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World's richest man got richer with $79. billion in 2015.

According to internal documents obtained by the website TechCrunch, Microsoft has offered $1 billion for the digital assets of Nook Media, Barnes & Noble's digital book venture. According to internal documents obtained by the website TechCrunch, Microsoft has offered $1 billion for the digital assets of Nook Media, Barnes & Noble's digital book venture.

Total U.S. spending on prescription medicines declined last year, a first in more than half a century. The dip was 1 percent, to $325.8 billion — a 3.5 percent drop after accounting for population growth and economic expansion, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

Things are looking up for most of the nation’s commercial casinos, as gambling revenue increased by nearly 5 percent last year and jobs held roughly steady. According to the annual survey of casinos by the American Gaming Association, America’s nontribal casinos took in $37.3 billion from gamblers last year, an increase of 4.8 percent over 2011.

With more than one billion unique visitors every month, YouTube asserted last night that the battle between television and the online video giant is over. YouTube claimed victory with six billion views per month. According to the Wall Street Journal, which cited Mark Mahaney's estimates, a stock analyst at RBC Capital Markets,  that YouTube generated about $4 billion in revenue in 2012, up from $2.5 billion in 2011.

Why would a company with $145 billion in cash even bother to issue debt? The answer has a lot to do with the frenzied state of the bond markets.

Germany drug company Bayer AG says it intends to buy California-based Conceptus to expand its birth control offerings. Bayer said Monday it would launch a pupublicblic offer to pay $31.00 per share for all the stock in Conceptus, Inc. That means Bayer would pay $1.1 billion. Conceptus makes Essure, an irreversible birth control method in which metal and polyester coils are inserted to block a woman's fallopian tubes. The procedure can be done in 10 minutes a doctor's office.

Apple is opening the doors to its bank vault, saying it will distribute $100 billion in cash to its shareholders by the end of 2015. At the same time, the company said revenue for the current quarter could fall from the year before, which would be the first decline in many years.

Google Inc reported consolidated first quarter revenue, including its Motorola Mobility business, of $13.97 billion, up 31 percent from the year-ago period.

Germany's lower house of parliament voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to grant Cyprus a 10 billion euro bailout that is designed to avert bankruptcy for the tiny Mediterranean island nation and keep it in the euro zone.