TurkmenPost

LONDON (AFP) - Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal and Russian businessman Roman Abramovich come first and second in a newspaper’s list of the richest people living in Britain.

Mittal is worth 13.2 billion pounds (19.5 billion euros, 25.9 billion dollars), while Abramovich, owner of Chelsea Football Club, has 10.8 billion pounds, up from 7.5 billion last year, the Sunday Times Rich List showed Wednesday.

The list shows that the combined wealth of those on the list has shot up in the last year — it is now 406 billion pounds, up over 18 percent from 343 billion pounds last year.

The benchmark for entering the top 5,000 is five and a half million pounds.

Other notable figures on the list include footballer David and Victoria Beckham, with a combined wealth of 87 million pounds, while Beatles legend Sir
Paul McCartney is worth 825 million pounds.

But list compilers warn he could fall out of the top 100 for the first time if he loses up to 200 million pounds in a divorce battle with estranged wife Heather Mills McCartney, as some pundits have predicted.

The chairman of Hooters - the US restaurant chain famous for its scantily clad waitresses - has died.

Robert Brooks, 69, made his fortune from the firm - which uses the slogan "Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined" for its style of cuisine and service.

A post-mortem examination was due to be carried out on Monday.

Hooters opened its first restaurant in 1983 and Mr Brooks, with a group of other investors, bought franchise rights a year later.

The South Carolina-born businessman later bought control of the company.

He shared his wealth, buying an American football stadium for Coastal Carolina University.

Hooters has 425 restaurants in 20 countries, including one in the UK, in Nottingham.

The company employs 25,000 people including 15,000 "Hooters Girls" and has been heavily criticised for exploiting attractive women.

But on its website the firm says such claims are "as ridiculous as saying the NFL exploits men who are big and fast".

It adds: "Hooters Girls have the same right to use their natural female sex appeal to earn a living as do super models Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell.

"To Hooters, the women’s rights movement is important because it guarantees women have the right to choose their own careers, be it a Supreme Court Justice or Hooters Girl."

In 1997 a group of Chicago men took the restaurant to court - challenging its right to only hire women for its front-of-house positions.

via BBC.

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush visit the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Friday.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - Negotiations on Russia’s admission to the World Trade Organization broke off with no agreement being reached, U.S. and Russian officials said Saturday.

The talks ended because of differences over assurances the United States was seeking over the protection of U.S. copyrights and patents and promises that Russia would accept greater amounts of U.S. farm goods.

President Bush, speaking at a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the deal could not be reached, despite intensive talks, because the administration believed Russia needed to offer more in trade concessions to satisfy the Congress.

“We’re tough negotiators and the reason why is because we want the agreement that we reach to (be) accepted by our U.S. Congress,” Bush said.

He said both sides would continue to negotiate to get a deal. The United States is the only country that has yet to sign off on Russia’s membership in the WTO.

Bush blamed “false reporting” in the press for raising hopes that a deal could be reached. “Well, it was almost reached,” the president said. “There is more work to be done.”

Russian trade negotiator Maxim Medvedkov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying the deal would not be signed “either today or in coming weeks.”

The failure to reach an agreement dashed the hopes of Putin to burnish the first Group of Eight summit on Russian soil with an economic triumph his government has been seeking for years.

Russia, the largest economy to remain outside of the 149-nation WTO, sees membership as a way to demonstrate how far the country has come since its severe economic collapse in 1998.

Hopes for an agreement had been raised when U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab traveled to Moscow earlier this week for intensive negotiations with Russian Economic and Trade Minister German Gref.

The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Medvedkov as saying that another stumbling block was an impasse over Russian tariffs on the sale of American airplanes. Russia has imposed high import tariffs for foreign planes as a way to protect its beleaguered aircraft industry.

 The Associated Press.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 13 (Reuters) — Intel said Thursday that it would lay off 1,000 managers, or about 1 percent of its work force, in an effort to streamline its business.

Intel, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., is the world’s biggest chip maker, but it is facing heightened competition from Advanced Micro Devices.

Last month, Intel said it would sell its money-losing communications chip business to the Marvell Technology Group for $600 million as it refocused on personal computer processors and related chips.

Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman, said the company was not disclosing how much it would save with the layoffs, but added that more details would be provided in its quarterly earnings report next week.

The world’s largest software maker has been briefing record companies on the proposed device that would play digital music and video files and carry wireless technology enabling users to download music without linking to a computer, according to executives who spoke on condition of anonymity because plans for the player have not been made public.

In addition, Microsoft has engaged in talks to secure licenses to sell digital content for the device, the executives said.

It was unclear if the company intended to augment its existing online music service, MSN Music, or build a new one.

Sally Julien of Edelman, one of Microsoft’s public relations firms, declined to comment Thursday.

Until now, Microsoft has stayed out of the digital music player market while licensing its Windows Media Player technology to Creative Technology Ltd., iRiver Inc., Samsung and other device manufacturers.

But those companies have struggled to compete with Apple Computer Inc.’s line of iPods, which have dominated the market partly because of their seamless integration with the iTunes Music Store.

IPods account for roughly 80 percent of the portable music player market, while iTunes has sold more than a billion tracks since it launched three years ago.

"The combination of the independent manufacturers trying to use the Microsoft technology to integrate with independent vendors such as Napster, Yahoo Music and Rhapsody … has resulted in an experience for the consumer that simply does not measure up to the experience of the iPod and iTunes," said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media.

The stakes for Microsoft extend beyond the online music market, Leigh said.

"It’s becoming increasingly evident that video is migrating to the Internet, and Apple is getting a lead there as well," Leigh said. "That is a lead that Microsoft cannot afford to let them build upon and maintain."

The Associated Press.