Archive for the ‘New York Times’ Category
- In: $500 Million | - | A | for | Grand Theft Auto | New York Times | Week
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Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest iteration of the hit video game franchise, racked up first-week sales of $500 million, Take-Two Interactive, the game’s publisher, plans to announce on Wednesday. The report exceeded the sales expectations of analysts.
The company is expected to report it sold six million copies of the graphically violent game, 3.6 million of them on the first day.
The sales exceed projections of industry analysts who were estimating that some five million consumers would purchase the game in the first two weeks.
The significance of the sales extends beyond buoying Take-Two, a company that has had its share of legal, financial and management struggles in the last few years. The company is the subject of a $2 billion hostile takeover effort by Electronic Arts, which is offering Take Two shareholders $25.74 a share for control of the company. If Take-Two can exceed sales expectations on Grand Theft Auto IV, it has the potential to drive up the share price and force Electronic Arts to raise its offer.
On Tuesday, Take Two’s shares closed at $26.35, up 29 cents.
Electronic Arts’ takeover bid turned hostile after Take-Two management said that it would not negotiate an acquisition agreement with Electronic Arts — or any suitor — until after the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. Now that the game is out, Take-Two may well have entered discussions with Electronic Arts and possibly other suitors who covet the Grand Theft Auto franchise, but Take-Two has declined to comment on whether such discussions are taking place.
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Taber Lightfoot sought reimbursement for cellphone spam.
Cellphones have become consumers’ most personal technological devices. Some industry executives, along with consumer groups and security experts, are concerned that unwanted text messages on phones will be an even greater headache than unwanted computer messages.
Cellphone spam is particularly annoying to its recipients because it is more invasive — announcing itself with a beep — and can be costly.
Taber Lightfoot, an assistant director for new media at the Yale School of Management, is among those who have paid for the privilege of receiving cellphone spam.
“I was at work and I got so annoyed,” she said of the first burst of three messages she received. She got another burst two days later.
“That is when I called Verizon and demanded they reimburse me $1.60 for eight text messages,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was my money.”
American consumers are expected to receive an estimated 1.5 billion unsolicited text messages in 2008, according to Ferris Research, based in San Francisco, which tracks mobile messaging trends. That is nearly double what they received in 2006.
Of course that is a small percentage of the overall number of messages: an industry survey showed that consumers in the United States sent and received about 48 billion text messages in December alone. But for many people who are charged as much as 20 cents for an incoming message or are interrupted in the middle of dinner, even one is too many.
“The reason this really burns people up is because they have to pay for messages they don’t want, and they shouldn’t have to,” said Chris Murray, senior counsel for Consumers Union, a nonprofit group.
The economic slowdown has swelled the ranks of people without health insurance. But now it is also threatening millions of people who have insurance but find that the coverage is too limited or that they cannot afford their own share of medical costs.
Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be — often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.
With medical costs soaring, the coverage many people have may not adequately protect them from the financial shock of an emergency room visit or a major surgery. For some, even routine doctor visits might now take a back seat to basic expenses like food and gasoline.
“It just keeps eating into people’s income,” said James Corbin, a former union official who works for the local utility in Tucson.
Mr. Corbin said that under their employer’s health plan, he and his co-workers are now obliged to pay up to $4,000 of their families’ annual medical bills, on top of about $1,600 a year in premiums. Five years ago, they paid no premiums and were responsible for only about $2,000 of their families’ medical bills.
“That’s a big jump,” Mr. Corbin said. “You’ve just lost a month’s pay.”
Already, many doctors say, the soft economy is making some insured people hesitant to get care they need, reluctant to spend a $50 co-payment for an office visit. Parents “are waiting longer to bring in their children,” said Dr. Richard Lander, a pediatrician in Livingston, N.J. “They say, ‘The kid isn’t that sick; her temperature is only 102.’ ”
The problem of affording health care is most acute for people with no insurance, a group expected to soon exceed 48 million, but those with insurance say they too are feeling the pain.
Since the recession of 2001, the employee’s average cost of an annual health care premium for family coverage has nearly doubled — to $3,300, up from $1,800 — while incomes have come nowhere close to keeping up. Factor in other out-of-pocket medical costs, and the portion of the average American household’s income that goes toward health care has risen about 12 percent, according to the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte, and is now approaching one-fifth of the average household’s spending.
In a recent survey by Deloitte’s health research center, only 7 percent of people said they felt financially prepared for their future health care needs.
Shirley Giarde of Walla Walla, Wash., was not prepared when her husband, Raymond, suddenly developed congestive heart failure last year and needed a pacemaker and defibrillator. Because his job did not provide health benefits, she has covered them both through a policy for the self-employed, which she obtained as the proprietor of a bridal and formal-wear store, the Purple Parasol.
