By Tommy Wilkes and Laurence Fletcher LONDON | Mon May 21, 2012 2:24am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - It's the day after Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday party and David Harding, the head of one of the most successful hedge funds in the world, is bubbling with talk of black holes. Given the financial crisis of the last few years, some might see that as an unwise topic of conversation for a hedge fund manager. But for Harding, a physicist, the geekier the better.The 50-year-old runs Winton Capital, one of a secretive but influential band of computer-driven hedge funds that bet tens of billions of dollars on the world's financial markets using algorithms - mathematical instructions to computers - which consume everything from bond price ... Continue reading →

By Erik Kirschbaum BERLIN | Wed May 16, 2012 2:16am EDT BERLIN (Reuters) - Political spouses sometimes provide a spot of glamour. Then there is Joachim Sauer, a professor of theoretical chemistry. Sauer is the husband of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, arguably the world's most powerful woman. He never speaks to the media and only rarely appears in public with his wife. He skipped her inauguration in 2005, drawing media wrath for watching the event on TV at his Berlin university. A German newspaper once said he was as "invisible as a molecule." His surname means "angry" or "sour."He has made headlines for his frugality, too. In April, he flew alone on a budget airline to Italy, where he and Merkel were to holiday, instead ... Continue reading →

Robert Krulwich, whose father was a hat designer, points to highways as the culprit: Until cars became the dominant mode of personal transport, there was no architectural reason to take your hat off between home and office. With Dwight Eisenhower's interstate highway system came cars, and cars made hats inconvenient, and for the first time men, crunched by the low ceilings in their automobiles, experimented with hat-removal, and got to like it. (Image via Wikimedia Commons) Continue reading →

By Joshua Schneyer, Jeanine Prezioso and David Sheppard NEW YORK | Wed May 2, 2012 6:02am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - As chairman and CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corp, Aubrey McClendon has been a powerhouse in the vast U.S. natural gas market, directing the company's multibillion dollar energy-trading operation and setting output targets for America's second-largest producer. Behind the scenes, a Reuters investigation has found, McClendon also ran a lucrative business on the side: a $200 million hedge fund that traded in the same commodities Chesapeake produces.On Tuesday, two weeks after Reuters reported that McClendon has taken up to $1.1 billion in loans against his stakes in Chesapeake oil and gas wells, the company stripped McClendon of the chairmanship and reiterated that it's reviewing details ... Continue reading →

By Duff Wilson and Janet Roberts Washington, D.C. | Fri Apr 27, 2012 6:13am EDT Washington, D.C. (Reuters) - In the political arena, one side is winning the war on child obesity. The side with the fattest wallets.After aggressive lobbying, Congress declared pizza a vegetable to protect it from a nutritional overhaul of the school lunch program this year. The White House kept silent last year as Congress killed a plan by four federal agencies to reduce sugar, salt and fat in food marketed to children.And during the past two years, each of the 24 states and five cities that considered "soda taxes" to discourage consumption of sugary drinks has seen the efforts dropped or defeated.At every level of government, the food and beverage industries ... Continue reading →

By Chris Francescani SANFORD, Florida | Wed Apr 25, 2012 3:42pm EDT SANFORD, Florida (Reuters) - A pit bull named Big Boi began menacing George and Shellie Zimmerman in the fall of 2009. The first time the dog ran free and cornered Shellie in their gated community in Sanford, Florida, George called the owner to complain. The second time, Big Boi frightened his mother-in-law's dog. Zimmerman called Seminole County Animal Services and bought pepper spray. The third time he saw the dog on the loose, he called again. An officer came to the house, county records show."Don't use pepper spray," he told the Zimmermans, according to a friend. "It'll take two or three seconds to take effect, but a quarter second for the dog to ... Continue reading →

By Geert De Clercq AMNEVILLE, France | Fri Oct 7, 2011 1:05pm BST AMNEVILLE, France (Reuters)- Amneville, a town in the Moselle region of northeastern France, does not look like a fault-line in the euro zone. The smell of grilled chicken wafts over the marketplace on a recent Saturday morning, the CD vendor plays German oom-pah music, and the sky behind the ochre clock tower is a steely blue. Yet the single currency is a target for an unusual politician canvassing stallholders and shoppers in this town near the German border.Fabien Engelmann, a 32-year old municipal plumber with tight-cropped hair, was an activist with France's leading trade union and a Trotskyist for many years. Later he joined the far-left "New Anticapitalist Party". This year he ... Continue reading →

By Brian Love TULLE, France | Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:06am EDT TULLE, France (Reuters) - It's not an introduction you'd expect from a presidential contender. Last, month when French socialist candidate Francois Hollande stepped off a train on a visit to London, he did so with the words "I am not dangerous." The bespectacled 57-year old, who is running against President Nicolas Sarkozy, is barely known outside France. Even at home he was long best known as the supportive partner of fellow Socialist politician Segolene Royal. Now, though, opinion polls put him ahead of Sarkozy, a centre-rightist, in the election whose first round will be held on April 22.For many in financial markets, in both France and Europe, that's a worry. They see Hollande's ... Continue reading →