Home, credit woes crimping growth
The collapse of the national housing market and the credit crunch will hurt economic growth in the final three months of this year and cause economic activity to lag in 2008, according to the National Association of Business Economics.
The latest projection of the group calls for the gross domestic product to expand 1.5 percent from October through December. If correct, that would mark a sizable decline from the July-September rate of 3.9 percent.
For all of this year, the forecasters expect the economy to grow 2.1 percent, which would be the weakest showing since 2002.
The association downgraded its growth forecast for next year - putting it at 2.5 percent, compared with an earlier projection of 2.8 percent.
About three-fifths of the forecasters put the odds of a recession next year at less than one in three. About one in five sees the risk at greater than 50 percent.
Celgene
Cancer-drug maker snags Pharmion
Celgene, the New Jersey maker of thalidomide-based cancer drugs, will buy Pharmion for $2.9 billion in cash and stock to expand its lineup of treatments for blood diseases and cancer.
Pharmion investors will receive $72 a share in cash and stock, the companies said Sunday. The price is a 46 percent premium to Boulder, Colorado-based Pharmion’s stock price of $49.28 Friday.
Pharmion began operating in 2000 and focuses on developing and acquiring products to treat blood diseases and cancer. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter.
Yahoo
Flickr to map world’s photos
Picture an Olympian view of millions of photos that the world’s photographers and cameraphone users have produced over the last day.
That’s what Flickr, Yahoo’s online photo-sharing site, said the company plans to offer this week, by introducing mapping features that make it easier to find photos based on location.
The service, called Places, identifies on a global map the latest hot spots for photo contributions. It also allows users to search by more than 100,000 geographic place names to find photos that might interest them.
EarthLink
Company scaling back on wireless
EarthLink, a chief evangelist for blanketing cities with wireless Internet service, appears to be getting out.
The company “decided that making significant further investments in this business could be inconsistent with our objective of maximizing shareholder value,” CEO Rolla Huff said last week.
Cities have complained about high costs and less enthusiasm than expected from residential customers.
And service providers have questioned whether they will generate enough revenue to justify spending many millions of dollars to build and maintain the networks.
Compiled from The Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg News