When the political activist Al Sharpton pivoted from his war against bigmouth radio man Don Imus to a war on bad-mouth gangsta rap, the instinct among older music fans was to roll their eyes and yawn. Ten years ago, another activist, C. Delores Tucker, launched a very similar campaign to clean up rap music. She focused on Time Warner , whose subsidiary Interscope was home to hard-core rappers Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur. In 1995 Tucker succeeded in forcing Time ...

FROM its inception, the stock market was meant to be a place where businessmen could raise capital by selling shares in their enterprises, and where investors could turn a profit when those enterprises prospered. The market still serves both purposes, but today it is judged less by what it does for businessmen seeking capital than by what it accomplishes for investors seeking gain. In a time of high and rising taxes, investment in stocks is one of the few ways ...

The Homebuyer Tax Credit was a sweet little perk for the housing market, but now it's over. That leaves home prices to rise — or fall — on the merits. Many housing experts believe that with the inventory of unsold homes still high, there could be more price weakness in many markets, so for people thinking about buying a home it may be too early. But not every market is the same, so it pays to understand well ...

In the 1997 film Seven Years in Tibet, the character of Austrian mountaineer Peter Aufschnaiter escapes an Indian POW camp and declares that he is heading for China to find work. His compatriot-in-arms, Heinrich Harrer, played by a sun-kissed, blue-eyed Brad Pitt, says he's skipping China and going to mountains of Tibet. Harrer goes on to cross the line that separates India from Tibet, where he makes a silver-screen connection with the Dalai Lama among the Chinese ...

The high-pitched, nasal call of the neighborhood scrap collector is a familiar weekend sound in most Indian neighborhoods. In Noida, a quiet satellite city of Delhi, Ashu Kumar has been collecting old newspapers, phones, computers, digital recorders and refrigerators for the past five years. And for years, at the end of each month, Ashu treks down a dusty road leading to the Seelampur scrap market — the largest graveyard of India's ever-growing electronic waste — to sell ...

One of the best ways to make money and reduce risk in today's choppy market is through a classic hedge fund: one that bets on some stocks to go up and others to go down. Since January 2000, when the Dow peaked, hedge funds have risen 13% on average, while the typical stock has fallen 20%, reports Hennessee Group, a hedge-fund tracker. Over the past three years, assets in the 6,000 U.S. hedge funds have more than doubled, to $563 ...

Brian Ward lost his job on a Friday afternoon. Eleven days later he had a new one. With nearly 1 in 10 people out of work and the typical job search lasting 12 weeks, how did the Cleveland-based software architect pull it off? In a phrase: online social networking. Welcome to the new rules of the job hunt. Gone are the days of simply posting your rsum on CareerBuilder, e-mailing former colleagues and trolling company websites for open ...

For a short time at the launch of GM's new Baojun 630 sedan at the Shanghai Auto Show this week, the car was the side attraction. On a stage behind the car, two male models dressed in black performed a strange routine in which they drew car parts with their fingers in the air and then tossed the phantom pieces to one another. A ballet dancer emerged to twirl in front of a video of the Baojun ...

Chung Mong Koo, Chairman of South Korea's Hyundai Motor, carefully scrutinizes a newly designed gearshift lever for the automaker's Sonata sedan while his entire senior-management team hovers around, anxiously awaiting his approval. The execs are justifiably edgy. Engineers added a plastic plate beneath the shifter to prevent spilled coffee and other flotsam from falling into the mechanism and gumming it up. It's a minor change, but no one treats it that way, least of all Chung, a hard-nosed, detail-oriented boss ...

Anders Dahlvig recently hit the 10-year mark as CEO of Ikea. Under his leadership, the Swedish furniture giant has nearly tripled its number of stores and employees, and committed to a broad new slate of policies on the environment. The company maintains a mixed reputation on quality, though, in the midst of an increasingly tough economic climate. In a series of recent conversations, Dahlvig spoke with TIME's Jeremy Caplan about why the tough business climate works in ...