The South African government is to spend more than 15bn rand ($2bn) on hosting the 2010 Fifa World Cup. The country’s finance minister Trevor Manuel announced the figures to the South African parliament on Wednesday. The bulk of the money will be spent on building new football stadiums and refurbishing existing ones. There is public concern that South Africa will be poorly prepared and not able to afford to host the event. Mr Manuel outlined his plans for the World Cup while delivering a medium-term budget policy statement to parliament. He told members of the national assembly that 8.4bn rand ($1.1bn) would be spent in building five new stadiums and upgrading existing facilities, while 6.4bn rand ($800m) was to be invested in public transport initiatives and supporting infrastructure. The money will be spent over the next three years. Despite all the hype, digital sales won’t surpass CD sales until 2014, based on linear growth rates. And despite claims that they’re being robbed into penury by “pirates”, the music industry finds unexpected ways of profiting from its assets. The ringtone business, for example, grossed $75bn for operators last year – double the global revenue of the music industry.Republicans will go into the elections with a message that they’ve made great strides fighting illegal immigration, including authorizing a fence along one-third of the U.S.-Mexico border and making a $1.2 billion down payment on it. Among its final tasks before leaving to campaign, the Senate on Friday night passed and sent to President Bush a bill authorizing 700 new miles of fencing on the southern border. No one knows how much it will cost, but a separate bill also on the way to the White House makes a $1.2 billion down payment on it. A 14-mile segment of fence under construction in San Diego is costing $126.5 million. The fence bill was passed by the House two weeks ago. The Senate vote on it Friday night was 80-19. In addition to money for starting work on the fence, a homeland security bill Congress was completing Friday includes $380 million to hire 1,500 more Border Patrol agents and money to build detention facilities to hold 6,700 more illegal immigrants until they can be deported. Another stadium in line, for the Giants and Jets in New Jersey, is estimated to cost $1.2 billion. Immigrants in North Carolina will send an estimated $1.2 billion back to Latin America this year that will be used to help reduce poverty in their homelands, according to a new study. Migrants – legal and illegal – work on construction sites, in animal-processing plants and in the service industry around North Carolina. The availability of such jobs has made North Carolina a top destination for migrant workers. On average, migrant workers are expected to send $300 a month to their native countries, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, which issued the report Wednesday. “This is amazing, because the money goes into the pockets of poor people,” said Luis Pastor, chief executive officer of the Latino Community Credit Union, a Durham-based agency with more than 50,000 members statewide. The credit union was not involved in the study. Nationally, the amount of money migrants send home should increase 12 percent over 2005, the report said. The $45 billion that 12.6 million immigrants from Latin America will send home annually is more than the assistance their countries get from the U.S. government or other aid organizations, the study says, making it a major tool for reducing poverty in Latin America.Guggenheim Aviation Partners LLC has ordered four Boeing 747-8 Freighters in a deal valued at $1.2 billion at list prices. The four planes, which will be built in Everett, have 16 percent greater payload capacity than the company’s current 747-400 Freighter model. Struggling US car firm Ford has seen its third quarter losses widen dramatically, hit by the expense of its ongoing cost-cutting plan. Ford said its loss in the three months until the end of September totalled US$5.8 billion – almost 30 times higher they were at this time last year. Leaving out the provision for its cost cuts, including 45,000 redundancies, the loss shortened to US$1.2b. Ford added that an error meant it had to restate all earnings since 2001.The Atlanta-based beverage giant Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) had net income of $1.5 billion on $6.5 billion in revenue, compared with net income of $1.3 billion on $6 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2005. Earnings were 62 cents a share, up from earnings of 54 cents a share in the third quarter of 2005. Google bought internet video sharing website YouTube for US$1.65 billion in stock. BOISE, Idaho (AP) – Wildfires across the country have burned a record number of acres this year, and with the scorched land comes a record bill, a federal official said Tuesday. The U.S. Forest Service’s firefighting efforts for fiscal year 2006, which ended Sept. 30, cost more than $1.5 billion, at least $100 million over budget, said Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department undersecretary for natural resources and the environment. Gates Foundation donates to India HIV/AIDS. In its efforts to create awareness among people living with HIV/AIDS and slash the soaring figure of AIDS patients, the Indian Government on Tuesday got a boost when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it would make a $23 million grant to India. India with 5.7 million infections has the world’s highest number of people living with the deadly disease and the funds will enhance the capacity of the government’s HIV prevention response and will target high-risk groups such as homosexuals, prostitutes and drug users, the Indian health Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.According to the National Association of Home Builders, the median American house size is slightly more than 2,000 square feet. Compare that to the domicile of the world’s richest man: as might be expected from one with that sobriquet, Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ house is more than 30 times that size. The NAHB says that most houses have three bedrooms, one fireplace and are sided in vinyl or aluminum. Some billionaires’ homes have more than a dozen bedrooms; the only vinyl is in the rare-record collection housed in the custom-built listening room. Yet as extravagant as some of their mansions may seem, the homes of the superrich are not out of proportion to their wealth. In fact, they can seem comparatively downright modest. A report released by the National Association of Realtors last year pointed out that in the U.S., about a fifth of a household’s wealth is composed of home equity. Let’s say that held true for Warren Buffett. The mastermind behind holding company Berkshire Hathaway is second on our list of the World’s Richest People, with an estimated net worth of $42 billion. If he sank the average 20% into his home, the property would have to be worth…oh, approximately $8.4 billion. In other words, the gross domestic product of Libya. Instead, Buffett lives more like a millionaire than a billionaire. For nearly 50 years, he’s bedded down in the same Omaha house he bought for $31,500. Although far from elaborate, it is still more than adequate. In 2003, the local assessor pegged its value at nearly $700,000. Buffett disagreed–he thought it was worth more like $500,000. Buffett’s not the only penny-wise homeowner on the list. Ingvar Kamprad, founder and former chief executive of home furnishings giant IKEA, is a notorious tightwad who drives a second-hand Volvo despite his estimated $28 billlion fortune. His house in Lausanne, Switzerland, though hidden behind a high hedge, is said to be surprisingly unremarkable. He does indulge in winemaking, at his small vineyard in Provence, but has been known to complain that it’s an expensive hobby. And even though Gates’ sprawling estate is tremendous and impressive, it’s not Xanadu through and through. Sure, there’s the tremendous main staircase, the 60-foot-long swimming pool…but countless luxury estates have 20-room theaters. Just try peeking into a few Beverly Hills mansions. Thankful patients and their grateful families increased their charitable contributions to health care facilities and organizations by a record 16 percent in the U.S., to $7.01 billion, and by 11 percent in Canada, to $1.2 billion, according to The AHP Report on Giving, FY 2005, issued today by the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy.NBC paid $3.5 billion to televise the five Olympics from 2000 through 2008.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unveiled the church’s preliminary designs Tuesday evening for its massive five-year, 20-acre City Creek Center project before the Salt Lake City Council. The project, estimated to cost $1 billion, will encompass most of two blocks between South Temple and 100 South from West Temple to . It also will spill across to the area south of Weight of excess flab costs us $2B yearly at gas pump, study says. Want to spend less at the pump? Lose some weight. That’s the implication of a new study that says Americans are burning nearly 1 billion more gallons of gasoline each year than they did in 1960 because of their expanding waistlines. Simply put, more weight in the car means lower gas mileage. Using recent gas prices of $2.20 a gallon, that translates to about $2.2 billion more spent on gas each year. The Jamaican agriculture ministry is establishing irrigation systems islandwide at a cost of $2 billion to help farmers make the shift from the rain-fed production system, Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke said yesterday.ATLANTIC CITY — Casino mogul Steve Wynn wants to bring Las Vegas-style glitz and glamour to Atlantic City by teaming up with his former archrival Donald Trump for a $3 billion megaresort that could dominate the heart of the Boardwalk.More than $3 billion will be spent on public Wi-Fi by U.S. municipalities over the next four years. According to the news release, the numbers are exceeding expectations, with muni-Fi spending exceeding $235 million in 2006 — significantly higher the forecast of $177 million made last year. Los Angeles‘ public works officials have drafted a $3 billion plan to upgrade the city’s sewer, storm-water and water-treatment systems. The city is expected to add 700,000 residents in the next 14 years and all those people — and their waste — will generate 68 million more gallons of wastewater daily, the Daily News reported. Much of the massive blueprint is dedicated to upgrading sewer lines and expanding the city’s wastewater treatment plant in the San Fernando Valley, according to the newspaper. The new concept emphasizes reusing water. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has approved a five-year, $3 billion Medicaid experiment in New York state. The focus of the experiment, the agency said Tuesday, will be on encouraging low-income elderly and disabled Medicaid beneficiaries to use more in-home and community-based care and rely less on hospitals and nursing homes. NEW YORK – One of the largest apartment complexes in the nation was sold to a developer Tuesday for $5.4 billion after a bidding war that included tenants who expressed fear that their middle-class homes would be replaced by top-dollar luxury apartments.MetLife Inc., one of the nation’s largest insurers, announced the sale of the Peter Cooper Village andStuyvesant Town apartments to the Tishman Speyer development company in a joint venture with BlackRock Realty, the real estate arm of BlackRock Inc.$5B to be spent on Halloween holiday. Halloween fans can buy just about any conceivable holiday item these days – from a fake coffin for the lawn to a fire hydrant costume for the family pooch. With such variety, it’s no surprise that Halloween is making headway as a major retail holiday. This year sales are expected to approach $5 billion nationwide – a big increase from the $3.29 billion spent in 2005, according to the National Retail Federation. Spending per person is expected to average $60.
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