Wealthy People

Surprise, surprise. Grass is green, the world is round and Oprah Winfrey is the richest woman in entertainment. The talk-show titan, who has amassed $1.5 billion over the course of her career, has bested "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling and lifestyle guru Martha Stewart to take the No. 1 spot on Forbes.com's list of "The 20 Richest Women in Entertainment." Rowling, who is finishing the seventh and final installment in her boy wizard series, ranks second with $1 billion.

They seemed so young. That's what Peter Hero remembers most about the day, nine years ago, when Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll walked into his office at Community Foundation Silicon Valley with an odd idea to give away a fortune. Omidyar wore jeans and a T-shirt; his thick black hair was tied back in a ponytail. Skoll had on what looked to Hero like a varsity jacket. He couldn't still be in high school, could he?

Neil Kadisha is one of Los Angeles' richest people, with a fortune based largely on his stake in the once-highflying wireless tech firm Qualcomm Inc. The 51-year-old venture capitalist and father of three -- worth $910 million by one estimate -- also is known as a generous benefactor of charitable causes here and in Israel. But a recent court decision casts him in a far harsher light, finding that he relied on more than savvy for his success.

THE good times are rolling for guests at luxury hotels, and this time it's personal. Flush with sky-high executive pay and bonuses, plus double-digit returns in the stock market, the super-rich are looking to elite lodgings to satisfy their cravings for pampering and unique experiences. Hoteliers, eager for their business, happily comply. The result?

Betting that voter concern over healthcare outweighs disdain for higher taxes, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Monday proposed repealing President Bush's tax cuts on high-income Americans to finance a universal healthcare plan. The plan would cover all 47 million of the nation's uninsured by 2012, the former North Carolina senator said.

Michele Raucci, a successful financier, needs just the right car when he's off to a swank party or a weekend of truffle hunting and wine tasting. Something to match his outfit, his mood. Maybe a red Ferrari F430 one day, a sporty Lamborghini the next. He's in luck. Raucci belongs to a new club in Milan that caters to the whims of the wealthy, offering them the option of borrowing instead of buying the latest model automobiles, sleek yachts, villas, helicopters and fine art.

FLOATING through the snow in their tinted-windowed SUVs, shrouded in baubles and whispered fears of losing it all, the Russian rich sometimes sense that their imaginations are not as outlandish as their offshore bank accounts. And so they turn to Sergei Knyazev. They call him the "producer." He loves saying that; he even embossed it on his business card.

Sometime between the end of the Apollo missions and the shuttle disasters, space lost its shine. Instead of Capt. Kirk boldly going where no man has gone before, space shuttle launches barely cause a media ripple. The most recent indignity was the headline-grabbing misadventure of a diaper-wearing, lovesick astronaut. Now, all that may be about to change.

Telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helu has built a corporate empire so vast that it's nearly impossible for most Mexicans to go a day without slipping a few pesos into his pocket. Those pesos add up. On Thursday, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $49 billion. That represented a stunning $19-billion increase from 2006, the biggest one-year jump in a decade for anyone on the magazine's annual list of the world's richest people. Microsoft Corp.

The words "guilty pleasure" surely were invented for circumstances such as these: taking a shower at the colonial-era Lagos Lawn Tennis Club after a sweaty afternoon in Ajegunle, aka the Jungle, Africa's biggest slum. An unhappy spit of land shared by as many as 5 million people, Ajegunle is a few miles, and a world away, from the club. There, children make their way home from school along rutted dirt roads lined with waist-high mounds of peanut shells, plastic bags and rotting food.