News In Brief

MID-DAY UPDATE: Gold hits record highs, high-tech talent race continues

Katharine Crnko Apr 22, 2011

Here are today’s top headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report and from around the web.

Gold is hitting record highs just about every day. It’s at more than $15,000 an ounce amid worries about inflation.

Toyota said today it expects to be back up to full production levels in Japan by December. Toyota factories are currently running at half capacity because of parts shortages.

Toyota’s recalling 333,000 RAV4s and Highlander SUVs because of an air bag issue.

Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices — or AMD as it’s known — said its first quarter revenue was up 2 percent year over year.

Amazon.com continues to struggle to restore computers used by other major websites such as Reddit as an outage stretched beyond 24 hours. Though better known for selling books, DVDs and other consumer goods, Amazon also rents out space on huge computer servers that run many websites and other online services.

The high-tech talent race continues. Microsoft is boosting pay and shifting more compensation from cash to stock to compete for workers with rivals like Facebook and Google.

The price of oil topped $112 a barrel today. And as the price keeps going up, and gas prices do the same, President Obama is being pressured to do something about it. So the president’s ordered Attorney General Eric Holder and a Justice Department task force to look into the possibility of SPECULATION as a reason for oil price volatility.

To the world of real estate. Here in LA, if you can’t afford to live in Beverly Hills you might consider living in “Beverly Hills adjacent” — a fancy name concocted by real estate agents for a less-fancy neighborhood. In New York, if Soho’s out of your price range how about Soso — South of Soho? Or maybe Dumbo — Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Well according to the New York Times one Brooklyn lawmaker thinks this whole thing is getting out of hand. He’s writing legislation to punish realtors for making up neighborhood names to boost sales.

In Spain, the King’s Cup — or Copa del Rey — is the national championship trophy given by the King of Spain to soccer’s best team. This year, that team is Real Madrid who beat Barcelona this week for the top Football title. A huge crowd gathered in the wee hours of yesterday in the capitol city’s central square to celebrate the big win. But when defender Sergio Ramos held the expensive trophy out of the team bus, to show thousands of fans what Real Madrid had just won, he accidentally dropped it and the bus ran over it.

You can read the rest of today’s headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report here.

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