But when Raymond had his medical problems, Ms. Giarde discovered that her insurance would cover only $22,000, leaving them with about $100,000 in unpaid hospital bills.
DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN? Ellen Page of “Juno” holds a picture of Myanmar’s dictator, Senior Gen. Than Shwe.
“HITLER is alive in Burma” reads the words scrawled on a cardboard sign, held aloft by a sweet-faced Ellen Page, the “Juno” star, in a 90-second human-rights public awareness message that began showing on video-sharing Web sites last week.
The spot is one of 30 produced for U.S. Campaign for Burma, starring celebrities like Will Ferrell and Jennifer Aniston. They will be distributed on Fanista.com, a social-networking and entertainment retail site, then passed along to sites like YouTube and Google Video every day for the next month. The goal of the campaign is to thrust the cause of human rights in Burma — now known as Myanmar — into the orbit of A-list activist causes, along with Tibet and Darfur, and to encourage international pressure on a government that activists say is one of the world’s most oppressive.
Attention will not be easy to gain, never mind actually pressuring the government. As with other global campaigns, activists must figure out how to make Americans care about a distant crisis with complex causes involving relatively unknown players. And they must also make themselves heard in the glut of worthy causes, all with a chorus of earnest celebrities crying “Urgent!”
To do so, the Burma campaign has decided to use some of the same brand-building strategies — simplified narratives, clear-cut imagery and, of course, the most carefully selected celebrities — used by other successful aid agencies, or even consumer-goods marketers.
“In a certain sense, you have to ‘brand’ it up,” said Jack Healey, the founder of the Human Rights Action Center, a partner in the Campaign for Burma. “It’s the nature of the business now.”
And no wonder. The public today is bombarded by pleas to take action on global warming, Tibet, Darfur, breast cancer, starving children, Africans with AIDS, or Katrina victims, said Daniel H. Adler, the founder of Fanista.com. The company financed much of the series of spots, called “Burma: It Can’t Wait.”
Anyone who watched the Kentucky Derby on Saturday had to feel saddened and amazed — saddened, of course, by the death of the filly Eight Belles and amazed by the power of the winner, Big Brown. As a longtime very ambivalent fan of horse racing and a lover of thoroughbreds, I can’t help seeing what happened as a kind of paradigm of Thoroughbredness, if you want to call it that.
I have a friend who trains a jumper who is a relative of Eight Belles, a son of her grandsire, Unbridled. When my friend got the horse, a woman he knows, a steward at Santa Anita, told him to watch out, because Unbridleds tend to be unsound and fearless, and my friend has found this to be the case. Where most horses have at least some caution, my friend’s horse will try anything. His mental toughness and competitiveness always take over, no matter what the circumstances.
This is what we saw in Eight Belles: she was more resolute and competitive than was good for her, and she literally ran herself to death. When the race was finished, every part of her was exhausted, including, I am sure, the support apparatus of ligaments and tendons that were keeping her bones together. She probably stumbled and broke one ankle, then stepped hard on the other and broke that one. Then she fell.
But Big Brown was the other half of the equation. Big Brown looks to be a truly exceptional horse — exceptionally strong and exceptionally competitive, possibly the Secretariat of our day. When Eight Belles decided she wasn’t going to give up, she risked herself more than she would have with a lesser horse — and in general, male horses are stronger than female horses, which is why so few fillies run in the Derby.
Some people think there should be no horse racing. Certainly, horse racing as a spectator sport is staggering under the weight of these recent horrors — Barbaro, and now this. But as I’ve written elsewhere, without horse racing, there would be no thoroughbreds as we know them, and there is nothing like them. The thoroughbreds I have bred and trained and now ride, modest specimens all, are athletic, game and eager, full of energy and intelligence. Beautiful, too.
- In: - | Bid | for | Its | Microsoft | New York Times | Withdraws | YAHOO
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Microsoft said Saturday that it was abandoning its blockbuster bid to acquire Yahoo after the two companies could not agree on a price.
The breakdown in the talks followed a meeting on Saturday morning in Seattle between Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, and Yahoo’s chief and co-founder, Jerry Yang, according to a person briefed on the discussions.
At the meeting, which also included Yahoo’s other co-founder, David Filo, and Kevin Johnson of Microsoft, Mr. Ballmer increased Microsoft’s offer to $33 a share, but Mr. Yang said Yahoo would not sell for less than $37 a share, this person said.
