Rich Guys Club

A company backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Toshiba are in early talks to jointly develop a small nuclear reactor, the Japanese electronics giant said Tuesday.

The Nikkei business daily earlier reported that the two sides would team up to develop a compact next-generation reactor that can operate for up to 100 years without refueling to provide emission-free energy.

The daily said the joint development would focus on the Traveling-Wave Reactor (TWR), which consumes depleted uranium as fuel. Current light-water reactors require refueling every few years.

“Toshiba has entered into preliminary talks with TerraPower,” said Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Ohmori. “We are looking into the possibility of working together.”

Gates is the principal owner of TerraPower, an expert team based in the US state of Washington that is investigating ways to improve emission-free energy supplies using small nuclear reactors.

Read More: – AFP

Bill Gates is no longer the world’s richest man in the world!

The Microsoft tycoon was edged out of the top spot of a new Forbes list top detailing the world’s richest people by Mexican telecommunications businessman Carlos Slim, who has an estimated $500 million more than Gates.

Read More: – RadarOnline.Com

When Forbes releases its annual ranking of the world’s richest billionaires tomorrow (Wednesday), it appears likely Warren Buffett will once again come in behind his friend and online bridge partner, Bill Gates.

My extremely back-of-the-envelope calculation is based on big gains for shares of both Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft over the past six months.

A year ago, Gates beat Buffett by $40 billion to $37 billion, ending the Omaha billionaire’s one-year reign at the top of the global list.  Before that, Gates had been number one for the previous 13 years.

We got an update last September.  In its list of the 400 richest Americans, Forbes put Gates at the top with an estimated wealth of $50 billion.  Buffett was number two with $40 billion.

Read More: – By Alex Crippen, CNBC

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has slammed Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for being more preoccupied with treating his own baldness than third world malaria.

The New York Post said Gates believes Berlusconi is stingy when it comes to foreign aid and is more concerned about his receding hairline than the world’s starving people.

“Rich people spend a lot more money on their own problems,” Gates said.

Read More: – the Belgravia Centre Hair Loss Blog

Philanthropy has become a new battleground for Britain’s private banks as they line up to offer rich clients the slickest methods to mimic the charitable giving of the likes of Bill Gates and George Soros.

Industry experts say the initiative by the UK’s largest wealth managers reflects part of a push to attract clients with niche services beyond traditional areas such as investment advice in an increasingly competitive market.

“Private banks are competing in a very tight market place. A lot of them offer services they don’t charge for … and philanthropy is part of that,” said Chris Groves, a partner at law firm Withers.

Coutts, the private banking arm of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L), has the longest established philanthropy team in the UK dating back to 2005 while Barclays’ (BARC.L) wealth division recently hired Emma Turner to head client philanthropy.

Read More: – By Chris Vellacott, Reuters

Billionaire businessman and philanthropist Bill Gates said he isn’t surprised by the sluggish economic recovery, adding that tax increases are needed to balance the federal budget.

“The budget is very, very out of balance,” Gates said on”Good Morning America” today. “Without changes in taxes or entitlement policies, it won’t get back into balance. Taxes are going to have to go up and entitlements are going to have to be moderated.”

Gates also showed support for the president’s plan to tax the country’s largest banks to recover losses from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, despite his friend and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett’s opposition to the plan.

“That’s a rare case,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time I’ll agree with Warren. He’s a great guide for me. I think we see it differently.”

Read More: – By Kate Escherich, ABC News

The economy is improving for the super rich. After two years of declines, the total net worth of America’s richest people rose 10 percent to $955 billion this year from 2002, according to Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of the nation’s 400 wealthiest individuals.

MICROSOFT CORP. FOUNDER Bill Gates, who remained in the top spot, personified the trend toward increasing wealth. His fortune increased by $3 billion to $46 billion this year. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen held third place, with his net worth rising $1 billion to $22 billion. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)

Investor Warren Buffett kept the No. 2 position although his wealth was unchanged at $36 billion.

Forbes said the surge in collective net worth was largely due to gains in Internet stocks and tech fortunes. For example, Amazon.Com’s Jeff Bezos saw his fortune expand by more than $3 billion to $5.1 billion as the stock of the online retailer skyrocketed. Bezos was the top gainer on the list, and holds spot 32.

David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!, saw his net worth nearly triple to $1.6 billion, tying him with 13 others for the 126th spot. Yahoo!’s other co-founder, Jerry Yang, also nearly tripled his fortune, but he shared the 162nd spot on the list with 16 others with a $1.4 billion fortune.

Read More: – The Associated Press

A federal appeals court ordered Microsoft Corp. to stop selling its Word program in January and pay a Canadian software company $290 million for violating a patent, upholding the judgment of a lower court.

But people looking to buy Word or Microsoft’s Office package in the U.S. won’t have to go without the software. Microsoft said Tuesday it expects that new versions of the product, with the computer code in question removed, will be ready for sale when the injunction begins on Jan. 11.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

Toronto-based i4i Inc. sued Microsoft in 2007, saying it owned the technology behind a tool in the popular word processing program. The technology in question gives Word users an improved way to edit XML, or code that tells the program how to interpret and display a document’s contents.

A Texas jury found that Microsoft Word willfully infringed on the patent. Microsoft appealed that decision, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Tuesday upheld the lower court’s damage award and the injunction against future sales of infringing copies of Word.

Read More: – The Associated Press