Computer firm Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison has bought next year’s ATP-WTA Indian Wells Masters event as well as the sprawling stadium where it is played, it was announced on Tuesday.
Ellison bought the event and its grounds at Rancho Mirage, 160 kilometres east of Los Angeles, from owners and founders Charlie Pasarell and Raymond Moore, former players and principals of PM Sports Management.
The tournament first came to Indian Wells in 1976, with Pasarell becoming tournament director in 1981.
PM Sports Management will continue to manage the event and the Indian Wells Tennis Garden for the new boss.
The Group of the 16 Countries (G16) Wednesday called on all parties concerned to reinforce efforts to end the Honduran political crisis.
“We request all the parties involved, and mainly President Manuel Zelaya, Mr. Roberto Micheletti, President-elect Porfirio Lobo and President of the Congress Jose Saavedra, to redouble efforts to solve the political crisis,” the G16 group said in a statement.
G16, founded in 1998, comprises 10 developed countries: Germany, Canada, Spain, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands; and six multilateral organizations: the Central American Bank of Economic Integration, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the European Commission, the United Nations Development Program and the International Monetary Fund.
Wednesday’s statement urged Honduras to “start a national reconciliation process based on the law, including the enforcement of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Agreement and other actions to contribute to the normalization of the ties and the formalization of the dialogue process with the future authorities.”
An eight-hour hostage standoff at a post office in Virginia, U.S. ended late Wednesday, with an armed, disabled man taken into custody, said media reports.
The man, in a wheelchair, entered the post office in Wytheville at about 2:30 p.m. local time (1930 GMT) and fired a shot, Wytheville Mayor Trent Crewe told reporters earlier.
Officials initially said the man had taken five people hostage, including three postal workers and two customers. But two postal workers managed to escape as the case unfolded.
No one was injured, and the disabled man’s motive was still unclear, said the local police.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service earlier said the man made no demands other than to ask for a pizza.
Virginia state police confirmed that there were shots fired in the incident. A SWAT team and a bomb technician were sent to the scene.
Wytheville is a small rural town in southeastern Virginia at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains with a population of just over 8,000.
China’s foreign trade is expected to decline 16 percent in 2009 from a year ago, to about 2.2 trillion U.S. dollars, the Minister of Commerce said on Thursday.
The annual retail sales is likely to rise more than 15 percent to 12.5 trillion yuan (1.84 trillion U.S. dollars), minister Chen Deming told a national meeting on commerce.
While China’s exports suffered serious impact from the financial crisis, a Beijing-based private enterprise has completed the acquisition of the largest overseas commercial property development project so far. On December 23, Wu Li, president of the Beijing Toward Group announced the group had acquired a very large commercial shopping center in the United States.
According to Wu, the shopping mall his company acquired is located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, covering an area of 188,000 square meters, equivalent to the size of 26 football pitches. It has also become the largest acquisition of overseas commercial property development project by Chinese enterprises so far.
Beijing Toward Group intends to build this shopping mall as a “trading center for Chinese goods in North American, and to show China’s modern cultural level and the quality of Made in China”. Chairman of Beijing Toward Group Cai Dongmei said, “Our aim is to introduce ‘Made in China’ products to the U.S. market, so Chinese enterprises can really enter the United States, and to build Chinese brands in the United States, using global resources and markets to optimize the allocation and improve Chinese enterprises’ core competitiveness.”
French rock star Johnny Hallyday has been released from a Los Angeles hospital after emergency surgery.
Hallyday, 66, was treated at Cedars Sinai hospital for an infection allegedly received during an operation for a slipped disc in Paris.
Doctors at one stage put him in a coma in order to conduct two operations. He will now continue treatment at home.
Hallyday, who has been active since the 1960s, has a passionate following in the French-speaking world.
He is expected to spend Christmas with wife Laeticia and his two daughters in Los Angeles.
Hallyday has had a series of health problems since treatment for cancer of the colon this year, and was operated on in Paris for a back injury suffered during his latest farewell tour.
Controversy flared up over the operation, performed by surgeon Stephane Delajoux.
Disgraced Wall Street financier Bernie Madoff has been moved to the medical centre within the prison where he is serving 150 years for fraud.
He was transferred on 18 December, a spokeswoman for the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in the US state of North Carolina confirmed.
However, she declined to provide further details.
Madoff, 71, is serving the prison term after pleading guilty to a $65bn (£41bn) fraud.
He admitted defrauding thousands of investors through a Ponzi scheme, which pays out using investors’ money, rather than from any actual profits.
He said the scheme had been running since the early 1990s.
It unravelled when Madoff’s investors, hit by the economic downturn, tried to withdraw about $7bn, but he could not produce the money.
The list of his victims included film director Steven Spielberg’s charitable foundation.
Five people have been taken hostage at a post office in a small town in the US state of Virginia, by a man claiming to be carrying explosives, say reports.
Local media reports say the man had a wheelchair and that grenades were found in his vehicle, parked outside the post office in Wytheville.
The man fired shots from the post office but no-one was reported to have been injured.
Police are speaking to the man and have told local people to leave the area.
Sgt Michael Conroy of the Virginia State Police said the man, who has not been named, entered the post office at about 1430 local time (1930 GMT).
“We do have a hostage situation,” he said, adding that police and post office officials were on the scene.
“We have all available resources here and we’re trying to negotiate
A second Irish bishop is resigning after a damning report which found that Catholic leaders concealed child abuse.
The Bishop of Kildare, Dr James Moriarty, announced he had offered his resignation to the Pope on Wednesday.
Despite previously insisting he should not resign, Bishop Moriarty said he accepted that he should have challenged Church handling of abuse by priests.
“I know that any action now on my part does not take away the suffering that people have endured,” he said.
“I again apologise to all the survivors and their families.
“I have today offered my resi
A two-year-old Brazilian boy has undergone a second operation to remove sewing needles pushed into his body by his stepfather.
In a three-hour operation, surgeons took out 14 needles piercing the boy’s liver, bladder and intestines.
Four needles which had come perilously close to his heart and lungs were removed last week. One further operation is still needed.
Stepfather Roberto Carlos Magalhaes said he had wanted to kill the boy.
He said he got the boy drunk on wine before inserting the needles, up to three times in a month, as a way of taking revenge on his wife.
The latest operation comes after Mr Magalhaes, 30, and his lover Angelina Ribeiro dos Santos were formally charged with attempted murder.
