Finance & Economics | WPN World People News

Salesforce.com's move last week to launch a legal counter-attack against Microsoft seems to signal that software's old and new guards are ready to spar over who will have the most sway over the future of cloud computing.

Earlier today, at the federal courthouse in Central Islip, New York, Roger Corbin, a former Nassau County Legislator who represented the Second Legislative District from 1995 until December 31, 2009, was sentenced to 18 months of incarceration by United States District Judge Sandra J. Feuerstein. Corbin pleaded guilty earlier this year to all seven counts of a superseding indictment, which charged him with tax evasion and filing false federal tax returns for the years 2005, 2006, and 2007, and making false statements to Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service. Judge Feuerstein also imposed three years of supervised release, a $700 special assessment and ordered Corbin to pay $92,170 in restitution.

Technip S.A., a global engineering, construction and services company based in Paris, has agreed to pay a $240 million criminal penalty to resolve charges related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for its participation in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials to obtain engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts, the Department of Justice announced today. The EPC contracts to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities on Bonny Island, Nigeria, were valued at more than $6 billion.

Social networking service Twitter has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard their personal information, marking the 30th case the FTC has brought targeting faulty data security, and the agency’s first such case against a social networking service.

LONG BEACH, Calif.-- The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] today announced the start of flight tests for a B-1 Lancer bomber upgraded with new digital avionics for the aft cockpit, including a line-of-sight Link 16 data link. The B-1 Fully Integrated Data Link (FIDL) made its first flight test on June 4 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The gaming industry's E3 conference is under way. Like previous years, the show has delivered on its promise of showing off what gaming developers and hardware makers have planned for the next year or two. The show is once again dominated by the gaming big three—Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft—each taking the stage to show off some new technologies. They have also unleashed details on a slew of games that will be making their way to their respective consoles in the coming months.

State personal income growth averaged 0.9 percent in the first quarter of 2010 up from 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to estimates released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal income increased in all but two states with growth ranging from 1.6 percent in Mississippi to –2.0 percent in North Dakota. Inflation, as measured by the national price index for personal consumption expenditures, declined to 0.4 percent in the first quarter from 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and GEORGE VENIZELOS, the Acting Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), announced today the arrest this morning of ANTOINETTE HODGSON on charges that she orchestrated a $45 million real estate Ponzi scheme that fraudulently solicited investments from over 20 New York and New Jersey investors. HODGSON is charged in a Complaint with one count of wire fraud conspiracy and one count of wire fraud, and surrendered to the FBI this morning. She is expected to appear in Manhattan federal court later today.

Lee Bentley Farkas, the former chairman of a private mortgage lending company, Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (TBW), was arrested last night in Ocala, Fla., and charged in a 16-count indictment for his alleged role in a more than $1.9 billion fraud scheme that contributed to the failures of Colonial Bank, one of the 50 largest banks in the United States in 2009, and TBW, one of the largest privately held mortgage lending companies in the United States in 2009.

The soccer stars and Goodwill Ambassadors for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Didier Drogba and Zinedine Zidane, today launched a television announcement exhorting the world to make a concerted effort to help millions of people free themselves from poverty.