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Leno Hospitalized

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. – Jay Leno checked into a hospital with an undisclosed illness Thursday and canceled the taping of the "Tonight" show, but was doing well and planned to return next week, his publicist and NBC said.

Leno left his office at NBC's studios about midday and checked himself into a hospital for observation, said his publicist, Dick Guttman. He would not identify what ailed Leno or where he went, but characterized his illness as "mild" and said the comedian continued working throughout the day, making phone calls and writing jokes.

"Jay Leno is doing just fine," read a statement from NBC spokeswoman Tracy St. Pierre. "He was kidding around with the hospital staff and running his monologue jokes by the doctors and the nurses. He's expected back to work on Monday."

A woman who answered the media line at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, which is near the Burbank studio where Leno tapes "Tonight," said they had no patient by that name, and referred inquiries to NBC.

The network planned to air a rerun, the first time it had to cover for a sick Leno since he took over "Tonight" in 1992, St. Pierre said. Guests scheduled for Thursday included "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" actor Ryan Reynolds, celebrity animal trainer Jules Sylvester and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

"We wish Jay the speediest of recoveries and hope that our soundcheck this morning didn't have anything to do with his illness or the cancellation of the show," joked Chad Jensen, manager for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. He said most of the guys in the swing band instead were "in the ocean surfing this afternoon."

It was an unusual lapse for the famously intrepid performer, who routinely fills off-days from his TV show with live appearances on the comedy circuit.

Leno, who turns 59 on Tuesday, will leave the "Tonight" show May 29 after 17 years. But he will continue on NBC, with a Monday-through-Friday program at 10 p.m., starting in the fall.

The top-rated late-night host's move to prime time created a stir in the industry, taking the time slot usually reserved by broadcast networks for dramas such as "ER." And Leno has continued to make news, scoring a coup by booking President Barack Obama as a guest and performing free comedy concerts in the recession-wracked Detroit area.
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Inter suffer Italian Cup KO

ROME (AFP) – Serie A leaders Inter Milan were knocked out of the Italian Cup on Thursday when a 1-0 semi-final second leg win over Sampdoria fell short of overturning a 3-0 deficit from the teams' first meeting.

In the May 13 final in Rome, Sampdoria will face Lazio who completed a 4-2 aggregate win over Juventus on Wednesday.

It will be Sampdoria's first cup final appearance since 1994 where they defeated Ancona while, for Inter, defeat meant their run of four successive final spots came to an end.

Inter were champions in 2005 and 2006 and runners-up in 2007 and 2008.

With three goals to make up, Inter coach Jose Mourinho played three strikers with Mario Balotelli, Julio Cruz and Zlatan Ibrahimovic all starting.

It was Ibrahimovic who was to score the only goal of the second leg with a superb 27th-minute volley although the Swedish international was unfortunate not have celebrated a second when he saw a 37th-minute lob come back off the post.

Sampdoria had their chances with Antonio Cassano and Giampaolo Pazzini both denied by good saves from Julio Cesar.

Inter can now turn their attentions to clinching the league title.

They have a 10-point lead with just six games left to play.
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Microsoft feels more recession fallout, sales drop

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. said Thursday its quarterly revenue fell from the previous year for the first time in its 23-year history as a public company, while its profit dived 32 percent.

The shortfall illustrated the toll the recession has taken on the world's largest software maker, even though Microsoft remains one of the richest and most profitable companies. In January, Microsoft said it needed to resort to its first mass layoffs, cutting 5,000 jobs, and on Thursday it announced it would do away with merit pay increases for employees in the next fiscal year.

Microsoft did not issue earnings guidance for the rest of the year, and it offered no hope for a rebound in the current quarter.

"I didn't see any improvement at the end of the quarter that gives me encouragement that we're at the bottom and coming out of it," said Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer.

Even so, Microsoft shares gained 2.6 percent in extended trading after the earnings report, having closed earlier at $18.92, up 14 cents.

Redmond-based Microsoft said that in its fiscal third-quarter, which ended March 31, profit was $2.98 billion, or 33 cents per share. In the same quarter of 2008, Microsoft earned $4.39 billion, or 47 cents per share.

Microsoft's profit included a $290 million charge for severance from some of the layoffs announced in January. The software maker also wrote down $420 million related to investments that lost value.

Excluding such items, Microsoft said it would have earned 39 cents per share, matching the estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

Microsoft avoided a steeper drop in profit by slashing costs in several areas, such as sales and marketing, which it cut by 9 percent to $3 billion.

Revenue in the last quarter slipped 6 percent to $13.6 billion, missing analysts' expectations for $14.1 billion.

"I think it was a good quarter in a tough environment," said Taunya Sell, an analyst for Ragen MacKenzie, a division of Wells Fargo. They did "the two things you can do in a tough environment — try to keep costs down, and make sure customers still want to buy your products."

Microsoft makes most of its profit selling the Windows operating system and business software such as Office, and those divisions have been hammered over the last six months as consumers and businesses sharply cut their technology spending. The holiday quarter, which ended in December, was the PC industry's worst in six years, according to research groups IDC and Gartner Inc. In the following quarter, computer shipments sank about 7 percent.

Even the brightest spot in the PC market — tiny, recession-friendly laptops known as netbooks — had a downside for Microsoft because those inexpensive computers run a cheaper version of Windows XP, Microsoft's last-generation operating system.

The Windows division's profit fell 19 percent to $2.5 billion, and its sales sank 16 percent to $3.4 billion in the last quarter.

The division that makes Office saw its profit drop 8 percent to $2.9 billion on revenue that declined 5 percent to $4.5 billion.

Both divisions were cushioned to some extent by businesses that renewed bulk software licenses at about the same pace as usual.

Microsoft's online advertising business widened its quarterly loss, and its entertainment and devices division, which makes the Xbox 360 game console and the Zune media player, swung to a loss from the prior year.

Microsoft said the current quarter would probably still be weak in the markets for PCs and computer servers. Other technology companies have offered mixed assessments about whether a recovery is in sight.

Last week, Intel Corp. Chief Executive Paul Otellini raised some hopes when he said the PC market had bottomed out in the first quarter.

And on Thursday, EMC Corp. CEO Joe Tucci predicted that spending on information technology "has reached or is very near the bottom" and should rebound in the second half of this year. He made those comments even as EMC reported that its first-quarter profit dropped 23 percent and the company planned more cost cuts.

Other executives have been more cautious.

"I don't know how someone could say we've hit bottom in the current economic climate," Dirk Meyer, the CEO of Intel's main rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., said Tuesday.

Even as Microsoft and EMC reported profit and revenue declines Thursday, two e-commerce companies fared better.

Leading online retailer Amazon.com Inc. said profit rose 24 percent and revenue jumped 18 percent. And Netflix Inc. posted a 68 percent leap in profit, as more people turned to its DVD-by-mail service as an affordable entertainment option during the recession.

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