World News

Roxanne Emadi, Forbes.com
Last year, a 40-acre Greenwich, Conn., property with a 21,897-square-foot, 14-bedroom Jacobean manor was listed for $125 million. It was the world's second most expensive home for sale.

The nation's richest top their Chinese counterparts when it comes to the size of their fortunes.

Kalanithi Maran has built Sun TV into one of Asia's hottest media outfits and made himself worth more than $2 billion in the process.

In May 2007 a newspaper owned by Kalanithi Maran published the results of a survey, which named M.K. Stalin as a more popular potential successor to his father, M. Karunanidhi, Tamil Nadu's powerful chief minister, than his older brother M.K. Azhagiri.

Susan Adams, Forbes.com
In 1961, when Joe Navarro was 8, the Bay of Pigs invasion happened six miles from his home in Cienfuegos, Cuba, and his family fled to Miami. The boy knew no English, so he relied on careful observation of his peers, neighbors and teachers to figure out how things were done in his new country.

Miriam Marcus, Forbes.com
The unemployment rate may be north of 10%, but pet-product makers are booming.

Miriam Marcus, Maureen Farrell and Melanie Lindner, Forbes.com
In 2007, Anand Sanwal was managing a $50 million innovation fund for American Express. His job: to identify and incubate new business ideas--and that meant doing gobs of market research, much of it on small, closely held companies.

Klaus Kneale, Forbes.com
Chief executives always have a lot to worry about. They can't even quit without making sure they handle the process with a very delicate touch.

Tom Wajnert and Stephen A. Miles, Forbes.com
We have advised and assisted many boards of directors with succession planning and coached new chief executive officers through their first year of transition, and we've found that most CEOs encounter big surprises after assuming the top job. Many are overwhelmed by the sheer demand on their time and how many balls they must juggle at once.

David Whelan, Forbes.com
Last month Karen Ignagni held a conference call with reporters to announce the release of a new study commissioned by her lobby, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). It found that the health care reform bill, then making its way through the Senate Finance Committee, would raise the cost of every family's health care by $400 a year.

Michael Noer and Nicole Perlroth, Forbes.com
"I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies." --Napoleon Bonaparte

Vladimir Putin keeps a close eye on Russia's vital oil sector through a man who has proved his loyalty--but also has his own interests at heart.

Steven Berglas, Ph.D., Forbes.com
You are, or plan to be, an entrepreneur. You have a plan, scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin, that will make investors salivate. You are an agent of creative destruction, and with any luck, soon to be a very rich one.

Maureen Farrell, Forbes.com
Harvey Carmichael thought he won the golden ticket back in the summer of 2004 when his company, Beneficial Holdings, marketer of weight loss and sexual-enhancement pills in Salt Lake City, Utah, landed a large order from CVS worth $1.2 million. Instead, the business sank him.

Christopher Steiner, Forbes.com
When Andrew Yang launched Manhattan GMAT, a standardized-test preparatory service, he wanted to differentiate himself by snaring experienced instructors who themselves had scored above 700 (out of a possible 800) on the test. The Princeton Review and Kaplan require their coaches to crack just 680 or better.

Maureen Farrell, Forbes.com
Survival is the new success, so the line goes. Many struggling business owners aim merely to make payroll and plug gaps in working capital.

Susan Adams, Forbes.com
If you are anybody's boss, you've probably given out a lot of bad news lately. Layoffs are coming. Anyone who doesn't lose their job will have a much heavier workload. The fourth-quarter numbers are looking bad. Did someone say holiday party? Since there's no budget this year, forget the annual blowout at that upscale restaurant.

Poor air quality, lack of clean water and a high rate of superfund sites make these metros most contaminated.

Meghan Casserly, Forbes.com
Charlie Graham, founder and CEO of Shop It To Me, an online sale-alert e-mail service and Web site, wants to help you make better use of your time, particularly time spent shopping online.