Congress approved the JOBS Act, in a rare spirit of bipartisan agreement. The legislation will make it easier for some firms to go public, addressing concerns that America's recent tougher financial regulatory requirements are hindering initial public offerings. The act will allow firms to waive certain listings regulations for up to five years and raise money from investors online. It emerged that Facebook is ending the trading of its privately held shares on the secondary market as it prepares to go public, which many people now expect to happen in May. Private secondary markets will see a big drop in their trading volumes with the departure of Facebook. Completely BATS BATS Global Markets, a high-tech stock exchange group, withdrew its IPO from its own listings market after "technical issues" saw BATS's shares drop to a price of almost zero on their first day of trading. The incident raised more worries about the automation of financial markets. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, warned that despite the improvement in America's jobs situation over the past few months the labour market was "out of sync with the overall pace of economic expansion" and still "far from normal." But investors responded positively when Mr Bernanke implied that "accommodative monetary policies" would continue, ending speculation that the Fed was backing away from its commitment to hold interest rates near zero until late 2014. America's nomination of Jim Yong Kim to lead the World Bank drew fire. Mr Kim currently runs Dartmouth College and is an expert on public health, but he has scant experience in economics. In 2000 he published a book arguing that growth does little for the poor. Tradition demands that an American always head the World Bank, but some say it is time to break that tradition and pick Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria's finance minister. Springtime in France Co nsumer confidence in France rose sharply, baffling analysts. A drumbeat of grim economic news had prompted them to expect otherwise. In Germany consumer confidence fell. Lloyd's reported its first pre-tax annual loss for six years. Thanks to Japan's tsunami-induced nuclear disaster and big floods in Thailand, last year was the second most expensive on record (after 2005) for total catastrophe claims, which are estimated at up to $116 billion. Richard Ward, the chief executive of Lloyd's, said he was "disappointed" that insurance rates had not risen more. The European Commission launched an investigation into United Technologies" $16.5 billion proposed takeover of Goodrich, which was announced last year. Both companies are American. The commission wants to know if a deal would hurt competition in specific areas of the aircraft-components industry. Sharp, a Japanese electronics company, sold a 10% stake in its business to Hon Hai, a Taiwanese contract manufacturer that assembles a wide range of electronic products, including the iPhone, at its factories in China, where it is known as Foxconn. The investment underscores the waning of Japan's once-mighty consumer-electronics industry. Much of Sharp's business is in televisions and LCD screens, which are made more cheaply in Taiwan and South Korea. Tim Cook, Apple's boss, travelled to China to meet a number of officials, including Li Keqiang, a deputy prime minister. A court in Guangdong will decide soon whether Apple has rights to the "iPad" name, which is claimed by a rival company in China. Mr Cook also visited Foxconn's new factory in Zhengzhou, where the iPhone is made. Rupert Murdoch's media empire was embroiled in fresh controversy when allegations emerged in Britain and Australia that computer workers at NDS, a subsidiary of Mr Murdoch's News Corporation that is in the process of being sold to Cisco, were told to sabotage rivals to Sky, one of News Corp's television businesses. NDS denies the claims. A new record price was paid for a sports franchise in America, when an investment group led by Magic Johnson, a former basketball player, won an auction for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team with a bid of $2.1 billion. The previous record was the $1.1 billion forked out for the Miami Dolphins football team in 2009. Wizard stuff The Harry Potter books were released in digital form for the first time. J.K. Rowling, the world's most successful author, has set up her own website, Pottermore, as the exclusive seller of the digital books, bypassing Amazon and other online retailers. Consumers searching for the books on other sites will be magically transported to Pottermore.