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Kylie Minogue announces new tour

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Kylie Minogue announces new tour
Wed Nov 28, 2007 3:08pm GMT

LONDON (Reuters) - Australian pop star Kylie Minogue announced a European tour and promised the show would be "totally different" from previous performances.

The 39-year-old, who released her new album "X" this week, starts in Paris on May 6 and crosses Continental Europe, Scandinavia and Northern Ireland before winding up at London's O2 Arena on July 27.

"The eclectic mix of sounds on 'X' is affording me an opportunity to explore and develop a new live show that will be fresh, exhilarating and innovative," Minogue said on her Web site www.kylie.com.

"After two celebratory tours, 'X' will be . . .

The misguided practice of earnings guidance

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Go to The McKinsey Quarterly home page Visitor Edition 27 November 2007Welcome to the online journal of McKinsey & Company. This article is available to you free as a special bonus. Please register or log in to read this article.


Article at a glance:
The misguided practice of earnings guidance

Many executives believe that providing quarterly earnings guidance helps them to maintain an open channel of communication with investors in their companies and to increase the visibility of those companies while reducing the volatility of share prices and improving share valuations.

Our analysis finds that the practice offers few of the expected benefits and carries its own costs, particularly management time and an overemphasis on short-term performance.

Executives should consider whether providing quarterly earnings guidance is truly necessary—or whether other types of information would better serve the goals of companies and their shareholders.

This article includes the following exhibits:
Exhibit 1: Increasingly, companies are discontinuing guidance.
Exhibit 2: There appears to be no relation between guidance and valuation.
Exhibit 3: Offering guidance does not appear to affect total returns to shareholders.
Exhibit 4: Poor performance affects returns more than discontinuing guidance.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract_visitor.aspx?ar=1752

Justices to Decide on Right to Keep Handgun at Home

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By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: November 21, 2007

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it would decide whether the Constitution grants individuals the right to keep guns in their homes for private use, plunging the justices headlong into a divisive and long-running debate over how to interpret the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

The court accepted a case on the District of Columbia’s 31-year-old prohibition on the ownership of handguns. In adding the case to its calendar, for argument in March with a decision most likely in June, the court not only raised the temperature of its current term but also inevitably injected the issue of gun control into the presidential campaign.

The federal appeals court here, breaking with the great majority of federal courts to have examined the issue over the decades, ruled last March that the Second Amendment right was an individual one, not tied to service in a militia, and that the District of Columbia’s categorical ban on handguns was therefore unconstitutional. . . .

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Global Politician

How the Feminists’ “War against Boys” Paved the Way for Radical Islam

Global Politician: "How the Feminists’ “War against Boys” Paved the Way for Radical Islam Fjordman - 11/12/2007
Some commentators like to point out that many of the most passionate and bravest defenders of the West are women, citing Italian writer Oriana Fallaci and others. But women like Ms. Fallaci, brave as they might be, are not representative of all Western women. If you look closely, you will notice that, on average, Western women are actually more supportive of Multiculturalism and massive immigration than are Western men.

I got many comments on my posts about Muslim anti-female violence in Scandinavia. Several of my readers asked what Scandinavian men are doing about this. What happened to those Vikings, anyway? Did they drink too much mead in Valhalla? Despite the romantic mystique surrounding them today, the Vikings were for the most part savage barbarians. However, I doubt they would have looked the other way while their daughters were harassed by Muslims. In some ways, this makes present-day Scandinavians worse barbarians than the Vikings ever were.

One of the reasons for this lack of response is a deliberate and pervasive censorship in the mainstream media, to conceal the full scale of the problem from the general public. However, I suspect that the most important reason has to do with the extreme anti-masculine strand of feminism that has permeated Scandinavia for decades. The male protective instinct doesn’t take action because Scandinavian women have worked tirelessly to eradicate it, together with everything else that smacks of traditional masculinity. Because of this, feminism has greatly weakened Scandinavia, and perhaps Western civilization as whole."

Mayo Clinic blogs

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It's D-Day For Google's GPhone

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by Laurie Petersen, Monday, Nov 5, 2007 6:00 AM ET

IN THE WAKE OF MOUNTING pre-launch news coverage, Google is expected to go public with its Google Phone plans this morning.

The Wall Street Journal reported that an official announcement will come on Monday about details of the phone. Additional reports say Google intends to make software available for different phone carriers that would open up more application development for mobile devices, including its own.

Sunday's New York Times carried a gushing profile by technology writer John Markoff of Andy Rubin, who is overseeing the Google phone and software efforts as director of mobile platforms. Markoff got extraordinary access to Rubin at home and work.

According to the story, Google plans to give away its software to handset makers and then use the Google Phone's openness for software developers and content distributors to design applications for it.

Rubin was creator of the Sidekick, one of the first smartphones to integrate the Web, instant messaging, mail and other PC applications.

Among the wireless carriers already said to be working with Google are Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless.

Google stock, whose price some analysts suggest may surpass $1,000, was trading at $711 after hours on Friday. Laurie Petersen is executive editor of MediaPost. Email her at laurie@mediapost.com