A round up of today's other stories in brief...
New senior appointments made at IMI
The Irish Management Institute (IMI) has made a range of new senior academic and management appointments in order to expand its executive education and management training programmes.
Dr Paul Donovan has been appointed head of management development at the IMI, while Dr Tim Wray has been made head of executive education. Laura McLellan has been appointed manager of sales and business services, while Kathleen O'Connor has joined as marketing manager.
The institute also recently added three new senior management specialists to its teaching faculty. Dr David Darcy is now director of the IMI's mini-MBA programme; Dr Simon Boucher has joined the IMI as a senior specialist, and Dr Jonathan Westrup is the new faculty director of the IMI's innovation BizLab.
The IMI said management training needs would grow by up to 25 per cent by 2012, based on predictions by the ESRI/Fás.
Oil prices stage modest recovery
Oil prices staged a modest recovery yesterday though gold remained under pressure when commodity markets traded in thin holiday conditions.
Dealers fear that this week could bring further volatility in the energy, metals and agricultural commodity markets after widespread selling pressure last week when risk aversion rose and hedge funds cut back on their bets for further weakness in the dollar.
Geoffrey Yu at UBS said he expected to see further unwinding of leveraged positions and hedge funds liquidating crowded trades in commodities when dealers returned after Easter. - ( Financial Times )
Google opens new Wi-Fi lobby front
Google yesterday opened a new front in its lobbying campaign to try to pry open more access to US airwaves for wireless internet use.
The latest effort could lead to what the internet giant called "Wi-Fi 2.0" - an informal, loosely regulated and low-cost wireless broadband network with "data rates in the gigabits-per-second".
If regulators go along with the plan, new devices using the service could be on sale by next year, said Rick Whitt, Google's lead counsel in Washington. The new pitch was made in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission a week after the completion of the US's landmark 700 megahertz auction.
Google proposed what Mr Whitt called a "belt and suspenders" approach. Along with the controversial "spectrum sensing" approach, which tries to identify which parts of the spectrum are in use to avoid interference, it backed a Motorola plan that would prevent a device from transmitting on a particular wave length until it had received an "all clear" signal from a local transmitter. -( Financial Times )
Dell set to sell cheap PCs in India
Dell, the world's second- largest maker of personal computers, will start selling low-cost models in India to sustain accelerating sales growth in the country, beginning in the middle of April. Dell chief executive Michael Dell is expanding in developing markets such as India, where PC sales gained 80 per cent in the latest quarter.
European stock markets reopen
All major European markets were closed for the Easter bank holiday and reopen this morning after a four-day break in trading.
Asian shares rose yesterday, led by a rally in Taiwan after Ma Ying-jeou's presidential election victory boosted prospects of improved trade with China.
