May 1, 2012

With controversy building over its role in a Mexican bribery scandal, Wal-Mart’s desire to stay out of the limelight grows.

The deal, which gives Microsoft a 17.6 percent stake, values the Nook unit at $1.7 billion — roughly double Barnes & Noble’s entire market value as of last Friday — and bolsters the bookseller’s efforts to make its digital business the linchpin of its future growth.

“An Early History of Fire,” a tumultuous work that has been given a surprisingly flat production by the New Group, is the first new play in a decade from David Rabe.

Concerned about Wal-Mart’s reported cover-up of bribery, leaders of New York City’s pension funds said they would vote their 4.7 million company shares against five directors standing for re-election.

Tom Allen, a partner in a Hollywood marketing firm that aims to attract churchgoers to movies and theater, hopes to take advantage of a “faith moment” on Broadway.

A former state investigator looking into Google’s Street View has identified the so-called Engineer Doe.

In recent years, climate change skeptics have seized on one last argument that cannot be so readily dismissed. Their theory is that clouds will save us.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is enjoying a surge of support and nationalism in a feud with the United Arab Emirates over Abu Musa, a four-square-mile spit of sand with about 2,000 inhabitants.

Tagg Romney, Mitt Romney’s eldest son, and Spencer Zwick, a Romney campaign fund-raiser, turned to wealthy campaign donors for investments in their firm.

A damning report on the hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s British papers convulsed the political and media worlds in Britain and threatens a core asset of News Corporation.

The BlackBerry 10 is critical to the revival of Research in Motion, but early models given to app developers were missing features, like the ability to make calls.

With their economy in recession and facing new belt-tightening measures, the Dutch are showing grim determination.