Microsoft’s decision to walk away is the latest chapter in a three-month-old standoff that began when Microsoft made an unsolicited offer to acquire Yahoo in an effort to compete more effectively with Google in Web search, advertising and services.
Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s offer repeatedly, saying it undervalued the company. Microsoft at times threatened to lower its offer, originally valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 a share.
In a letter to Mr. Yang that Microsoft released Saturday evening, Mr. Ballmer said that it would not make sense for Microsoft to pursue a lengthy proxy fight. “Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft,” he wrote.
Mr. Ballmer said in a separate statement that Microsoft would continue to pursue its online efforts on its own.
“We have a talented team in place and a compelling plan to grow our business through innovative new services and strategic transactions with other business partners,” he said. “While Yahoo would have accelerated our strategy, I am confident that we can continue to move forward toward our goals.”
- In: back | Gymnastics | New York Times | on | Oprah Winfrey | Tom Cruise | Without
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“This is so normal!” Oprah Winfrey exclaimed as Tom Cruise took her through the vast, pristine, wood-paneled kitchen in his mountaintop estate in Telluride, Colo. Ms. Winfrey sounded relieved, almost as if she were half expecting to find space helmets and a teleporting station wedged next to the stove.
Oprah Winfrey with Tom Cruise in Colorado on Friday.
There was nothing normal about the conversation between Ms. Winfrey and Mr. Cruise, of course. Mr. Cruise, whose unhinged exuberance and acrobatic leap onto Ms. Winfrey’s couch in 2005 was the first in a torrent of embarrassing YouTube moments, was back on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to repair the damage. He had agreed to a two-part interview, and tellingly, the first one on Friday was on his couch, a reversal that they joked about, gingerly.
“I’m on your sofa now,” Ms. Winfrey said, mugging. Mr. Cruise laughed and said, “And we’re sitting.”
When Ms. Winfrey’s car drove up the Cruises’ driveway, Mr. Cruise and his wife, Katie Holmes, emerged from the house hand in hand to greet her. Like the first lady, Laura Bush, welcoming reporters to the family ranch in Crawford, Tex., Ms. Holmes was warm and gracious and quickly made herself scarce, hugging her husband and saying, “I love you,” as she walked out the door.
Mr. Cruise then sat winsomely through a barrage of questions about his marriage; their baby, Suri; Scientology; and in particular his rant to Matt Lauer in 2005 on “Today,” ridiculing the use of Ritalin and attacking Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants for postpartum depression.
“I mean, what I regret is that it just came out wrong,” he said. “What I regret is that even discussing Brooke in any way.”
This was not a promotional gimmick to boost box office sales. Mr. Cruise does not have a movie coming out imminently. (“Tropic Thunder,” in which he briefly plays not a leading man but a sleazy studio executive, is scheduled for an August release.) Mr. Cruise employed his charm — and taut stagecraft — in an effort to rehabilitate his reputation.
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The cover of the June issue of Vanity Fair and the photograph of Miley Cyrus, inset.
Fifteen years old and suggestively wrapped in what appears to be a satin bedsheet in the June issue of Vanity Fair. Did Miley Cyrus, with the help of a controversy-courting magazine, just deliver a blow to the Walt Disney Company’s billion-dollar “Hannah Montana” franchise?
Some parents reacted with outrage over the weekend when the television program “Entertainment Tonight” began showing commercials promoting a scoop: Ms. Cyrus, the star of the wholesome Disney Channel blockbuster “Hannah Montana,” had posed topless, albeit with her chest covered, for the Vanity Fair photographer, Annie Leibovitz.
Screen grabs of the photo quickly popped up online, sparking a blogosphere debate. “Bonfire anyone?” wrote Lin Burress on her marriage and parenting blog, Telling It Like It Is, referring to the mountain of Hannah Montana retail items — makeup, shoes, clothes — in the marketplace. “Parents should be extremely concerned,” Ms. Burress said in an interview. “Very young girls look up to Miley Cyrus as a role model.”
It is doubtful that one photograph — especially one that is tame in the context of an Internet awash in nude photographs of other starlets — could dent the Hannah Montana machine, said several Wall Street analysts. Retail sales for the franchise are expected to total about $1 billion in 2008. A motion picture is in the works for 2009 and Ms. Cyrus signed a seven-figure book deal with the Disney Book Group last week.
But keeping a teenage entertainment franchise on track in an age when stars are monitored around the clock by bloggers and paparazzi is extremely difficult, even for a company with the experience of Disney. Executives are constantly battling to keep minor slipups from growing into full-blown controversies.
Last week, the public relations problem du jour was a green bra; photos online showing Ms. Cyrus pulling away her tank top to flash her underwear.
