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ABCNEWS — Meet the world's new richest man: Bill Gates loses the title to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu. ~ Bill Gates - Carlos Slim - List of billionaires - Business - Carlos Slim Helu

Associated Press — Report: BP PLC emerges as leading candidate for Devon Energy's Gulf, international assets ~ Devon Energy - Energy - BP - England - Devon

Wall Street Journal — China Mobile said it agreed to buy a 20% stake in Shanghai Pudong Development Bank for $5.83 billion as the mobile operator seeks to expand into mobile payment services.

Wall Street Journal — Sony provided new details of a forthcoming motion controller for its PlayStation 3 videogame console, another entry in a field pioneered by Nintendo.

Associated Press — China inflation rises in February, adding to pressure on Beijing to keep recovery on track ~ China - Inflation - Beijing - Business - Asia

L.A. Times Tech Blog — Twitter engineer Alex Payne upset a flock of third-party developers recently when he boasted about new features the company plans to roll out to its website. "If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client," he wrote on his Twitter page. Software makers feared that Twitter was trying to squeeze them out. Payne did damage control -- all of these tweaks are built on top of options we've already given to developers, he pleaded. But developers who had ...More built countless products and entire companies on the... ...Less

Digits — Two recent reports show Microsoft’s Bing advancing slightly in search rankings — but the surveys differ on who is losing out. ~ Data from Hitwise today show Bing rising a bit to 9.7% of searches in February from 9.37% in January, while Google’s giant share fell from 71.49% to 70.95%. Yesterday’s report from ComScore also showed a boost for Bing — to 11.5% from 11.3% in January. But ComScore’s data showed that Bing was taking search business not from Google, but from Yahoo, which fell to 16.8% ...More from 17% in January. ~ Microsoft has been spending heavily for Bing. Jefferies & Company analyst Youssef Squali writes that Bing’s gains are “aided by the company’s aggressive marketing” but writes that its rise “is an indicator of sustainable traction.” He also writes that, with the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership this year, “Bing should become a viable competitor to Google.” ~ But Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider has another take, writing that “We think Bing is buying these share gains, which means that they won’t be building a profitable search business anytime soon.” ...Less

Comment is free | guardian.co.uk — Intentional or not, the announcement of new settlements in East Jerusalem may push the US into a tougher stance towards Israel ~ It's not the first time that Israel has stiffed Barack Obama over his attempts to kick-start Middle East peace negotiations. But the sudden, highly inflammatory announcement of plans to build an additional 1,600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem , in the midst of a visit to Israel of US vice-president Joe Biden, was certainly the most brutally contemptuous rebuff so far to American peacemaking. ~ It ...More may be that Binyamin Netanyahu , Israel's rightwing prime minister, was unaware in advance of the provisional decision by a Jerusalem district planning committee , as he claims. But the announcement was promulgated by his interior ministry, which thereby gave it an official stamp of approval. If Netanyahu did not know, then why not? ~ Despite the evident embarrassment and considerable political damage caused by the decision, Netanyahu has so far made no move to repudiate it. Lesser figures, such as welfare minister Isaac Herzog and Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev were deployed on firefighting duties on Wednesday, dutifully uttering conditional words of contrition. "We have to express our apologies for this serious blunder," Herzog said. ~ But protestations of innocence by interior minister Eli Yishai, head of the Shas religious party in Netanyahu's coalition and no great advocate of American attempts to forge a two-state peace settlement with the Palestinians, are hard to credit. ~ "There was certainly no intention to provoke anyone, and certainly not to come along and hurt the vice-president of the United States," Yishai said. ~ These are weasel words. Is it to be believed that Yishai, like Netanyahu, was unaware of what his own ministry was doing? Did he have no idea the planning decision was pending? Did he, as an experienced politician, not foresee the destructive political implications of this ambush? Like Netanyahu, Yishai presumably regard... ...Less

Associated Press — Complaints of runaway Priuses spike, but it could have something to do with psychology ~ Toyota Prius - Toyota - Television - Programs - Arts

Associated Press — First lady challenges software makers to help get kids excited about healthy living ~ Health - Nutrition - Child Health - Physical exercise - Environment