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    Michelle Kung

    Michelle Kung

    Contributor

  • Richest Man In India Builds $1 Billion House

    If you were Indian businessman Mukesh Ambani, you might build yourself the world's most expensive home. As designed by Chicago architecture firm Perkins + Will, the in-progress glass-tower is estimated at $1 billion and is known to feature, at the least, a health club, multiple "safe" rooms, 3 helipads, 168 parking spaces and require 600 servants to maintain, and physically, the structure stands at 27 stories, or 570 feet tall. Floor for car maintenance Sources said the Ambanis would prefer to have all their cars serviced and maintained at an in-house service centre.

  • Michael Dell Buys Brother Adam Dell's Company

    Dell acquired MessageOne, which makes email-management software, for $155 million in cash. One of the deal's big beneficiaries is the Dell family, although the company says the transaction will also help businesses who want to outsource management of their tech equipment to Dell. MessageOne was co-founded by Adam Dell, Michael Dell's lesser-known brother - though to be fair, it's hard to be the successful sibling when your brother is worth around $15 billion - and other Dell family members are investors.

  • Retail Chill: Consumers Give Stores The Cold Shoulder

    Consumer spending slowed to a crawl in January, with retail sales at major chains rising just 0.5% in what was by one measure the month's worst performance in nearly 40 years, according to reports released Thursday. Discounter Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said shoppers held on tight to the gift cards they received over the holidays or used them to buy milk and bread rather than toys or iPods. High-end Saks Inc. said customers shifted more of their spending to "promotional events" -- making purchases when items were specially priced.

  • Dirty Elf Shuts Down Canada's "Write To Santa" Program

    You may want to write your own letter from Santa to the kids this year. Canada Post has temporarily shut down their popular "Write to Santa" program, which delivers over a million letters to kids in Canada and elsewhere, while they track down the volunteer who's been sending out obscene letters to kids. The Ottawa Citizen said at least 10 nasty letters had been delivered to little girls and boys in Ottawa who wrote to Santa this year care of the North Pole, which has a special H0H 0H0 Canadian postal code.

  • Gates: Businesses Need To Help The Poor

    In two separate speeches on Friday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates made the case that businesses need to see serving the poor as part of their mission and that governments need to see private businesses as potential partners. One of the big topics for both audiences was the notion of microfinance--improving the access to credit and banking to the poor.

  • Wealth Boom Fuels New Pricing Scale For Escorts

    The complaint filed in the Emperors Club escort bust, which apparently nabbed Eliot Spitzer, casts a rare spotlight on the dealings between the wealthy and high-priced escort services. It may be the world's oldest profession: but the prices reflect the new realities of wealth.

  • Drought Reduces Australia's Rice Crop By 98 Percent

    The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to meet the needs of 20 million people around the world. Ten thousand miles separate the mill's hushed rows of oversized silos and sheds -- beige, gray and now empty -- from the riotous streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but a widening global crisis unites them.

  • America's Got British Talent: HuffPost Talks To Unlikely Opera Star Paul Potts

    No one was more stunned than Paul Potts when the 36-year old amateur singer won the television competition Britain's Got Talent this past June. Not only had the rotund and unassuming mobile phone salesman not sung a note in four years previous to his audition for the show, but Potts' song category of choice was... opera. Immediately rushed into the recording room by Talent panelist, uber-businessman, and notorious curmudgeon Simon Cowell, Potts has since seen his debut album One Chance top the British music charts, move legendary rock producer (and new Columbia honcho) Rick Rubin to tears, and drive viewers of his recent Today show appearance wild.

  • Lopez Baby Pictures May Fetch $6 Million

    People magazine is poised to pay Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony between $4 million and $6 million for exclusive U.S. rights to the first photos of their expected twins, people familiar with the negotiations said last week. At the high end, the payout would not only match box-office receipts for J.Lo's "Gigli," maybe a modest achievement even for newborns, but also set a stratospheric standard in the market for celebrity baby photos. People magazine and the stars' representatives denied last week that any deals were complete.

