Finished last week's issue of BusinessWeek. Cover story about Microsoft Corp. losing a lot of key talents to other tech firms, mainly Google. There seem to be an internal uproar with its employee blogging abt their dissatisfactions. Most complained of innovation stagnation, slow product development, bureaucratic red tape n sagging morale. I think Microsoft has become the victim of its size after 3 decades in the business. In China, many Chinese companies are wooing top execs away from MNCs, with much success, eventho most of them suffer pay cuts. Main reason for the jump ship being more challenging n holding a far more superior position in the co. In Asia, Thailand is playing with the idea of creating its own shipping line, but it's not w/o high risks involved. In Europe, Western Europe is slowly accepting the fact that they may have to adopt a single flat tax rate, like Eastern Europe, in order to revive its ailing economy. GM Europe has finally made its first profit after 5 yrs with US$36m n gaining 1.1% in market share since 2002. Brighter days are ahead with its new line of luxury n sports cars. Tech deals are on the revival after the dotcom bubble burst in 1999 with EBay leading the way by buying over Skype for US$2.6b. High oil prices are likely to continue in the next few yrs cos of the damage done in the past few yrs. We have exhausted the spare capacity that kept us going for 20yrs. New drilling rigs n ground exploration will take yrs to materialise. Lastly in New Orleans, hurricane Katrina had created so much mess that it had made cleaning up the city an uphill task. A toxic brew of oil, chemicals, bacteria, debris n garbage must be cleared n the ground scrubbed before the city can be rebuilt.