10. Newcastle United FC Boss Wins £1.3m on Roulette Wheel Spin (The Telegraph)
Mike Ashley, the billionaire businessman and owner of Newcastle United Football Club, stunned gamblers at an exclusive casino by scooping £1.3 million on a single spin of the roulette wheel.

(Mike almost needed that spin to avoid relegation ending the season just seven points above the drop zone.)
9. Inside The World’s First Billion-Dollar Home (Forbes Magazine)
Forbes tours of Mukesh Ambani’s 27-story residential skyscraper in Mumbai, India.

(Aside from 21-stories of opulence, there are six stories of car parking garage spaces hidden by hanging hydroponic gardens.)
8. Demand For Gulfstream’s New Jet ($59 MILLION) Surging Past Expectations (The Huffington Post)
According to a Gulfstream spokesman, demand for the company’s new G650 — the largest Gulfstream yet — has far outstripped early supply. The company has received around 500 letters of inquiry, which include $500,000 deposits from prospective buyers. That’s about equal to the total number of G4’s ever sold — over the past 20 years. Gulfstream, a unit of General Dynamics, sold about 193 of the hot-selling G5 before it moved to the next model.

(And no, the 500 people exspressing interest and sending a $500,000 deposit don’t care about their carbon footprint or yours.)
7. Super Bowl 30-Second Ads to Cost $3 Million in 2009 (Reuters)
NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co, plans to say next week that the entry price for a 2009 Super Bowl 30-second ad will be $3 million, the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday.

(How will they justify a non-NY match-up against a non-unbeaten Patriots team, becasue that’s the only thing that brought them the numbers this time around?)
6. Would You Eat 2,900-Calorie Cheese Fries? (Fortune Small Business)
More cities are requiring restaurants to tell customers how much fat is in that burger. Smart business owners are embracing the trend. Driven by curiosity and customer demand, Marc Geman, CEO of the Spicy Pickle restaurant chain, sent 30 of his top-selling dishes to a testing lab for nutritional analysis. He learned everything about each dish, from calories to sodium content.

(That’s double an entire diet daily intake on one plate. Yum-yum…)
5. Olympics 2012 Chiefs Willing to Spend Money Like Water, say MPs (The Guardian)
Officials on the London Olympics project allowed the cost of the 2012 aquatics centre to quadruple because of “risible” finance controls and a willingness to “spend money like water”, a report by a committee of MPs says today.  The aquatic centre was budgeted at £75m when commissioned in 2004, but the Olympic Delivery Authority revealed this month the final bill will be £242m.

(Well it is an aquatics centre. I love the early guarantees OOC’s make and then come back and say, without exception, whoops, if you want labour peace, it’s gonna cost more.)

4. Apple to Sell Films on Day of Release Via iTunes Reuters)
Apple Inc said on Thursday it would begin selling movie downloads on its iTunes service on the same day as the titles are released in DVD form, under agreements with most of the top Hollywood studios.

(So I can pay even more money for bad films than at the Cineplex! Yeah! Where do I sign up?)

3. Herbalife President Resigns Over Fake Degree (Wall Street Journal)
Gregory Probert, the president and chief operating officer of Herbalife Ltd., lost his job after acknowledging he claimed a fake master’s degree in corporate filings.

(Did he think no one would notice?)

2. You Have 7 Years to Learn Mandarin (CNN Money)
Back in 2001 when the International Olympic Committee chose Beijing as the site of this summer’s games, the event was meant to mark China’s debut as a player on the global economic stage. But a recent study by the economist Angus Maddison projects that China will become the world’s dominant economic superpower much sooner than expected - not in 2050, but in 2015.

(My very smart dasughter studied for 2-months in Shanghai and can speak it so, we’ll ask her to lead the way for our family.)

and the number one business headline over the last two weeks:

1. It’s Official, George W. Bush the Most Unpopular President (CNN)
A new poll suggests that George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in modern American history. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president.

(Business, politics and entertainment rolled into one!)