My synthesis

Speculation about Peoplesoft’s change of heart has intensified after the firm sacked chief executive Craig Conway, a main opponent to Oracle’s approach.
New CEO and co-founder Dave Duffield said on Friday he was confident about the company’s outlook and he had no plans to sell the company.
Chief financial officer Kevin Parker told Reuters on Friday that no board members or executives have held talks with Oracle.
Peoplesoft had earlier claimed that the battle with Oracle was denting demand for its products, with many consumers unwilling to buy software they fear will not be updated or supported.
The firm said it was still facing a “challenging pricing environment”.
Revenues, however, in the third quarter rose 12% to $699m, topping market expectations.
The company forecasts that revenue and earnings growth will continue in the current quarter.
“The earnings report looks pretty good overall,” said Tad Piper, an analyst at Piper Jaffray.
Peoplesoft, the software maker that is the target of a hostile takeover bid from industry heavyweight Oracle, has returned to profit.
Net income in the three months ending 30 September was $24m (£13m), compared with a loss of $7.3m a year earlier.
Peoplesoft has been fighting Oracle’s advances for 15 months, though there has been speculation recently that the firm may now be willing to negotiate.
Oracle restated its $21-a-share offer for Peoplesoft on Thursday.

Gavin and Stacey star James Corden was quite simply “blown away” by Coldplay’s comeback gig.
He was one of a host of celebrities among the thousands of fans at London’s Brixton Academy on Monday night.
“I loved it,” he said. “I think that may have been the sixth time I have seen them now, and musically, that’s as good as I have seen them play.”
It was Coldplay’s first concert in two and half years and while Corden said he liked the new album Viva La Vida or Death & All His Friends, he did not really know it yet.
“It has a real anthemic quality about it, it feels like it has been built for stadiums,” he said.
He said he was still drawn to their golden oldies and claimed he was the “reason” behind the new acoustic version of Yellow, which the band performed from a balcony.
But I only talk through Gwyneth, so I never have direct contact with the band. That’s why if you see the band and me in the same room, they pretend not to know me.”
Hollywood actress Gwyneth was also spotted at the free gig, as was Kelly Osbourne, Stella McCartney, Andy Burrows from Razorlight, Muse’s Dominic Howard and Danny McNamara from Embrace.
Comedian Dom Joly said the band was no laughing matter.
“I am on Facebook and I said I was going to see Coldplay and so many people wrote, they’re crap,” he said.
“I think it is trendy to knock Coldplay and I genuinely think they’re a great band.” www.easybuyying.com

Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic have both been charged and indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal at The Hague.
They face numerous counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and violation of the laws of war in Bosnia-Hercegovina between April 1992 and July 1995.
There are 11 counts against Mr Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb political leader, and 15 against Mr Mladic, who commanded the Bosnian Serb army.
The indictment says they were responsible for persecution of Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) and Bosnian Croat civilians on national, political and religious grounds.
The tribunal says Mr Karadzic’s and Mr Mladic’s squads killed more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims captured around Srebrenica in July 1995.
Bosnian Serb forces executed thousands of Bosnian Muslim men in an organised, widespread and systematic manner”, the indictment says.
It says Mr Karadzic and Mr Mladic are responsible for the unlawful confinement, murder, rape and inhumane treatment of the non-Serb civilian population in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Detainees were terrorised by random brutality and sexual violence, it says.
It lists detention facilities – such as Omarska, Keraterm and Luka – where Bosniaks and Croats were detained, and says the camp commanders were accountable to Mr Karadzic and Mr Mladic.
In many instances, women and girls were repeatedly raped in the camps.
Food rations and medical care in the prisons were inadequate.
Mr Karadzic and Mr Mladic are also accused of shelling Sarajevo, and of using 284 UN peacekeepers as human shields in May and June 1995.
For 44 months the forces under their command “used shelling and sniping to kill, maim, wound and terrorise the civilian inhabitants of Sarajevo,” the indictment says.
Both men are charged with the unlawful appropriation and destruction of property and places of worship.
The tribunal also accuses Mr Karadzic and Mr Mladic of committing grave breaches and violations of the laws or customs of war. www.easybuyying.com

