Italy, mired in a fourth recession since 2001, is struggling to shake the threat of debt-crisis contagion even as the nation
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Yahoo ended Scott Thompson’s four-month stint as its CEO without giving him a severance package, according to documents filed Monday.
Thompson, 54, left Sunday in a management shake-up triggered by inaccurate information in his official biography. He would have been entitled to a severance package if Yahoo had terminated him “without cause,” according to the contract he signed in January.
When Yahoo fired Carol Bartz as CEO eight months ago, the company paid her $3 million in severance. Bartz stands to make even more money from the nearly 386,000 shares of restricted stock and nearly 416,000 stock options that vested upon her ouster.
Thompson kept a $1.5 million bonus and restricted stock valued at $5.5 million that Yahoo paid him when he joined. Those sums were intended to compensate him for benefits he gave up by leaving his job running PayPal, the online payment service owned by eBay Inc.
But Yahoo Inc free credit score online. is requiring Thompson to surrender unvested stock awards valued at $16 million.
Thompson was getting an annual salary of $1 million at Yahoo and could have gotten a bonus of up to $2 million this year.
Yahoo parted ways with Thompson because of the recent revelation that his bio included a college degree in computer science that he never received. Thompson received an accounting degree from Stonehill College, a small school near Boston, in 1979.
Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported that Thompson had recently told Yahoo’s board that he has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The disease contributed to Thompson’s decision to leave Yahoo, according to the Journal.
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Iraqi officials say a car bomb has killed a policeman in the western city of Ramadi.
Security officials say the parked car exploded around 7:30 a.m. Sunday near a police patrol in a main street in the center of the city.
An official in the nearby Ramadi hospital said five other policemen were seriously wounded. Two passers-by were also wounded, he said.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province and used to be a stronghold of al-Qaida. Recently, local militias have managed to bring a measure of calm to the city and province, part of a general drop in violence seen across the country.
Poland’s lawmakers have approved a controversial government plan to raise the retirement age to 67 for most Poles.
The lower chamber of Parliament voted Friday 268 to 185 with 2 abstentions to approve changes sought by the pro-business government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which argues that delayed retirement will help Poles build up larger pensions and reduce state spending.
Trade unions have vehemently opposed the plan and were staging a noisy protest outside Parliament.
The current law allows women to retire at age 60 and men at 65. The armed forces and some other services have even more lenient regulations which the new law also seeks to toughen up.
The new law still needs approval from the Senate and from President Bronislaw Komorowski.
Socialist Francois Hollande defeated conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday to become France’s next president, heralding a change in how Europe tackles its debt crisis and how France flexes its military and diplomatic muscle around the world.
Exuberant, diverse crowds filled the Place de la Bastille, the iconic plaza of the French Revolution, to fete Hollande’s victory, waving French, European and labor union flags and climbing the column that rises at its center. Leftists are overjoyed to have one of their own in power for the first time since Socialist Francois Mitterrand was president from 1981 to 1995.
“Austerity can no longer be inevitable!” Hollande declared in his victory speech Sunday night after a surprising campaign that saw him transform from an unremarkable, mild figure to an increasingly statesmanlike one.
Sarkozy is the latest victim of a wave of voter anger at government spending cuts around Europe that have tossed out governments and leaders over the past couple of years.
In Greece, a parliamentary vote Sunday is seen as critical to the country’s prospects for pulling out of a deep financial crisis felt in world markets. A state election in Germany and local elections in Italy were seen as tests of support for the national government’s policies.
Hollande promised help for France’s downtrodden after years under the Sarkozy, a man many voters saw as too friendly with the rich and blamed for economic troubles.
Hollande said European partners should be relieved and not frightened by his presidency.
“I am proud to have been capable of giving people hope again,” Hollande told huge crowds of supporters in his electoral fiefdom of Tulle in central France. “We will succeed!”
Hollande inherits an economy that’s a driver of the European Union but is deep in debt. He wants more government stimulus, and more government spending in general, despite concerns in the markets that France needs to urgently trim its huge debt.
Sarkozy conceded defeat minutes after the polls closed, saying he had called Hollande to wish him “good luck” as the country’s new leader.
Sarkozy, widely disliked for budget cuts and his handling of the economy during recent crises, said he did his best to win a second term, despite widespread anger at his handling of the economy.
