(AFP) - British lawmakers are to quiz police chiefs Tuesday amid reports that royalty and ex-prime minister Gordon Brown were targeted in a phone-hacking scandal that felled Rupert Murdoch's News of the World.(AFP/Ki Price)
(AFP/HO/File) - A police photo shows murdered schoolgirls Jessica Chapman (R) and Holly Wells, in 2002. Prime Minister David Cameron has backed calls for a public inquiry into phone-hacking by the News of the World, amid claims that it targeted relatives of the murdered girls and victims of the London bombings.(AFP/HO/File)
(AFP/Getty Images/File) - Nintendo displays the new game console Wii U at the Nintendo booth during the Electronic Entertainment Expo on June 7 in Los Angeles, California. Nintendo is credited with opening the world of videogames to moms, seniors and other "casual gamers" with the launch of the Wii console in 2006.(AFP/Getty Images/File/Kevork Djansezian)
An image courtesy of Cupertino City Hall shows an illustration included in the proposal for the new Apple Campus in the city.
Credit: Reuters/Cupertino City Hall
SAN FRANCISCO |
Wed Jun 8, 2011 4:24pm EDT
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc plans to build a circular "spaceship" building in hometown Cupertino that will hold 12,000 employees -- and be the best office building in the world, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said.
The ailing chief of Apple, formally on leave from the company, made his second public appearance in two days late on Tuesday to show off plans to the Cupertino city council.
"It's a little like a spaceship landed," said Jobs, showing off a four-story, circular building with a massive interior courtyard on a 150-acre piece of landscaped land.
"There is not a straight piece of glass in the building," he said. "We know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use."
Apple has grown "like a weed" Jobs said, and needs a place to put roughly 12,000 people. The massive new structure would be in addition to the main campus at 1 Infinite Loop.
"That's rather odd, 12,000 people in a building, in one building. But we've seen these office parks with lots of buildings, and they get pretty boring pretty fast, so we'd like to do something better than that," he said.
"I do think we have a shot at building the best office building in the world," he added, showing off sketches.
He quickly shot down questions from city council members, avoiding a request to give free Wi-Fi to the city and arguing that the increase in workers at the site would not be significant enough to require any traffic mitigation efforts.
Landscaping will include trees, native plants and apricot orchards, a throwback to the agricultural heritage of Silicon Valley when Jobs was growing up.
Apple bought most of the land from Hewlett Packard Co, where Jobs got one of his first summer jobs after calling up his idol and HP founder Bill Hewlett, to ask for spare parts. Hewlett and Packard bought the main parcel, he said.
(Reporting by Peter Henderson and Poornima Gupta)
original content on reuters
(AFP/Getty Images) - Adam Ghiggio from Australia poses next to mutant mannequins wich are lined up to be used as displays for the video game "Rage" at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Blockbuster titles and powerhouse consoles will rule as video game makers from around the world meet in Los Angeles this week for the premier Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).(AFP/Getty Images/Kevork Djansezian)
