Marketplace: News Archives

Tuesday, September 26, 2000
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It's Tuesday, the 26th of September. I'm David Brancaccio.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed Microsoft a little pick-me-up today by declining to take up the company's appeal of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's order to break up the company to fix its monopoly. The antitrust team at the Justice Department wanted it to go right to the Supreme Court, but Microsoft wanted a federal appeals court instead. Louis Sernoff, an antitrust lawyer at Baker and Hostetler in Washington, says the high court justices may believe they already have enough work to do.

Sernoff: "It has been decades since such an appeal was taken, so it's hardly revolutionary in that respect. Their eagerness to take on new and wonderful things is diminished from what it might have once been. In other words, I think they like to receive cases through the filter of the court of appeals. And, this is an intensely factual case."

Today's development means that a federal appeals court will review the case, a court that has sided with Microsoft in another antitrust case two years ago.

Sernoff: "They've decided that if they hear it, they're going to hear it on bank, which means the entire court will hear it, not just the normal three judge panel. And my guess is that it's going to be a major piece of their workload this year."

The appeals court today wasted no time and ordered the two sides to come up with a schedule for the process by Monday. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he felt a "kind of relief" that the next stage is now moving forward. Microsoft stock went up 2.33 percent.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank opened their annual meeting in the Czech capital Prague today. And in what has become the expected scenario, it was well attended by police and protestors. Kate Connolly is covering the protest for London's Guardian newspaper. She says what started as a low-key protest quickly escalated into violent confrontation.

Connolly: "Large parts of Prague are effectively under siege now following what today was some quite violent confrontations between 10,000 to 15,000 anti-globalization activists and Czech riot police, with police using tear gas, water cannons and percussion grenades as well to try and disperse the protesters. The conference center there has been effectively closed. Many delegates are trapped inside because the police are saying that it's actually too dangerous for them to come away from the conference center. The feeling is that the business can still go ahead unimpeded. But these people are locked in this bunker-style building and really what goes on outside has very little effect on most of them."

Kate Connolly is the Prague correspondent for The Guardian.

Pick your cliché: Can-of-worms, Pandora's Box or handy empowerment tool. We saw an item today announcing a "Do-it-yourself-at-home DNA identity testing". For $280 people can "resolve identity issues in the privacy of their own home," specifically for such purposes as establishing paternity, says the product's blurb. We asked Helen Palmer at the Marketplace Health Desk to check it out.

Palmer: "Home DNA testing has been around for a couple of years, a spin-off of the kind of paternity testing the government's been doing for a decade. This latest test, which claims to be the cheapest and fastest, is marketed through an Internet company in Ft. Worth, Texas."

Calvert: "I got involved in selling these kits based on my own circumstances several years ago."

Palmer: "That's Steve Calvert, manager of the company that sells the kits. Involved in a divorce in 1995, he wanted to be sure that his three children were indeed his. But at the time, DNA testing was prohibitively expensive. As his youngest grew to look ever less like him, it became more of an obsession. Was this child really his flesh and blood?"

Calvert: "Subconsciously, I am sure that that would change the way I feel and act towards him."

Palmer: "That's one of the prime concerns experts in this field voice over easy availability of tests such as these."

Lance: "One could see the potential for more family disruption."

Palmer: "Leonard Lance, professor of health law at Boston University, says it could be devastating for children and points out that parenting has to do with a lot more than genetics. But, he predicts that easier, cheaper tests will also mean more tests. And indeed, since he developed them a couple of years ago, Steve Calvert says he's shipping several at-home tests each month, and sales are increasing about 15 percent each month. But what about his own children? 'Good news,' he says. They're all his. From the Health Desk at WGBH Boston, I'm Helen Palmer for Marketplace."

Some Wall Street players were put out that Eastman Kodak waited until four days before the end of the accounting quarter before sharing the bombshell that its profits would disappoint. Kodak pointed its finger in an increasingly popular direction when assigning blame, the low European currency and high oil prices. Today Kodak shares fell 24.75 percent. Kodak's one of the Dow 30, a big reason for the index's 176 point drop today, that's 1.66 percent. The Nasdaq fell, as well.