Clark died Tuesday at Beth Israel Hospital in New York. She had lived in hospital at her request since the end of the 1980s.

‘She died as she wanted, with dignity and privacy,’ a spokesman for her lawyer Wallace Bock said, the Los Angeles Times reported.

She was the daughter of William Andrews Clark, a copper and railway magnate who was among the richest men in the country.

Huguette Clark’s wealth was put at around 500 million dollars. She had no children.

Clark was born in Paris in 1906 and grew up in a house with 121 rooms, the New York Times reported.

She was briefly married in the late 1920s but after splitting from her husband she increasingly withdrew from public view and was only rarely seen after the death of her mother in 1963.

The family’s houses in California and Connecticut remained empty.

Her New York lawyer was reportedly one of the few people she was in regular contact with.

Clark hit the headlines last year when MSNBC.com ran reports raising concerns about the handling of her wealth.

Distant relatives later went to court, complaining that advisors were exerting ‘improper influence’ over her.

It was unclear who would inherit her estate.

A deal between the two companies could be announced as early as Tuesday, according to the person familiar with the talks. While details were still hammered out on Monday night — which could yet derail an announcement — the person added that the deal could value Skype at about $8.5bn, including debt.

The deal would mark Microsoft’s most aggressive move online so far, as the Seattle-based company seeks to respond to strategic challenges and shift away from its core Windows business into other areas, including the internet, communications and entertainment.

Microsoft’s last substantial deal was the purchase of online advertising company Aquantive in 2007 for just over $6bn.

Microsoft declined to comment on the negotiations with Skype. But the internet telephone company, which is owned by a group of private investors led by Silver Lake Partners, could not be reached for comment on the deal, which was reported by the blog GigaOm and the Wall Street Journal.

A deal, if made for cash, would make little dent in Microsoft’s cash reserves. The software company had cash and short-term investments of $50.2bn at the end of March, up from $13.4bn the year before.

However, the value put on Skype by the potential acquisition represents a big premium to what Wall Street had been expecting in an initial public offering.

The internet calling service reported a loss of $7m for 2010 on revenues of $860m. It has struggled to find add-ons for its free voice and video services that add revenue.

Skype boasts about 145m people who use its services each month, although less than 10m pay anything at all — usually to make, or receive, phone calls on regular telephones rather than through a computer. Its average number of monthly users rose by nearly 40 per cent last year.

At $8.5bn, a deal would value Skype at about 32 times its adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation — the measure by which analysts assess its performance.

The company last summer filed for an initial public offering through a Nasdaq listing. However, since then, takeover speculation has swirled around Skype, with Google and Facebook mentioned as possible suitors.

Microsoft may tread carefully in picking up Skype. Ebay purchased the company in 2005, but failed to deliver on its promise of profitably bringing together internet communication with online shopping. The company eventually wrote down its investment in Skype, selling the business to a group of private investors.

The rise in fuel prices is hitting everyone hard in the United States as they fill up at the pump. For the average person the $1.00+ increase in the price of gas is equal to an extra $40 per month for a small car to $80 or more for larger vehicles and SUV’s. Now imagine that same dollar per gallon added to the hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel used by major airlines like Hawaiian. For every penny change in the cost of a gallon of jet fuel, Hawaiian’s income can change by as much as $1.6 million.

By hedging their fuel costs, which is essentially locking in the price of fuel for a period of time by committing to a purchase agreement, Hawaiian was able to save about eight and a half million in fuel costs. It’s a little like locking in a mortgage rate for a fixed amount of time. If rates go up, you win. If they go down, you miss out.

While it can be a bit of a gamble, when it works, like it has recently for Hawaiian, and like it did for Southwest Airlines when prices skyrocketed in 2008-2009, it can put an airline in a much more advantageous position over its competition.

As fuel prices rise for a competitor they are forced to raise fares, while those who locked in their prices for fuel can keep fares low. If fuel costs drop, of course, the exact opposite can happen.

For Hawaiian Airlines the strategy paid off giving them a net income of $855,000 for the last quarter. At the same time, the five largest U.S. carriers lost over a billion dollars combined.

Here are the numbers: $24.67 billion dollars in revenue (a record for the quarter), $5.99 billion net profit (again, a record for the quarter), 41.4% gross margin and international sales accounted for 59% of the revenue.

During Q1 of this year (which is Q2 in Apple’s finance calendar), Apple shipped 18.65 million iPhones, a whopping 113% increase compared to the year-ago quarter. During the last three months of 2010, the number of shipped iPhones was 16.24 million.

Meanwhile, the iPad hasn’t been doing so hot – 4.7 million units were shipped compared to 7.3 million the previous quarter. The iPad launched in March 2010 so there are no year over year numbers and the iPad 2 launched in March 2011 so it couldn’t help much with the Apple’s tablet sales. iPod sales fell 17% year over year (from 10.9 million in Q1 2010 to 9 million in Q1 2011).

