Airbus Denies Massive Price Cut

Filton-based planemaker Airbus has denied that it had to cutprices by more than 45 per cent in order to win this week's key orderfrom easyJet.

The company on Monday announced it had won a firm order from low-cost airline easyJet for 120 A319 planes.

But reports suggested that the company had discounted the closeto-GBP4 billion list price of the planes in order to win the businessfrom rival Boeing.

Noel Forgeard, Airbus chief executive, said rumours of 45 per centdiscounts were "just ridiculous." And he insisted both that thecontract had been profitable for the company and that its price hadnot been far from Boeing's price.

He said: "What really made a …

D.C.

ALL politics is local. That American aphorism is playing out across the Arab world.

The Zionist bogeyman that Arab rulers have relied upon for more than six decades to deflect their people's demands for freedom, democracy and economic opportunity won't work to save them now.

This time around there have been only a few feeble and transparent efforts by dictators to blame Israel for their problems, but no one is buying.

Syria's myopic ophthalmologist, President Bashar Assad, dismissed the demonstrations in his country as the work of an "American-Israeli conspiracy ... to dismantle Syria."

Even a longtime Assad family apologist, Patrick Seale, took him to task …

Toy story: Soviet-era landmark for kids closes

The same year that Sputnik soared into space saw the launch of another Soviet-era icon that may have loomed larger for generations of Russians: a huge toy store in central Moscow called Detsky Mir, or Children's World.

Fifty years later, the hulking block-long building across from the KGB's notorious Lubyanka headquarters closed Tuesday for major renovations, the latest landmark to be torn down or tarted up in the malling of Moscow.

The toy store, faced in yellowish tile on a sloping square near the Kremlin, was a place of dreams and desire for Soviet children and a crucial resource for parents struggling to find them holiday gifts, school supplies and clothing …

Legal eagles take wing ; Lawyers ride an M&A tailwind.

The opening up of the economy has galvanised the oldworldprofession of law. Going beyond the thrust and parry of courtroomlitigation, it has led to the rise of the corporate lawyer, nowbeing spoken of in the hushed tones usually reserved for MBAwhizkids. And the demand will continue to hold.

Within corporate law, capital markets, private equity,infrastructure and project finance are the areas where the demand isred hot, while corporate practice in debt capital markets,convergence law and competition law promise to be areas of growth.Says Vishnu Jerome, Senior Associate with Mumbai-based corporate lawfirm AZB & Partners: M & A and PE deals in India have become evenmore …

Scoreboard: Books by our sports heroes create healthy competition on the bookshelves

Books by our sports heroes create healthy competition on the bookshelves

America Above the Rim: Basketball Jones edited by Todd Boyd and Kennith L. Shropshire New York University Press, November 2000, $18.95, ISBN 0-814-71316-5

A compendium of wisdom on the game which helped define the 20th century and will no doubt define the 21st. Basketball is the top aspiration for generations of black boys-the source of massive wealth or empty hoop dreams.

Black Stars of Professional Wrestling by Julian L.D. Shabazz Awesome Records, 1999, $14.94 ISBN 1-839-68003-7

Focusing on the longtime prejudices and stereotype of those performers by the industry's promoters, …

Scottish Football Results

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — Results Sunday in Scottish football (home teams listed first):

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Euro a big hit in Montenegro and Kosovo

European Union membership still remains an elusive goal for Montenegro and Kosovo. But Europe's two youngest states have an apparent advantage over many other candidates to get into the elite club: They use the euro.

Sure, there is some anxiety about the European currency's weakness in the wake of the Greek economic crisis. And the accompanying economic jitters within the EU _ and particularly in those EU countries using the euro _ is also causing concerns.

"With the euro falling, I'll need more money to break even," said Nikola Lazarevic, the owner of the Grispolis fish restaurant in this Adriatic seaside town.

But for now, the …