Business Markets

BEIJING, July 9 (UPI) — Chinese regulators said they will not shut down Google Inc. or Microsoft Corp.’s Internet mapping services.

“We will not investigate or shut down the Web sites that have submitted their applications and are under examination,” the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping said, China Daily reported Saturday.

The statement referred to companies that had submitted applications before the July 1 deadline, which included the two U.S. companies.

In June, Chinese regulators relaxed their standard of having foreign companies that operate online mapping services in the country be controlled by a domestic firm. Google China is a 50-50 partnership, the newspaper said.

Marsha Wang, a spokeswoman for Google China, did not comment on the issue but repeated a previous statement.

“We’re in discussions with the government about how we can offer a mapping product in China,” she said.

AP Photo In this file photo, Apple CEO Steve Jobs with an iPhone, left, iPad and iPod Touch, right, are displayed at an Apple announcement in San Francisco.

AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO — A new security hole has opened up in Apple Inc.’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, raising alarms about the susceptibility of some of the world’s hottest tech gadgets to hacker attacks.

Flaws in the software running those devices came to light after a German security agency warned that criminals could use them to steal confidential data off the devices. Apple, the world’s largest technology company by market value, said Thursday that it is working on a fix that will be distributed in an upcoming software upgrade.

With the security hole, an attacker can get malicious software onto a device by tricking its owner into clicking an infected PDF file. G

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Premier Colin Barnett has appointed South Perth MLA John McGrath as the new parliamentary secretary to assist with the planning and development of Perth’s multi-purpose sports stadium at Burswood.

Mr McGrath was sworn in at a special executive council meeting this morning.

“John McGrath has gained invaluable knowledge of stadium development through his time as a sports journalist and is familiar with the requirements of sporting organisations,” the Premier said.

“He will continue to use that knowledge by working with myself, Sport and Recreation Minister Terry Waldron, the Perth Stadium steering committee and stakeholders, to design and build what is one of Western Australia’s most significant developments.”

Darling Range MLA Tony Simpson will replace Mr McGrath as Government Whip in the Legislative Assembly.

Canberra real estate agency, Luton Properties, has been recognised for helping homeowners sell by promoting green living in their homes by being named the 2011 Telstra ACT Business of the Year.

Established in 1999 by Richard Luton, the agency also won the Panasonic Australia Medium Business Award, and earlier this year won the Real Estate Institute of Australia’s Excellence Award for Innovation.

The business focuses on environmental sustainability in its offices and encourages sellers to make their homes more energy efficient by giving advice on home energy audits.

Luton Properties boasts 185 record suburb sales prices among its 6500 home sales over the last 11 years, with its 270 sales exceeding $1 million.

Luton said they penetrated the market by opening local offices as an alternative to the widespread national agencies and using technology to match sellers with buyers.

Panasonic Managing Director Steve Rust said Luton Properties had shown customer focus and openness to opportunities.

“The path to transforming great ideas into business success is inspiration, coupled with hard work and determination,” he said.

Other winners of the Telstra ACT Business Awards were:

• Business Owner Micro-Business Award: Learning Options

• MYOB Small Business Award: Interaction Consulting Group

• AMP Innovation Award: Lucy Media

• Yellow Pages Social Responsibility Award: PCA People Pty Ltd
• The BlackBerry People’s Choice Award: Lucy Media

Telstra Business Group Managing Director Deena Shiff said all winners had created local job opportunities and contributed to their local communities.

The national Telstra Business Awards will take place in Melbourne on 26 August. The nat

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WASHINGTON, July 5 (UPI) — The U.S. corn crop remains slow compared with the long-term average, following up late planting with late silking, the Department of Agriculture said.

The silking stage is when the corn sends out silky tassels, which are critical for pollination.

The USDA said 6 percent of the U.S. crop was in the silking stage, compared with a long-term average of 12 percent for this time of year.

Farmers report 10 percent of the crop is in very poor to poor condition, while 90 percent is either in fair, good or excellent condition. Still, corn can run into an early fall, which can make a critical difference at harvest time if the ears are not fully developed.

The USDA’s weekly crop report said 8 percent of the soybean crop was blooming, also behind the five-year average, which has 18 percent of the crop in bloom by this week of the year.

Soybeans, like corn, are 90 percent in fair, good or excellent shape.

The rice crop in the six most critical rice-producing states is 95 percent in fair-to-excellent shape, and rice is ahead of its average progress for this week of the year — 10 percent headed out compared with 9 percent for the long-term average.

Fifty-six percent of the winter wheat crop has been harvested, slightly ahead of the historic average.

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Business planning is the magic bean for successful businesses. Put a plan in place, give it the continued attention it needs and your business is going to grow stronger and better. Whether it grows bigger and stronger depends on the plan you’ve chosen, but the point is, without business planning, you have a fair chance of ending up with nothing but some churned up dirt to show for your efforts.

This business planning makeover is designed to ensure that you create a Business Action Plan that will provide your small business direction for the coming year – or longer. When you’ve completed it, you will have a Vision Statement, a Mission Statement and specific business goals that enable you to put your business planning into action.

The Basic Questions of Business Planning

So let’s start with the basics of business planning.

The assumption of business planning is that you want your small business to be successful.

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As federal authorities and Exxon Mobil Corp. worked Tuesday to clean up an oil spill in Montana’s Yellowstone River, a U.S. lawmaker called for hearings to investigate the pipeline rupture that created the spill.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey said pipeline owner and operator ExxonMobil should appear before Congress to answer questions about its operation of the Silvertip pipeline, which spilled as much as 1,000 barrels of oil near Billings, Mont., late Friday.

“ExxonMobil has turned parts of the Yellowstone River black with their spilled oil,” Markey, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement. He added that lawmakers should examine “the holes in oil pipeline safety that led to this incident and how we might prevent another spill in the future.”

Markey noted that Exxon’s Montana oil pipeline met all regulatory requirements and that federal authorities had inspected the line in December. He proposed that U.S.

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