Microsoft Corporation, or often just MS, is an American multinational computer technology corporation with 79,000 employees in 102 countries and global annual revenue of US $51.12 billion as of 2007. It develops, manufactures, licenses and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its best selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. These products have prominent positions in the desktop computer market, with market share estimates as high as 90% or more as of 2003 for Microsoft Office and 2006 for Microsoft Windows, in line with Bill Gates's vision "to get a workstation running our software onto every desk and eventually in every home".

Founded to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s. The company released an initial public offering (IPO) in the stock market, which, due to the ensuing rise of the stock price, has made four billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Throughout its history the company has been the target of criticism for various reasons, including monopolistic business practices—both the U.S. Justice Department and the European Commission, among others, brought Microsoft to court for antitrust violations and software bundling.

Microsoft has footholds in other markets besides operating systems and office suites, with assets such as the MSNBC cable television network, the MSN Internet portal, and the Microsoft Encarta multimedia encyclopedia. The company also markets both computer hardware products such as the Microsoft mouse and home entertainment products such as the Xbox, Xbox 360, Zune and MSN TV. Known for what is generally described as a developer-centric business culture, Microsoft has historically given customer support over Usenet newsgroups and the World Wide Web, and awards Microsoft MVP status to volunteers who are deemed helpful in assisting the company's customers.

Mumbai, the financial capital of India

The economy of India is a developing mixed economy with a notable public sector in strategic sectors. It is the world's fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP and the third-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP); on a per capita income basis, India ranked 136th by nominal GDP and 119th by PPP-adjusted GDP. From independence in 1947 until 1991, successive governments followed the Soviet model and promoted protectionist economic policies, with extensive Sovietization, state intervention, demand-side economics, natural resources, bureaucrat-driven enterprises and economic regulation. This was a form of the Licence Raj. The end of the Cold War and an acute balance of payments crisis in 1991 led to the adoption of a broad economic liberalisation in India and indicative planning. India has about 1,900 public sector companies, with the Indian state having complete control and ownership of railways. While the Indian government retains ownership through the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), a large share of new national highway projects are now built and maintained under Public–private partnership (PPP) models rather than being fully government‑funded. The government plays a major role in sectors like supercomputing, space and shipping but private participation is growing, especially in space, telecom, and satellite communications. (Full article...)

"However no decentralized pricing system can serve to determine optimally these levels of collective consumption. Other kinds of "voting" or "signalling" would have to be tried. But, and this is the point sensed by Wicksell but perhaps not fully appreciated by Lindahl, now it is in the selfish interest of each person to give false signals, to pretend to have less interest in a given collective consumption activity than he really has, etc. I must emphasize this: taxing according to a benefit theory of taxation can not at all solve the computational problem in the decentralized manner possible for the first category of "private" goods to which the ordinary market pricing applies and which do not have the "external effects" basic to the very notion of collective consumption goods. Of course, utopian voting and signalling schemes can be imagined. ("Scandinavian consensus," Kant's "categorical imperative," and other devices meaningful only under conditions of "symmetry," etc.) The failure of market catallactics in no way denies the following truth: given sufficient knowledge the optimal decisions can always be found by scanning over all the attainable states of the world and selecting the one which according to the postulated ethical welfare function is best. The solution "exists"; the problem is how to "find" it."

—Paul Samuelson, The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure, 1954

• ... that Joanna Ferrone served as the business manager for the fictional character Fido Dido?
• ... that the British political theorist Chris Armstrong has called for a "blue new deal" to secure ecological resilience for the ocean and a just blue economy?
• ... that Gerald Willis, after working as a bus driver at age 15, started a business that earned $2 million per year and built a replica of the Hermitage after watching The President's Lady?
• ... that political consultant Jim Rivaldo said that moving to San Francisco made him realize that "there were gay lawyers, gay businessmen—a lot of people like me"?
• ... that despite little formal education, Earnest Andersson was a successful inventor, businessman, amateur athlete, race car driver, pilot, photographer, radio operator, pro golfer, and composer?
• ... that Bill Chisholm's announced $6.1 billion purchase of the Boston Celtics is the largest amount ever paid for a North American sports team?

February 24:

• 1938 - Phil Knight, an American businessman, co-founder of Nike, Inc., was born on this day.

• ... that Well No. 4 in the Pico Canyon Oilfield was the first commercially successful oil well in the Western United States and the longest producing oil well in the world at 114 years?

• ...that, unlike the accounting systems that help in the preparation of financial reports periodically, cost accounting systems and reports are not subject to rules and standards like the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles?

• ... that during the Great Depression, violence in Seattle's Smith Cove between longshoremen, strikebreakers and police ultimately resulted in the loss of much of the city's maritime traffic to the Port of Los Angeles?

• July 21: Technological University Dublin senior lecturer Dr Lorcan Sirr speaks to Wikinews on housing market in Ireland
• July 15: California governor signs new state budget, eligible Californians to get stimulus payments
• July 4: 130 OECD countries agree to back global corporate tax rate
• June 30: 'Each makes the other more difficult to recover from': University of Sussex professor L. Alan Winters speaks to Wikinews on trade, COVID-19, Brexit
• June 16: Wikinews interviews Victor Kline, leader of newly registered The New Liberals party in Australia
• April 23: Irish Finance Minister Donohoe criticises OECD's global minimum corporate tax rate
• April 17: People protest in Berlin against German Court overturning five-year rent cap
• March 5: Chancellor Rishi Sunak announces UK budget 2021
• February 10: Disney to shut down Blue Sky Studios, animation studio behind 'Ice Age'
• January 24: World Trade Organization declares US tariff hike illegal, rules in South Korea's favour