“I bear responsibility … for the defeat,” he said. “I committed myself totally, fully, but I didn’t succeed in convincing a majority of French. … I didn’t succeed in making the values we share win.”
With 75 percent of the vote counted, official results showed Hollande with 51.1 percent of the vote compared with Sarkozy’s 48.9 percent, the Interior Ministry said. The CSA, TNS-Sofres and Ipsos polling agencies all predicted a Hollande win as well paydayloans.
Hollande has virtually no foreign policy experience but he will face his first tests right after his inauguration, which must happen no later than May 16.
Among his first trips will be to the United States later this month for summits of NATO _ where he will announce he is pulling French troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year _ and the Group of Eight leading world economies.
Hollande’s first challenge will be dealing with Germany: He wants to re-negotiate a hard-won European treaty on budget cuts that Germany’s Angela Merkel and Sarkozy had championed. He promises to make his first foreign trip to Berlin to work on a relationship that has been at the heart of Europe’s postwar unity.
Germany’s foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, congratulated Hollande on Sunday night and said both countries will keep on cooperating closely in driving the European Union’s policies and be “a stabilizing factor and a motor for the European Union.”
At home, Hollande intends to modify one of Sarkozy’s key reforms, over the retirement age, to allow some people to retire at 60 instead of 62. He also plans to increase spending in a range of sectors and wants to ease France off its dependence on nuclear energy. He favors legalizing euthanasia and gay marriage.
Sarkozy supporters call those proposals misguided.
“We’re going to call France the new Greece,” said Laetitia Barone, 19. “Hollande is now very dangerous.”
Sarkozy had said he would quit politics if he lost, but was vague about his plans Sunday night.
“You can count on me to defend these ideas, convictions,” he said, “but my place cannot be the same.”
His political allies turned their attention to parliamentary elections next month.
People of all ages and different ethnicities celebrated Hollande’s victory at the Bastille. Ghylaine Lambrecht, 60, who celebrated the 1981 victory of Mitterrand at the Bastille, was among them.
“I’m so happy. We had to put up with Sarko for 10 years,” she said referring to Sarkozy’s time as interior and finance minister and five years as president. “In the last few years the rich have been getting richer. Now long live France, an open democratic France.”
“It’s magic!” said Violaine Chenais, 19. “I think Francois Hollande is not perfect, but it’s clear France thinks its time to give the left a chance. This means real hope for France. We’re going to celebrate with drink and hopefully some dancing.”
No one took issue with Antonio Hegwood’s dreadlocks when he worked for the temp service. Or the fast food restaurant before that.
But in mid-April, four months after a service station and convenience store hired him as an overnight clerk, Hegwood learned his hair style had suddenly became a problem.
Hegwood, 24, hasn’t been fired. But he hasn’t collected a paycheck since.
His supervisors at a St. Louis Petro Mart have told Hegwood that he’s welcome to return to work — if he shears the dreadlocks that run about halfway down his neck.
Hegwood doesn’t understand the fuss.
“It’s a gas station,” he said. “People aren’t going to not buy gas just because the clerk has dreads.”
Policies on the personal grooming habits of employees land on the edge of state and federal employment discrimination laws.
Companies doing business in Missourihave the right to terminate or suspend any employee that doesn’t meet established guidelines addressing hair, tattoos or dress.
“An employer may condition a job on an employee’s compliance with the employer’s hair styling preferences, unless the employee’s alternative hair styling preference is connected with the employee’s inclusion in a protected category,” Missouri Department of Labor spokeswoman Amy Susan explained in an e-mail. “For example, a particular hair style may be a tenet of the employee’s religion, or the employer may decline to hire a prospective employee because the employee is considered to be disabled because of his or her hair style (such as believing someone without hair to be suffering from cancer).”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is a bit more exacting. It looks at how various groups of people wearing various hairstyles are treated in comparison to other groups.
“The baseline for evaluating grooming policies is to look at their overall burden on different groups of employees,” EEOC spokeswoman Justine Lisser wrote in a general overview of the Petro Mart matter.
“…If an employer prohibits a range of hair styles, such as both corn rows and mohawks, and the no cornrows/dreadlocks policy affects 30% of its African-American employees while the no mohawks affects only 3% of its white employees, we could say that the policy had a disparate impact on African-Americans, even if it applies to all employees.”
Hegwood has sported dreads on and off for years. The dreadlocks were in place when he applied for and was offered the $8 business cards.50-an-hour position at Petro Mart late last year.
