Canada dollar adds to gains on surging commodities

TORONTO (Reuters) – The suddenly red-hot Canadian dollar hit its highest level of 2008 versus the U.S. dollar on Wednesday as lofty commodity prices helped the currency build on sharp gains recorded earlier this week.

Domestic bond prices had no key Canadian data to consider but still managed to build on gains made during the previous session given widespread expectations for further interest rate cuts in the United States.

The Canadian dollar closed at US$1.0196, valuing a U.S. dollar at 98.07 Canadian cents, up from US$1.0179, valuing a U.S. dollar at 98.24 Canadian cents, at Tuesday’s close.

Microsoft Launches New Server Software

SEATTLE (AP) — Microsoft Corp. launched a new version of its server operating system with great fanfare Wednesday, but analysts said Windows Server 2008 is an incremental update rather than a giant leap forward.

At a Los Angeles event that opened with a speech by former news anchor Tom Brokaw, Microsoft also unveiled a new edition of Visual Studio 2008, used by computer programmers to create desktop and Web applications. The event also promoted a third program, Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 database system, which won’t be available until the third quarter of this year.

Whoopi Makes Peace with Oscar Oops

Whoopi Goldberg would like to thank the Academy…for apologizing for her Oscar-night slight.

Three days after being left out of a montage highlighting past hosts—despite being not only the first female emcee, but the first black one as well—and two days after getting choked up about her televised absence on The View, Goldberg told E! News that the ceremony’s longtime producer, Gil Cates, had personally phoned her to make amends for the gross oversight.

“Gil called yesterday and said, ‘I would have called you Monday but I hadn’t slept,’ ” she said, explaining the one-day lag time between her emotional episode and the subsequent apology. “He said, ‘Listen, I missed it. I didn’t realize it wasn’t in there.’ “