David Blaine Show...

David Blaine Tricks

Clinton Loaned Her Campaign $5 Million Last Month

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., addresses the media at her national headquarters Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008, in Arlington, Va. Clinton and Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama dug in Wednesday for an extended battle for the Democratic presidential nomination after splitting wins Tuesday in the biggest primary day in U.S. history.

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Obama Says He Can Win Votes That Clinton Cannot

US Democratic presidential candidates Illinois Senator Barack Obama talks to the press in Los Angeles, California 01 February 2008. Democrat Hillary Clinton reeled off a sharp new attack on Obama on Sunday, as polls showed their White House race tightening 48 hours before the "Super Tuesday" national nominating clash.

(AFP/File/Emmanuel Dunand)

John Edwards to quit presidential race

AP

John Edwards to quit presidential race

AP - 17 minutes ago

DENVER - Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies, The Associated Press has learned.

McCain beats Romney in Fla.

Getty Images

McCain beats Romney to win Fla. primary

AP

MIAMI - Sen. John McCain won a breakthrough triumph in the Florida primary Tuesday night, seizing the upper hand in the Republican presidential race ahead of next week's coast-to-coast contests and lining up a quick endorsement from soon-to-be dropout Rudy Giuliani.

eBay Changes Its Fee Structure

Online auction giant says it will cut the fees it charges to list items by 25% to 50% and increase the fees for sold items.

Linda Rosencrance, Computerworld

Full Story...

PMA 2008: Panasonic Launches Slim, Feature-Packed Cameras

---

Full Story...

US Candidate Presidential Election

AP Photo

Romney, McCain in tight Florida race

AP

MIAMI - John McCain edged ahead of Mitt Romney in the Florida primary Tuesday night, a battle for the biggest delegate prize to date as well as precious campaign momentum heading into next week's competition across more than 20 states.

EBay Saves Billions For Bidders

Maryland professors found that buyers saved an average of $4 per person, or $19 billion total, at the popular online auction site. By W. David Gardner

By InformationWeek

If you think you would save money by bidding on eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) auctions, you would likely be right, according to a study released Monday by researchers at the University of Maryland. In fact, the researchers maintain eBay bidders saved $19 billion in 2007 at the popular auction site.

Researchers Wolfgang Jank and Galit Shmueli studied eBay online auctions in 2003 and found savings of $7 billion; they arrived at the $19 billion figure by extrapolating the figures forward into 2007.

The two associate professors at the university's Robert H. Smith School of Business worked with the Indian School of Business' Ravi Bapna, who maintained a sniper Web site that assisted bidders in automatically placing bids at the last minute of auctions. Bapna, an associate professor at the Indian school, was able to use his cniper.com site to calculate the difference between the actual purchase price paid for auction items and the top price bidders stated they were willing to pay.

The difference is called "consumer surplus" and the Maryland researchers found it averaged at least $4 per auction.

"This is the first time consumer surplus has been quantified in online auctions," said Shmueli in a statement. "You just can't quantify this for traditional retailers."

Jank said all three major parties involved in eBay's auctions -- buyers, sellers, and the company itself -- benefit from eBay auctions.

"All three parties on eBay win," he said. "Obviously the consumers win because they accrue a very large surplus... which is either money they can put in the bank or spend."

Noting that it's difficult to quantify the value for sellers, Jank said they win in the sense that eBay attracts a "large critical mass of potential buyers" for the sellers. The value to eBay is "obvious," he said, because of the funds generated for the company by the auctions.

More than 4,500 U.S. and European eBay auctions in 2003 were examined in the professors' research. Their complete study, titled "Consumer Surplus in Online Auctions," will be published in the Journal of Information Systems Research.

A Good Eg - Gates donates 20 mln dollars to support farmers: institute

Bill Gates, the world's richest man, is to donate nearly 20 million dollars for research into helping rice farmers deal with global warming, the International Rice Research Institute said Monday.

(AFP/Louisa Gouliamaki )

MANILA (AFP) - Bill Gates, the world's richest man, is to donate nearly 20 million dollars for research into helping rice farmers deal with global warming, the International Rice Research Institute said Monday.

The Philippines-based institute said it would use the donation from the Microsoft founder to harness scientific advances and address major unsolved problems in agriculture.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would release the 19.9-million-dollar grant over three years, the institute said.

The money initially would help give improved rice strains and linked technology to 400,000 small farmers in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, it added.

"Farmers are expected to achieve a 50 percent increase in their yields within the next 10 years," the institute said in a statement.

"The new funding comes at a vital time for rice farmers, who are now facing major production pressure and rising prices that threaten Asia's continued economic growth," the body said.

The donation would help farmers struggling with little or no irrigation by helping to develop and distribute rice strains capable of withstanding stresses such as drought and flooding, the institute said.

Robert S. Zeigler, the institute's director general, emphasised that climate change threatened to worsen the frequency and severity of such problems, making the need for hardy crops urgent.

"If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers -- most of whom are women," said Gates in the statement.

He is to step down as head of Microsoft in July to devote his time to running his foundation, which works to reduce global economic inequalities.

The grant from Gates is part of 306-million-dollar package that nearly doubles the foundation's investments in agriculture, the institute said.

Rice is a staple food for 2.4 billion people. Annual rice output must increase by nearly 70 percent to nearly 880 million tonnes in 2025 to meet projected global demand, according to the institute's estimates.