And just four years after its IPO, as a tiny public company, Wal-Mart began paying a dividend. This business was run to sustain yearly profit growth indefinitely. If you're going to invest in small-cap rocket stocks, as our team does at Motley Fool Hidden Gems, please avoid the whisper-stock party tips and hype jobs. They destroy wealth over time. Wal-Mart wasn't getting hyped. No one was following it!

Finding these stocks doesn't involve a hopeless search through barn-sized haystacks for a lone platinum needle. The stock market features plenty of promising smaller companies, run successfully by founders with large personal stakes in the enterprise.

Forth Road Bridge hack redirects to smut bazaar

Updated Hackers turned the Forth Road Bridge website into a filth jamboree after breaking into its systems to plant script designed to redirect surfers to a Turkish site hosting malware.

The Magic Johnson Foundation and Abbott Expand Focus of 'Campaign to ...

NEW YORK, Nov. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- In conjunction with World AIDS Day, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, the Magic Johnson Foundation and Abbott (NYSE: ABT) today announced that Cookie Johnson, wife of Earvin "Magic" Johnson will be touring throughout the country in 2008 to educate women on HIV/AIDS. Earvin "Magic" Johnson will continue to be the primary ambassador for the "I Stand With Magic" program to inform people about the disease, encourage people to get tested and if necessary, seek treatment for HIV if they are HIV positive. The program also will be traveling to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago to provide free HIV testing and education in recognition of World AIDS Day 2007.

Since its 2006 launch, the "I Stand With Magic" program, a part of the "Campaign to End Black AIDS," has provided free HIV/AIDS testing to more than 21,000 Americans in 16 major cities with large African-American populations as part of the "I Stand With Magic" tour.

Hip Bowling -- Despite the Clown Shoes

Fortunately, we were able to get a lane right away at AMF's 300 Atlanta, but that may be because we came a little early in the evening. The setting hinted at a relaxed, grown-up experience -- the 39-lane center bills itself as "a strikingly different entertainment venue with upscale decor and amenities." But despite such touches as soft leather benches and a bistro-style lane-side dining menu, we found the atmosphere more reminiscent of a noisy disco. The background music -- a mix of hip-hop and Top 40 -- was unbearably loud. The food and drink, from a "smokehouse" barbecue sandwich to a "big bowl" margarita, was mediocre at best. And service was pokey -- we had to ask for that margarita twice before it finally came. At least the bowling experience itself proved unparalleled, with clean rental shoes, perfectly oiled lanes and an excellent selection of balls.

TaylorMade-adidas Commercial Shoot

Monday was one of the most remarkable days I've seen in my years of covering golf. I spent the day at Mountain Gate GC in Los Angeles where TaylorMade-adidas had rented out the course to complete a wide array of work for its advertisements. There were photo shoots, television shoots and internet tapings for a number of different products. A stable of TaylorMade pros were on hand to pose and smile and hit shots for the cameras. They were moved from position to position to position through a long day.

That included Mike Weir, Jason Day, Justin Rose, Retief Goosen, Sergio Garcia and Sean O'Hair. (My timing wasn't great on this one – Natalie Gulbis and Paula Creamer were here a day earlier.)

I drove around with Richard "not a guru" Sullivan of the Canadian TM office and as we sped along, we saw Goosen taping something for the internet, then O'Hair doing a television commercial for the ball.

The Downside of Mutnemom

They're both ideas Bush had when he came into office. Bush speechwriter David Frum has written of his first Oval Office meeting with Bush, a few weeks into his presidency, at which the president explained his "determination to dig Saddam Hussein out of power in Iraq." At about the same time, Bush was meeting with Mexican president Vicente Fox to try to hammer out an immigration deal that would combine a guest worker program with some legalization of existing illegal Mexican immigrants. (Plans for such a broad deal were put on hold only after 9/11 made immigration a national security issue--but Bush diligently resumed pursuit of the deal, just as he diligently resumed pursuit of his pre-election plans for Social Security.)

2. They both have an idealistic basis. Bush was sympathetic to the way Middle East democrats had been frustrated by "realist" foreign policies, and he's clearly sympathetic to the problems of poor immigrants who come to the U.S.

UK MPs reject referendum on EU Treaty

Brown has been under severe pressure from opposition parties and campaign groups to hold a popular vote on the treaty ever since he signed the text last December (seeEurActiv 21/01/08). Meanwhile, parliamentary committees have already been discussing the treaty on an issue-by-issue basis for a month.

The issue split the Liberal Democrat party, whose leader Nick Clegg had ordered his MPs to abstain from yesterday's vote. Yet aquarter of Lib Dem MPs defied the orderand voted in favour of a referendum, with three frontbenchers resigning to do so.