Ms. Cyrus and the “Hannah Montana” series have been championed as one of the few entertainment sanctuaries for children, complicating matters. Last month, Ms. Cyrus was chosen favorite television actress at Nickelodeon’s “Kids’ Choice Awards.”
Dave Strom of South Boston, Va., bought a Smart ForTwo Passion Coupe, which he says is getting 45 miles a gallon.
Soaring gas prices have turned the steady migration by Americans to smaller cars into a stampede.
In what industry analysts are calling a first, about one in five vehicles sold in the United States was a compact or subcompact car during April, based on monthly sales data released Thursday. Almost a decade ago, when sport utility vehicles were at their peak of popularity, only one in every eight vehicles sold was a small car.
The switch to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles has been building in recent years, but has accelerated recently with the advent of $3.50-a-gallon gas. At the same time, sales of pickup trucks and large sport utility vehicles have dropped sharply.
In another first, fuel-sipping four-cylinder engines surpassed six-cylinder models in popularity in April.
“It’s easily the most dramatic segment shift I have witnessed in the market in my 31 years here,” said George Pipas, chief sales analyst for the Ford Motor Company.
The trend toward smaller and lighter vehicles with better mileage is a blow to Detroit automakers, which offer fewer such models than Asian carmakers like Toyota and Honda. Moreover, the decline of S.U.V.’s and pickups has curtailed the biggest source of profits for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.
Once considered an unattractive and cheap alternative to large cars and S.U.V.’s, compacts have become the new star of the showroom at a time when overall industry sales are falling.
Sales of Toyota’s subcompact Yaris increased 46 percent, and Honda’s tiny Fit had a record month. Ford’s compact Focus model jumped 32 percent in April from a year earlier. All those models are rated at more than 30 miles per gallon for highway driving.
Dave Strom of South Boston, Va., recently bought a tiny Smart ForTwo Passion Coupe, made by Daimler, the German automaker.
Mr. Strom also owns a pickup truck, which he uses mainly to haul his boat. When he runs errands, he drives his Smart, which he says is getting 45 miles a gallon.
“I had to smile the other day when I filled my tank for $18 and the guy next to me had a Ford Explorer and the pump was clicking past $80,” said Mr. Strom, a 66-year-old retired manager of a Chevrolet dealership.
Previous spikes in sales of smaller cars were often a result of consumers trading down during tough economic conditions or gas-price increases. When the economy improved or fuel prices dropped again — as they did after the oil-price shocks in the 1970s eased — buyers invariably went back to bigger vehicles.
But with oil prices expected to remain high for years, auto industry executives are seeing a turning point.
The recently opened Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital International Airport was designed and completed in record time for the Summer Olympics. It can handle 50 million passengers a year. More Photos >
BEIJING — Beijing airport’s new Terminal 3 — twice the size of the Pentagon — is the largest building in the world.
Adorned with the colors of imperial China and a roof that evokes the scales of a dragon, the massive glass- and steel-sheathed structure, designed by the renowned British architect Norman Foster, cost $3.8 billion and can handle more than 50 million passengers a year. The developers call it the “most advanced airport building in the world,” and say it was completed in less than four years, a timetable some believed impossible.
It opened in late February with little fanfare, but also without the kind of glitches that plagued the new $8.7 billion terminal at Heathrow in London, a project that took six years to complete.
This is the image China would like to project as it hosts the Olympic Games this summer — a confident rising power constructing dazzling monuments exemplifying its rapid progress and its audacious ambition.
While much of the world has focused on protests trailing the Olympic torch, China’s poor human rights record, its pollution, product safety and child labor scandals, workers here have been putting the finishing touches on one of the biggest building programs the world has ever seen.
Beijing hopes to overcome these negatives, and the dark sides of its roaring economy, by emphasizing its ability to upgrade and modernize, at least when it comes to buildings and infrastructure projects. The main Olympic stadium, nicknamed the Bird’s Nest, is already widely admired for its striking appearance and its use of an unusual steel mesh exterior. The nearby National Aquatics Center, known as the Water Cube, is a translucent blue bubble that glows in the dark.
And east of the main Olympic arenas, construction is winding down on the new headquarters of the country’s main state television network, China Central Television, or CCTV.
That $700 million building, designed by Rem Koolhaas, consists of two interlocking Z-shaped towers that rise 767 feet and may be the world’s largest and most expensive media headquarters.
New York has the Chrysler Building, Grand Central and the Guggenheim Museum; Paris has the Louvre and the Pompidou Center; now Beijing is determined to build its own architectural icons.
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