Reston, Virginia-based ComScore Inc said yesterday. Sales trailed last year's 26 percent growth and the research firm's forecast for a 20 percent gain during this year's holidays, Bloomberg News said. Consumers have limited spending growth this year as gasoline and food prices rise and mortgage defaults increase. The Reuters/University of Michigan final index of consumer sentiment for December dropped to 75.5, the lowest since October 2005. "This year will be the year of the discount," Fred Crawford, managing director at AlixPartners LLP, told Bloomberg Television on December 21. AlixPartners is a consulting firm based in Southfield, Michigan. ComScore hasn't recorded growth of less than 20 percent since

SICHUAN Changhong Electric Co, China's second-biggest TV maker, has grabbed the lion's share of government-financed home appliance sales in rural areas. China promised to give farmers subsidies, about 13 percent, for buying household electrical appliances, in a bid to stimulate sluggish rural consumption and reduce the rising trade surplus, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce said over the weekend. "We are a major player in the deal and we occupy at least 50 percent shares of the TV sales (in the subsided sales in the rural areas)," Chen Ning, Changhong's vice president, told Shanghai Daily yesterday. Changhong will provide TVs, which costs less than 1,500 yuan (US$202) each, and some mobile phones for the subsidized purchase program. The pilot program will be launched in Shandong, Henan and Sichuan, the three major agricultural provinces, according to Chen. Farmers in the provinces can buy color TV sets, refrigerators and mobile phones with

Two things my immigrant grandmother told me: "You have to go to college if you want to make something of yourself," and "If you live long enough, anything can happen." Right, Grandma, on both counts. I went to college at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and I've lived long enough ...

Switzerland’s banking regulator will investigate how UBS ran up losses in the credit crisis requiring billions of dollars of writedowns, a spokesman for the body was quoted as saying on Sunday. Federal Banking Commission spokesman Alain Bichsel told Swiss weekly Sonntag that the regulator was putting pressure on the world’s biggest wealth manager to overcome the [...]

Japan’s most spectacular building projects, including possibly the world’s most expensive road, resulted from deception and falsified data, the former president of the state highways agency has told The Times .