National / International News

Iran's reported plans to upgrade its uranium enrichment centrifuges would be a "further escalation" in the nuclear stand-off, the US warns.

Apple has trademarked its minimalist store design. Though it seems over the top, the company has good reason to protect its look: Fake Apple stores cropped up in China last year.

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So it turns out it wasn't just the New York Times. The Wall Street Journal reported today that its own computers had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers as well.

And it's not just media companies that are getting the unwanted online attention. Corporations from Google to Lockheed Martin to Coca-Cola have had their computer systems hacked for both political reasons and economic ones.

In Google's case, Chinese hackers were looking for the names -- and the email addresses -- of political activitists in that country, says Wired senior writer Kim Zetter.

But what do you want from Coke? "There, it's economic espionage. You want to know what your competitors are doing," says Zetter. "You may not want to focus on the recipe for Coke, although that is a good one, but you might also want to know factory secrets -- you know, how does Coke operate successfully?"

It is the cost of doing business on the Internet. And since companies -- and even individuals -- can't really avoid that, Zetter says, "Everyone has to figure how to mitgate the risks and live in a sustainable way with the risks."

Basically, you're going to get hacked -- better plan for it.

The man who admitted creating and killing off a fake online girlfriend in a hoax targeting US football star Manti Te'o says he was in love with him.

The A&E department at Lewisham Hospital is to be downgraded after a neighbouring trust ran up debts of £150m.

Administrators PwC confirm that they have sold the brand of High Street photographic firm Jessops to entrepreneur Peter Jones.

A standoff between Alabama police and a man who has taken a five-year-old boy hostage enters a third day.

Target practice is only part of the allure as gun ranges add restaurants, lounges and ladies' nights to create a social atmosphere to go along with the firearms training.

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So you're at your computer. Try Googling something. How about..."Ben Bernanke." Almost certainly, the first thing that you type for almost anything is a Wikipedia entry. Information written mostly by about 15,000 active users -- not a huge group, when you think about it.

Sue Gardner is the executive director of the WikiMedia Foundation, of which Wikipedia is a part.

Turns out, there's not much different between the business models of WikiMedia and public radio. Both have to ask for money to help support their content. And that model's working really well for WikiMedia -- Gardner says in their latest campaign, they made $2.7 million a day. That's up from $430,000 a day the year before.

But financing aside, Gardner says Wikipedia has a lot of room for growth. Though the website has entries in 286 languages, the entries that get the most edits are in English by people in developed countries.

She also says the huge disparity between the number of male editors and female editors -- nine out of 10 editors are men -- is also troubling.

"It stems from the origins of the project," Gardner says. "So when people were first interacting online in 2001, the folks who were interacting online tended to skew heavily heavily male." She says WikiMedia works actively now to recruit female editors.

When will you see an ad on Wikipedia? Never, says Gardner. She then hedges a bit -- "if it were a choice between putting ads on Wikipedia or shutting down Wikipedia, we would then very reluctantly consider putting ads on Wikipedia."

And of course, you're probably wondering what Gardner thinks about criticism of the site's accuracy. "Everybody's saying, be skeptical of Wikipedia. That is true. They should also be skeptical of everything. We should all be critical consumers of the media."

At least 65 planes abandoned at airports across Nigeria are being dismantled as part of efforts to improve air safety, an aviation official says.

Moore, an accomplished trick artist, suffered a spectacular crash last week during the Winter X Games. The 25-year-old walked away from it, but then faced complications once he made it to the hospital.

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According to some estimates, $10 billion is gambled on the Super Bowl each year. And forget the simple bet of whether the San Francisco 49ers or the Baltimore Ravens will win -- and by how much. Frequent gamblers bet on far more obscure things, including events that take place off the field.

Theses proposition, or prop, bets, allow people to place a wager on things like how Beyonce will style her hair during the halftime show or how long the national anthem will last. 

We decided to get in on the prop bets game, minus the money. We've drawn up seven bets that we're asking people to make: five are based on Friday's Marketplace show, and two will be from the Super Bowl itself.

Place your bets now, either by commenting below or sending us a Facebook post or tweet.

1. How many times will Kai Ryssdal say Marketplace during Friday's show?
2. For the numbers, which will it be: "We're In The Money" (the happy music); "Stormy Weather" (the sad music); or "It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" (the mixed markets music)?
3. Which Weekly Wrap guest will get the last word in before the segment ends: Fortune Magazine's Leigh Gallagher or Reuters correspondent Felix Salmon?
4. How many segments, including reporter stories, interviews and Kai's final note, will be in the show? (Over/under 8)
5. How many reporters from our New York bureau will be in the show?
6. Will Jay-Z come out and perform during Beyonce’s halftime show at the Super Bowl?
7. How many total field goals will be kicked during the Super Bowl?

The deadline to send in your bets is Friday, Feb. 1st at 4:30pm EST. Answers/winners could be announced on Monday's show. Ways to place your bets: Comment below; comment on our Facebook page; or tweet us @MarketplaceAPM and #MPbets (on Twitter, you must have the hashtag for your bet to count).

Good luck!

