Harry Potter wizard invoked again as Japan hits back at China

Tokyo (AFP) – The diplomatic bickering between Japan and China descended into name-calling in the British press Monday, with ambassadorial claim and counter-claim invoking the fictional evil wizard of the Harry Potter series, Lord Voldemort.

In an opinion piece published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Tokyo’s envoy to London Keiichi Hayashi compared Beijing to the arch-villain of JK Rowling’s multi-million selling books and the resulting movie franchise.


Steep rise in Facebook’s stock price

Facebook’s stock levitated nearly 30 percent on Thursday, to $34.36 a share, after a second-quarter earnings report that was far stronger than Wall Street had predicted.

Securities analysts raised their revenue and profit estimates and stock-price targets for the social networking company, which has seen sentiment about its prospects swing widely since its initial public offering at $38 a share in May 2012.


Google Needs to Appease Competitors

The European Commission on Wednesday formally said for the first time that Google’s proposal for addressing antitrust concerns did not go far enough, and demanded that it come up with more far-reaching remedies or potentially face a fine of up to $5 billion.