  • Obama and the Hedge Fund Factor

    If you were a member of the Wall Street aristocracy, one of those hedge fund hot shots who makes half a billion dollars a year, which horse would you bet on in the race for the White House? Senator John McCain seems like the natural choice for the rich who are voting their wallets. After all, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, might help the wealthy keep more of their supersize incomes by making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

  • No Help For 70 Percent Of Subprime Borrowers

    Seven out of 10 seriously delinquent subprime mortgage borrowers are still not getting the help they need to keep their homes. "Our collaborative efforts to date have failed to prevent a large number of unnecessary foreclosures," said North Carolina Deputy Commissioner of Banks Mark Pearce.

  • Tainted Heparin Found In 11 Countries

    A contaminated blood thinner from China has been found in drug supplies in 11 countries, and federal officials said Monday they had discovered a clear link between the contaminant and severe reactions now associated with 81 deaths in the United States. "We don't have a strong evidence to show that it is heparin or its contaminant that caused the problem," said the official, Ning Chen, second secretary at the Chinese Embassy.

  • Bodies CEO Resigns After TV Report

    The CEO of a company that runs a controversial exhibit of "plasticized" Chinese bodies, Premier Exhibitions, has resigned, according to an SEC filing by the company. Arnie Geller submitted his resignation in March, weeks after a "20/20" report on the company's practices triggered an inquiry by the New York attorney general's office. Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

  • Yale Alumni Want 'College' Named After Chief Investment Officer

    No college has ever been named for a living donor. Mr. Swensen, for those who haven't read the countless hagiographies, is Yale's chief investment officer. During his 23 years on the job, Yale's endowment has increased to $22.5 billion from $1.2 billion.

  • Could The Recession Have Been Prevented?

    The 2008 recession guarantees many months of job losses that will boost foreclosures and feed the credit crisis. Such a soft landing would have bought some breathing room in which to resolve the credit crisis until the lagged effect of monetary policy kicked in.

  • Spielberg & Co May Not Get Paid For 'Indy 4'

    The Indiana Jones series is known for its cliffhangers. If that seems like a no-brainer, consider the norm in Hollywood, where top-tier filmmakers and stars traditionally earn huge upfront fees and get a big cut of ticket sales before a studio recoups its investment.

  • Dems Push Consumer-Friendly Credit Card Bill

    Congressional lawmakers of both parties have found something to agree on: The credit card industry, they say, has evolved beyond the scope of regulations intended to protect consumers, and it requires reining in. House Democrats are pushing legislation -- the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) -- that would force card companies to disclose looming rate increases, eliminate confusing fees and cease the retroactive application of hiked rates to existing balances. Republicans, siding with the banks, prefer to leave the task of reform to federal regulators, who are in the process of crafting new rules for the industry.

  • Morgan Spurlock Q&A About "Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden"

    Morgan Spurlock tends to live his life in terms of extremes. Four years later, the handlebar-mustached instigator has a far more heady goal for his second feature doc: tracking down Osama bin Laden. Supported by only a skeleton crew, Spurlock spent four and a half months trekking across the Middle East for Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?, and shot over 900 hours of footage, which he eventually whittled down to a neat 90 minutes.

  • Netflix: Don't Call Us Obsolete

    Netflix announces its first-quarter earnings after the bell Monday, April, 21. With a spate of upgrades by analysts during Q1, Netflix is expected to demonstrate that its momentum isn't slowing, especially since its rival in the DVD-by-mail business, Blockbuster, looks to be more and more occupied with its bricks and mortar stores and a takeover bid for Circuit City. A Silicon Valley venture capitalist, proud of a recent Web 2.0 investment that offered digital downloads of video, once described Netflix (NFLX) as an "ice cube in the sun." That was almost three years ago, and Netflix, No. 46 on Fortune's list of fastest-growing companies for 2007, shows no signs of melting.

  • Welch Backpedals On Immelt "Ass-Kicking" Insult

    "He has a credibility issue," Welch roared. Much to my shock and horror, remarks I made on CNBC's Squawk Box about the performance of GE and CEO Jeff Immelt were interpreted to mean the exact opposite of what I intended.