Microsoft has unveiled a cloud computing service, in which data and applications will not be stored on individuals’ computers.
The new platform, dubbed Windows Azure, was announced at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.
The platform was described by Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie as “Windows for the cloud”.
The framework will be offered alongside the next Windows release, Windows 7.
The move sees Microsoft taking on established players like Google and Amazon in the rapidly growing business of online software.
The aim is to allow developers to build new applications which will live on the internet, rather than on their own computers.
Microsoft believes consumers will also want to store far more of their data – from letters to photos to videos – on the servers in its “cloud” of giant data centres around the world, so that it can be accessed anywhere, from any device.
The move, which Microsoft sees as a major shift in its corporate strategy, was unveiled in front of 6,000 software developers from around the world.
The term cloud computing has become increasingly fashionable, as companies with large data centres start renting out space to businesses wanting to build rapidly growing online applications without needing to invest in more servers as traffic grows.
For consumers, there is the prospect of a future where much of their data and many of the applications they use could be stored online “in the cloud”.www.easybuyying.com

Guinea’s military leader Capt Moussa Dadis Camara has postponed an announcement on whether he will stand in next year’s presidential election.
The African Union had given him until midnight on Saturday to formally promise he would not participate.
Capt Camara says he wants the region’s appointed mediator, Burkina Faso’s leader, to decide his country’s future.
The crisis was triggered last month when troops opened fire on protesters, angered at rumours he intended to run.
Human rights groups say some 157 people died but the junta puts the toll at 57.
Soldiers allegedly raped and sexually abused women during the crackdown, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has opened an investigation into the deaths.
On Saturday, the West African states – through the 15-member regional body Ecowas – imposed an arms embargo on Guinea in protest at the “atrocities”.

He was a partner in President Omar al-Bashir’s 1989 coup against Sadeq al-Mahdi’s elected government.
Jem is led by a doctor, Khalil Ibrahim, who was one of the authors of the “The Black Book”, which documented the disproportionate power of three northern Arab tribes.
Jem is currently the most significant fighting force in Darfur, armed with weapons that Sudan says come from neighbouring Chad.
It has bases inside Chad. Khartoum says Jem is supported by Chadian President Idriss Deby, who is from the same Zaghawa ethnic group as Khalil Ibrahim.
In May 2008, Jem launched an unprecedented attack on the Sudanese capital.
In February the following year it was invited to one-on-one talks with Sudan’s government in Doha, Qatar.
Jem signed a “declaration of intent” for a peaceful settlement of the war. Fresh talks may follow.
Many Darfurians distrust Khalil Ibrahim because of his Islamist past and suspect he is focused on political power in Khartoum for his clan.
Until he attacked the capital, Jem had limited support on the ground in Darfur.

But there is likely to be intense rivalry for that post and for the EU president’s job. The latter is unlikely to be settled at the October summit.
Few potential candidates have been named so far – not least because EU politicians did not wish to be seen to be pre-empting the Irish vote.
But in July the UK Europe Minister, Lady Kinnock, said: “The UK government is supporting Tony Blair’s candidature for president of the Council”.
The former UK prime minister, currently a Middle East envoy, has the high-level experience of EU politics necessary for the new job. The president will be appointed by the European Council – the grouping of EU government leaders and presidents.
But Mr Blair’s key role as an ally of former US President George W Bush in the 2003 Iraq war proved very divisive in Europe.
And it is not yet clear how much international clout EU leaders want the new EU president to have.
According to Hugo Brady, the EU president’s job will be “very limited, with few executive powers” and “it is hard to find a list of candidates”.
The proposed EU External Action Service – another Lisbon innovation – has not taken shape yet.
It will be a “quasi diplomatic service,” Mr Brady says, and its formation is likely to be “messy,” drawing officials from the teams serving EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana and EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
Looking further ahead, key changes in voting “weights” – the majority required to enact EU decisions – are not scheduled to come in until 2014.

