IBM takes Amazon to court over patents
IBM has filed two suits against online retailer Amazon alleging patent-infringement covering presenting applications, storing data, presenting advertising, adjusting hypertext links and ordering items from an electronic catalog. It said the retailer knowingly built its business on the five technologies IBM owns.

IBM said it tried at least a dozen times, starting in September 2002, to persuade Amazon to pay for the use of its technology, but to no use. It said Amazon refused to engage in any meaningful discussion.

Amazon said the company had not been served with the suits and did not comment.

Amazon has been sued on the same basis at least three times before in the past three years and has filed some similar suits itself.
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Ford posts quarterly loss of $5.8bn: largest in 14 years
Detroit: Ford Motor has posted a quarterly loss of $5.8 billion - its largest in 14 years - on the back of writedowns, job-cutting costs in North America and declining sales of its trucks.

Ford Motor also said it would restate financial results from 2001 through second quarter of 2006, due to an accounting change on interest rate derivatives used to hedge its long-term debt. Ford recorded a net loss of $3.08 per share in the third quarter of the current fiscal against a loss of $284 million, or 15 cents per share in last year's comparable quarter.

Ford Motor is closing 16 plants and cutting about 45,000 jobs in North America.
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Enron's Skilling sentenced for 24 years
Houston- Jeff Skilling the chief executive of Enron Corp which closed down has been sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for leading a financial fraud that destroyed the company and shoved thousands into poverty.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake, who handed out the harshest sentence yet in the Enron saga, said Skilling's crimes "have imposed on hundreds if not thousands of people a lifetime of poverty."

Skilling also was ordered to pay $45 million in restitution to Enron investors, who lost billions of dollars when the company collapsed. Thousands of employees lost their jobs and retirement funds.

Skilling has been allowed to remain out of jail though confined to his home with an electronic monitor on his ankle until the U.S. Bureau of Prisons will order him to report to jail.
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