CHINA officially passed JAPAN to become the world's second-biggest economy when Japan said its GDP was worth $5.5 trillion in 2010. China's amounted to $5.9 trillion.
In China the rate of INFLATION rose again, to 4.9% in January, which was less than had been forecast. Meanwhile, China said imports of copper, iron ore and oil had accelerated in January. Imports of iron ore reached a record 69m tonnes, up by 48% from a year earlier.
BRITAIN'S inflation rate also crept up again in January, to 4% or double the Bank of England's target. The guessing game intensified about when the central bank would raise interest rates.
America's Treasury Department issued a report in which it proposed the eventual elimination of FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC and laid out options for reducing the role of government in mortgage financing. The report admitted that Fannie and Freddie had "strayed" from their core business of promoting sustainable home ownership when they extended credit to riskier borrowers. The Treasury now foresees government's role in housing limited to "robust oversight", consumer protection and targeted assistance for poor households; it wants the private sector to "bear the burden of losses" in the sector.
Investors gave a cool reception to NOKIA'S announcement of "a broad strategic partnership" with MICROSOFT. The Finnish mobile-phone company, which has lost ground to Apple and Google in the smartphone market, is adopting Windows Phone as its primary platform for smart devices, displacing its own Symbian software. Eric Schmidt, GOOGLE'S boss, revealed that his company had talked extensively to Nokia about adopting Google's Android platform.
A court in ECUADOR ordered CHEVRON to pay $9.5 billion for alleged environmental and social damage to Ecuador's Amazon region caused by Texaco, which Chevron took over in 2001. The oil company has accused the plaintiffs' lawyers of using "a strategy of fraud". Courts in New York and The Hague have issued orders that suspend the enforcement of any judgment against Chevron in the case, which has been rumbling on since 1993. –
GOOGLE launched a payment system that enables publishers to charge for online content through its operating platforms. Google announced its One Pass system the day after APPLE set out its conditions for subscriptions sold through its App Store, for which it will take a 30% cut. Google will retain 10% of the payments and give media companies more control over subscriber data than Apple would.
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