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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Zuckerberg, wife, to give $120 million to schools

From Wire Reports

MENLO PARK, Calif. – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are donating $120 million to public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The gift, which the couple discussed Tuesday in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press, will be spread over the next five years. It is the biggest allocation to date of the $1.1 billion in Facebook stock the couple pledged last year to the nonprofit Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

The first $5 million of the $120 million will go to the San Francisco, Ravenswood and Redwood City school districts and will focus on principal training, classroom technology and helping students transition from the eighth to the ninth grade. The couple and their foundation, called Startup: Education, determined the issues of most urgent need based on discussions with school administrators and local leaders.

Britain adding vice to GDP estimates

LONDON – Britain is putting a price on vice.

Prostitution and the import, manufacture and consumption of illegal drugs like crack cocaine and heroin will be included in the official estimates of the country’s economy, the national statistics agency said Friday.

Some of these activities, like prostitution, are legal in certain European Union countries, and comparable figures are needed. All member states need the same standard because they are used to assess a member state’s contribution to the EU budget.

The new estimates also simply seek to get a more realistic picture of the economy – warts and all.

Illegal drugs and prostitution are already measured in Estonia, Austria, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden and Norway, the ONS said in a report.

In Britain, they would add approximately 10 billion pounds ($16.7 billion) to gross domestic product in 2009, the ONS said. That remains a very small portion of the overall GDP, which now stands at 1.5 trillion pounds.

To measure prostitution, statisticians will have to tabulate up the value of things like brothel rental, condom sales, makeup and the clothing of sex workers.

For illegal drugs, the ONS will examine production and sales of crack cocaine, powder cocaine, heroin, cannabis, Ecstasy and amphetamines. Growing drugs will be classed as “production,” buying them for home use, “expenditure,” while selling them as “income.”

Bombardier halts CSeries test flights

MONTREAL – Bombardier’s CSeries test flight program was grounded Friday following what the company called “an engine-related incident” on one of the aircraft during ground maintenance testing.

A company spokesman said there were no injuries and testing will resume pending an investigation by the company, engine-maker Pratt & Whitney and Transport Canada.

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board sent an investigator to the scene to gather information and assess the incident.

Montreal-based Bombardier, the world’s third-largest maker of civilian commercial aircraft, has said it hopes to capture half the global market of the 100-to-149-seat planes and has marketed the CSeries plane as being 20 percent more fuel-efficient than the comparable Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 family of aircraft. The CSeries is critical to Bombardier Aerospace, which has spent years designing the advanced-technology jet.

The nature of the incident that occurred late Thursday afternoon in Quebec wasn’t immediately disclosed.