Does everyone know that the President of the United States makes $400,000 a year. Not bad, considering that Clinton made only $200,000. They raised it. Well, it's about time, if you look at all those baseball players making millions of dollars in one year.
Daylight savings time-hour is pushed one hour ahead. Meaning less sleep at first-adjustments will occur within a week or so :)
That's it for now, till next time on the Sonie News
First things first, the spot light is on NAPSTER (a great website, where people download music for free on to their computer, after downloading the software from the website, and I am talking about downloading the whole songs, not just 30 second clips that you find on cheesy websites that want to sell you music, I am not mentioning any names as I do not want to be sued. Anyway, back to NAPSTER (the song swapping service). As millions of people are enjoying the free music, record companies are furious. They are after all losing plenty of money. So, to make a long story short,lawsuits were filed against NAPSTER, to stop people from downloading free music. On March 7, 2000, NAPSTER was ordered by the judge to remove all the music that's copyrighted. The record companies are sending labels to NAPSTER of songs that they want blocked. NAPSTER has a heavy workload on their shoulders, as they have to spend much of their time screening songs, and worrying about the fact they they might be forced to shut down. There has also been talk that NAPSTER would start charging users a small monthly fee for using their service. WELL, I HOPE NOT. Users are quite FOND of this service, and believe that it is best to keep NAPSTER running and most of all FREE!!!!
On to the next topic, foot and mouth disease, which has hit Europe badly (especially Britain) . Several countries (like Germany) have started banning the transportation of animals that might get the disease. McDonald's and other restaurants are losing money, because of people's fear of the beef. Their sales have fallen. Farms are being investigated, to keep the disease from spreading. The disease has been spreading rapidly among cattle.
Cloning a human being might soon become a reality, as U.S. and Italian scientists are now planning to clone human beings.
Turkey's lira fell sharply after the president and prime minister had an argument. The economy will face inflation. Tourists should visit Turkey, as they will get everything much CHEAPER now.
As of March 9, 2001, the U.S. stock market is pretty much down in the dumps. The NASDAQ has reached its 27-month low (it closed at 2,052.78). Several countries in Europe have also seen their respective stockmarkets fall.
Lastly, in the U.S., the economy may be slowing down, if one looks at the direction the stock market is heading and the high number of firms issuing warnings of lower than expected earnings. Yet, surprisingly, especially to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the sales of homes were up in the month of January. The NAR had earlier forecasted a 4.65 million annual rate of home sales, but decided to revise the number to 5.13 million, a 10.32% increase from their first estimated value. The NAR attributed the cause of the error in the numbers when the sales-compilation software was being upgraded.
The main reason why home sales are not wavering despite the economy's recent plunge is that mortgage rates are down, (right now it's about 7%) making buying a home much cheaper for the consumer.