Overall, desktop sales are down (-12% year over year), while portables are experiencing an astronomic rise – Apple’s mobile gadget went up 53% year over year (in terms of units shipped).

For Q2 of 2011, Apple’s CFO is predicting $23 billion in revenue. Ambitious, but definitely possible considering Apple recent form.

The Santa Clara, Calif., giant has posted record results in recent quarters, but worries have emerged about slowing PC demand as consumers increasingly buy tablets like the Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPad. While Intel has seen some signs of consumer weakness, its exposure to business spending–especially on servers–has helped buffer its results.

“What we saw was very strong growth this quarter in terms of all markets, all segments, all geographies,” President and Chief Executive Paul Otellini said in an interview.

He added that the results position Intel well to post revenue growth of more than 20% for the full year, with much strength coming from Intel’s data center group.

“Investors have clearly underestimated the potential length and magnitude of the current corporate refresh cycle and Intel’s prominent spot within that cycle,” Edward Jones analyst Bill Kreher said. He added that the biggest driver of Intel’s results is servers, which should continue through the year.

Intel forecast current-quarter revenue of $12.3 billion to $13.3 billion. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected $11.87 billion.

Intel shares, down 17% over the past 12 months through Tuesday’s close, jumped 4.9% to $20.84 after hours as results and guidance blew past estimates. The stock has been sluggish in recent months, with worries about Intel’s struggles penetrating the mobile market.

Intel is considered an early indicator of technology demand because its chips serve as calculating engines in about 80% of the world’s computers. It has benefited from surging sales over the past several years of laptop PCs, including a variety called netbooks, but it has had problems gaining traction in the fast-growing mobile market dominated by chips based on ARM Holdings PLC (ARMH) architecture.

In addition, demand for tablets and smartphones has been undercutting sales growth for PCs of late, with global computer shipments declining in the first quarter for the first time since the end of the recent recession, data trackers Gartner and IDC said last week.

Otellini said strong consumer demand in emerging markets offset weakness in the U.S. and Western Europe, though some people in developed nations likely bought tablets instead of refreshing their notebooks.

“That perhaps is some of the reason behind consumer softness in the U.S. and Europe,” he said. “But we don’t see it globally. … I think [tablets and PCs] are very complementary devices.”

Otellini also reiterated that he expects the company to be a “strong participant” in smartphones and tablets.

In addition, he said the laptop market was “very good,” with industry still going through the early phases of an enterprise upgrade cycle. As a result, Otellini forecast 2011 PC industry growth in the low double digits, tweaked slightly from expectations in January of low- to mid-teens growth.

Intel recently released its second-generation Core processors–code-named Sandy Bridge–that combine graphics and computing on a single piece of silicon, and the company sees demand for the new processors helping drive results.

The company in January disclosed a design issue in its support chip that works with the Core processor, saying that in some cases, several of the connection ports within those chipsets may degrade over time, potentially interrupting the flow of data from devices like disk drives and DVD drives. The flaw caused the company to lower its forecast for the first quarter, estimating the cost at about $1 billion in repairs and reduced revenue.

The data center unit was particularly strong, with revenue up 32% in the quarter, which Otellini said is due to servers, as well as a “healthy” cloud business, storage and network. Demand for cloud computing, which allows customers to access data remotely using the Internet or internal networks, has soared and has helped drive strong results across the tech industry. Otellini expects server strength to be a major growth drivers for “many years to come.”

Overall, Intel reported a profit of $3.16 billion, or 56 cents a share, up from $2.44 billion, or 43 cents, a year earlier. Excluding items, such as write-downs and amortization of acquisition-related intangibles, per-share earnings rose to 59 cents from 43 cents. Revenue jumped 25% to $12.85 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast earnings of 46 cents a share. The company had expected revenue ranging from $10.8 billion to $11.6 billion, factoring in the $300 million impact from the chip-design issue.

Gross margin fell to 61.4% from 63.4%.

The latest results include contributions from Intel’s acquisitions of security-software provider McAfee and Infineon Technologies AG (IFNNY), which closed in the first quarter.

The suit is broader than Apple’s previous suits against Nokia and HTC. Those suits were focused on specific patented technologies used in the iPhone.

The new lawsuit also alleges “trade dress” infringement, which is a legal term meaning that Samsung copied the unique look and feel of Apple’s devices.

An Apple spokesperson told AllThingsD that Samsung even copied Apple’s packaging.

Samsung says it will fight the charges.

Both Samsung devices run Google’s Android operating system. According to intellectual property activist Florian Mueller, Android was involved in 37 intellectual property lawsuits as of March 22. This makes it at least 38