On Sunday, about 420 families invaded a farm belonging to Klabin, one of Brazil’s biggest paper companies.
The members of the Landless Workers Movement – known by its Portuguese initials MST – allegedly cut down native forest and pine plantations.
“Don’t lose your sense of responsibility,” Lula cautioned activists in his Breakfast with the President show.
He said land activists had to act within the law.
“[Agrarian reform] will be done in the calmest, most peaceful way, because the landless understand that this country has laws, has rules.
“And those apply to the president, they apply to those without land, and they apply to those with land,” he said.
Lula said the government aims to settle 430,000 families and grant 130,000 land titles by the end of 2006.
Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues later warned that the recent invasions threatened to frighten off rural investors.
He also warned the remaining squatters in Sao Paulo they had no choice but to move from the occupied properties.
“The bottom line is either they get out, or they get out,” he warned.
But the squatters hit back, telling AP news agency they had no choice.
“These occupations wouldn’t be necessary if the government did more to help us find places to live,” Roque Cuello said.

A Taliban suicide bomber has attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul, killing at least 17 people in a second attack on the building in little over a year.
Afghan officials say a car bomber blew himself up near the Indian embassy and the Afghan interior ministry.
The Taliban said it carried out the attack and the embassy was the target.
Kabul has been attacked regularly in recent months, and the Indian embassy was itself bombed in July 2008, with dozens of people killed.
Most strikes in the capital target foreign forces or government offices – but civilians are also often killed.
More recently, six Italian soldiers were killed last month in a bomb attack on a military convoy.
India’s Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said the suicide bomber “came up to the outside wall of the embassy with a car loaded with explosives”.
Television pictures showed charred vehicles at the site and ambulances speeding to the location.
An eyewitness, Habib Jan, told the BBC the victims were civilians.
“A [Toyota] Corolla car was parked in front of the Indian embassy. It was rush hour, about 10 minutes after I arrived at the office when we heard an explosion.
“There were lots of workers cleaning the street – most of them have been killed.”
India has a strong relationship with Afghanistan, building and managing infrastructure projects in what analysts say is a concerted effort to minimise Pakistani influence in the country.
Analysts say the strength of India’s relationship with Kabul has made it a key target for the country’s Taliban militants, who have historic links with Pakistan.
Afghan officials linked last year’s bombing to an “active intelligence service” – thought to be Pakistan.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in an online statement that Thursday’s attacker was an Afghan man who blew up his vehicle outside the embassy.
The Afghan Interior Ministry said 17 people had died and 63 had been wounded in the latest attack. Fifteen of the dead were Afghan civilians and one was an Afghan police officer.
The BBC’s Martin Patience, in Kabul, says there appears to be a lot of damage at the scene – now sealed off – and that municipal workers have moved into the area with brooms to begin a clean-up.

On pensions, one of the few areas that Mr Berlusconi was credited with making some improvements, Mr Prodi’s alliance would abolish a law that had raised the retirement age to 60 from 57.
Instead it would look for incentives for companies to keep employees working longer – a key factor in a nation where the birth rate is declining and the number of elderly is increasing.
Italy’s government also is saddled with a mountain of public debt, that has ballooned to 106.5% of gross domestic product (GDP), and a budget deficit that has bust through European Union limits for the past two years.
Mr Prodi has promised a review of government finance, better tax collection, the re-introduction of inheritance tax on the country’s wealthiest people, and a pledge not to follow through on expensive projects like a bridge to link mainland Italy and Sicily.
“The priority of the Italian government right now cannot fail to be the economy, a fresh boost to development, the fight against debt and the deficit,” Il Sole 24 Ore says.
“Everybody is wondering whether this agenda can be respected.”