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The Million Dollar Homepage is a website conceived in 2005 by 21-year-old student Alex Tew from Wiltshire, England, to raise money for his university education. The home page consists of a million pixels arranged in a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid; the image-based links on it were sold for $1 per pixel in 10 × 10 blocks. The purchasers of these pixel blocks provided tiny images to be displayed on them, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to which the images were linked, and a slogan to be displayed when hovering a cursor over the link. The aim of the site was to sell all of the pixels in the image, thus generating a million dollars of income for the creator. The Wall Street Journal has commented that the site inspired other websites that sell pixels. Launched on 26 August 2005, the website became an Internet phenomenon. The Alexa ranking of web traffic peaked at around 127; as of 9 May 2009, it is 40,044. On 1 January 2006, the final 1,000 pixels were put up for auction on eBay. The auction closed on 11 January with a winning bid of $38,100 that brought the final tally to $1,037,100 in gross income. During the January 2006 auction, the website was subject to a distributed denial-of-service attack and ransom demand, which left it inaccessible to visitors for a week while its security system was upgraded. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Wiltshire Constabulary investigated the attack and extortion attempt.

Moscow, the financial center of Russia

The economy of Russia has gradually transformed from a planned economy into a mixed market-oriented economy. It has enormous natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas. In 2023, it was the world's 11th-largest economy by nominal GDP, 6th-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP) according to IMF, and 5th-largest according to World Bank. Due to a volatile currency exchange rate, Russia's GDP as measured in dollars fluctuates sharply. Russia was the last major economy to join the WTO, becoming a member in 2012.

Russia's vast geography is an important determinant of its economic activity, with the country holding a large share of the world's natural resources. It has been widely described as an energy superpower; as it has the world's largest natural gas reserves, 2nd-largest coal reserves, 8th-largest oil reserves, and the largest oil shale reserves in Europe. It is the world's leading natural gas exporter, the 2nd-largest natural gas producer, the 2nd-largest oil exporter and producer and third largest coal exporter. Russia's foreign exchange reserves are the world's 4th-largest. It has a labour force of roughly 70 million people, which is the world's 7th-largest. Russia is the world's 3rd-largest exporter of arms. The oil and gas sector accounted up to roughly 34% of Russia's federal budget revenues, and up to 54% of its exports in 2021. Russia has the world's 5th-largest number of billionaires. Russia's inequality of household income and wealth remains comparatively high, with a Gini coefficient of 36 in 2020 as compared to 39.8 in the US in 2021. (Full article...)

"In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging, and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it."

—Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

• ... that the deity in Nakodaji is considered as a business partner by businessmen?
• ... that the Chicago Community Bond Fund sought to put itself out of business by eliminating cash bail?
• ... that the first batch of Action Computer Enterprise's Discovery 1600, one of the first multi-user microcomputers, was delivered to a tobacco-growing business in Thailand?
• ... that John Blackinger quit his job as the general manager of a professional football team to work in the dairy business?
• ... that the British political theorist Chris Armstrong has called for a "blue new deal" to secure ecological resilience for the ocean and a just blue economy?
• ... that the Darwin Rocksitters Club had "no funny business" as their first, third, and fifth rules?

May 16:

• 1956 - H. B. Reese, American candy-maker and businessman, created Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, died on this day.

• ...that French economist A.R.J. Turgot (pictured) served as the intendant of the genéralité of Limoges from 1761 to 1774?

• ...that in economics, the monetary base is defined as the portion of the commercial banks' reserves that are maintained in accounts with their central bank plus the total currency circulating in the public?

• ...that Friedrich Hayek was appointed as a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom on the advice of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher?

• ...that Gunnar Myrdal, the 1974 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics was married Alva Myrdal, a Swedish diplomat who won the 1982 Nobel Peace Prize?

• ...that Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Daron Acemoglu was the 2005 recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal?

• ...that Gold Fixing is the procedure by which the price of gold is set on the London market by the five members of the London Bullion Market Association?

• ...that the postal services of Canada, Finland and the United Kingdom have their own dedicated address to which letters to Santa Claus pleading their good behavior and requesting gifts?

Wikinews Economy and business portal

• July 21: Technological University Dublin senior lecturer Dr Lorcan Sirr speaks to Wikinews on housing market in Ireland
• July 15: California governor signs new state budget, eligible Californians to get stimulus payments
• July 4: 130 OECD countries agree to back global corporate tax rate
• June 30: 'Each makes the other more difficult to recover from': University of Sussex professor L. Alan Winters speaks to Wikinews on trade, COVID-19, Brexit
• June 16: Wikinews interviews Victor Kline, leader of newly registered The New Liberals party in Australia
• April 23: Irish Finance Minister Donohoe criticises OECD's global minimum corporate tax rate
• April 17: People protest in Berlin against German Court overturning five-year rent cap
• March 5: Chancellor Rishi Sunak announces UK budget 2021
• February 10: Disney to shut down Blue Sky Studios, animation studio behind 'Ice Age'
• January 24: World Trade Organization declares US tariff hike illegal, rules in South Korea's favour