A desperate dog owner re-mortgages her South Yorkshire home to put up a £10,000 reward for her stolen pet.

When the president told The New Republic that "we do skeet shooting all the time" at Camp David, some critics had their doubts. The Washington Post's Fact Checker says it's withholding opinion on the veracity of the claim. Now, Fox News says it has learned of at least two times Obama went shooting.

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Anheusuer-Busch InBev got bad news today. The world's largest-beer seller was hoping to become even larger by buying Mexico's Groupo Modelo, which makes Corona. But the Justice Department said not so fast, and filed an anti-trust lawsuit. The DOJ is worried that the $20 billion merger would drive beer prices up for Americans. Beer drinkers are worried the merger could change the taste of imports.

When InBev took over the German import Beck's, it moved the production of the lager from Germany to the United States and it made changes to the recipe to lower production costs.

Matt Simpson is known as the beer sommelier. He writes about beer and taught a beer education class at Emory University. He says InBev tends to hone down the brewing process so it costs less to produce the same beverage, which has consequences.

"There's less flavor, less body and often there is less alcohol," says Simpson.

Immediately customers started complaining about the blander Beck's, and sales dropped. But overall, InBev's strategy has paid off. The company has 39 percent of U.S. beer sales. If it acquires Groupo Modelo, it would jump to 46 percent.

The U.S. market "is essentially a duopoly now," says Peter Reid, the publisher of Modern Brewery Age. The other company in that duopoly is Miller Coors, which controls 26 percent of the market.

"Basically in terms of overall market, in most markets, they are the price leader" says Eric Shepard, executive editor of Beer marketers Insights.

When InBev increases prices, MillerCoors tends to follow. But Modelo doesn't. By not raising its prices, it hopes to narrow the price gap between its more expensive Corona and Budweiser. That price competition, the Justice Department fears, could vanish if InBev owns both brands.

In our mobile lives today, we forget all the progress made in the battery kitchen that got us here.

"For most of the 20th century, battery science progressed really slowly," says Popular Science's Seth Fletcher. "In part because it was kind of a backwater."

And, the science is really hard, especially the chemistry of batteries.

"They almost drove Thomas Edison crazy," Fletcher says. "He spent about a decade trying to develop a new type of battery, which he ultimately did."

Fletcher says research took off in the 1960s and '70s. Smog in traffic-jammed L.A., and oil shocks for the whole country, made getting off petroleum a priority. Several companies tested lithium. It's light, packs lots of energy, but isn't always stable.

"After the Exxon Mobil company had blown up a couple of labs, they decided to get out of the energy business," says battery pioneer John Goodenough, from the University of Texas.

Now 90, Goodenough gets a National Medal of Science at the White House tomorrow. His breakthrough: making an essential piece of the lithium ion battery -- a stable electrode. "And that gave you the energy density that you needed to have a handheld device. And that led to the wireless revolution."

Now here's the funny thing. Henry Ford owned a car. Edison owned a light bulb.

John Goodenough, though? "I don't have an iPhone. I'm an old-fashioned conservative gentleman who finds that I get along perfectly well with the last century's technology."

He doesn't like phone calls.

Another paradox: Goodenough's invention isn't always for the good.

"You take the cell telephone," he says. "Well, it can be used to detonate a roadside bomb from the hillside. It may be in the hands of evil people."

Since his breakthrough, lithium ion batteries have seen incremental improvements. There is a limit to the architecture, though. To make electric cars mainstream, or store lots of wind energy, it'll take another leap forward.

Steven Visco's working on that. He runs battery startup PolyPlus in Berkeley, Calif. His cocktail combines lithium and water.

Now normally, he says, "there's typically a spark, and that ignites the hydrogen. And then you get a little bit of a Hindenberg there. I mean it's a lot of excitement.

Visco has a way to de-Hindenberg it, and pack more energy in a small space. It may take a decade to commercialize. But think of the payoff.

"Once you get those products to market, they tend to never go away," Visco says. "And that's precisely why when you open the hood of your car and you see a lead-acid battery. Well, it's 150 years old."

Now the nature of energy is, each step forward tends to come with a trade off.

"Every time you move the energy density up, you know you bring with that some element of risk," says James Bellingham, who studies batteries at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. "And just think about gasoline. I mean, how many times in a movie a car crashes and there's a little fire and everyone runs away from the car because they're afraid the gasoline will blow up? Batteries can have their bad days also."

The battery chase goes on, though. And at 90, John Goodenough is still in the game. Why? For the reason he joined it decades ago: To graduate us from fossil fuels.

"Otherwise, we have Easter Island," he says. "We'll end up with a bunch of stones on the island that says 'Man once lived here. But they used up everything that was there. Then they killed one another over what was left 'til there was nothing left but stones.'"

The 49ers cornerback ignited a maelstrom when he said gay players had no place on his team. Culliver and team later apologized for the comments.

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Leaders from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and a prominent opposition coalition condemn political violence, after dozens are killed in a week of unrest.

David Beckham signs for Paris St-Germain on a five-month deal and says he will donate his salary to charity.

The RSPB has launched a rescue operation after around 100 birds, some of them dead, were washed ashore.