“They didn’t say anything about it then,” he said.
Nor, Hegwood added, was there any mention of the dreads posing a threat to safety or the health of co-workers.
Owned and operated by Western Oil Co. in Earth City, Petro Mart does have a written policy stipulating that hair should be “kept neat and clean…immoderate styles… such as corn rows, braids etc. must be approved by a supervisor…dreadlocks and mohawks are unacceptable.”
Western Oil did not respond to requests for a response.
A father of three, Hegwood doesn’t know how long he can take a principled stand against Petro Mart and its grooming policy.
He needs a salary to support his children and pay for the remainder of his education at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park, where Hegwood hopes to earn a degree in business.
The worst of the job crisis may be over — unemployment in the St. Louis region dropped to 8.1 percent in March.
But back in the hunt four months after starting a job “I really liked,” Hegwood fears landing employment remains a challenge.
“Maybe I’ll start my own business,” he said, looking ahead. “That way I can wear my hair anyway I want.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“We’re all technology companies at heart. Whether you’re a law firm or a bank, the core of your company is technology. And that is kind of shaking the core of the office today.” — Thomas Vecchione, head of Workplace Design at Gensler, the global architectural firm, on the work space evolution that includes “free range” offices in which employees take a seat each day at whatever desk is available.
Source: The Point, WBUR/Boston
BY THE NUMBERS
3.9 million - The population of Oregon — and the number of Americans who continue to suffer the effects of unemployment lasting more than a year. The long-term unemployed represent 29.5 of the nation’s jobless.
Source: The Pew Charitable Trusts
FINAL WORD
“You know, how could you not look?” - Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III on whether he tracks the struggles of a former employee, Albert Pujols, in the box scores each day.
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Oil prices rose to near $104 a barrel Tuesday in Asia after a successful Spanish debt sale eased fears that Europe’s debt crisis could flare again.
Benchmark oil for May delivery was up 62 cents to $103.55 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 10 cents to settle at $102.93 in New York on Monday.
Brent crude for June delivery was down 23 cents at $118.45 per barrel in London.
Spain sold euro3.2 billion ($4.2 billion) of 12- and 18-month bonds at an auction Tuesday, a day after a jump in Spanish yields sparked concern that the country may require an international bailout to avoid a debt default.
Stock markets, which oil traders often look to as a measure of overall investor sentiment, rose in early trading Tuesday in Europe.
Most analysts are forecasting a mild recession in Europe this year, but renewed contagion from the continent’s debt crisis could further hurt economic growth.
“Economic conditions in the big developed economies remain weak and there is potential for further downward revisions to crude oil demand,” National Australia Bank said in a report.
Investors are also mulling the impact of meetings last weekend about Iran’s nuclear program. Talks among Iran and six world powers didn’t produce any concrete agreements, but negotiators said the tone was better than previous meetings, and the sides agreed to meet again on May 23.
Concern that a military strike by Israel and the U.S. against Iran’s nuclear facilities would disrupt global crude supplies has helped push crude up from $75 in October. Iranian crude output has fallen in recent months as the U.S. and Europe begin to impose economic sanctions on OPEC’s second-biggest producer.
“While the recent Iran talks were ‘constructive’, they did not offer much in the way of providing markets with any sense of supply certainty,” NAB said.
In other energy trading, heating oil was up 1.2 cents at $3.13 per gallon and gasoline futures gained 0.5 cents at $3.27 per gallon. Natural gas fell 0.7 cents at $2.01 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Rupert Murdoch’s News International is challenging celebrity phone hacking victim Sienna Miller over her legal bill, a person close to the case said late Wednesday.
Miller was one of the first public figures to take the British newspaper company to court for illegally eavesdropping on her telephone messages.
In May, News International agreed to pay the “Alfie” star 100,000 pounds (about $160,000) to settle her claim, but a person close to the case says there’s been no agreement how much to pay out in legal costs and that the issue is headed to court.
The person provided no detail as to when any potential hearing would take place, speaking anonymously because the information wasn’t cleared for release.
News International spokeswoman Daisy Dunlop declined comment, as did Miller’s lawyer, Mark Thomson.
The scandal over illegal interception of voicemail messages at News International’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid has taken a bite out of parent company News Corp.’s bottom line. In February, Murdoch’s international media company disclosed that legal bills linked to police and parliamentary probes, a judge-led inquiry, and a slew of lawsuits was close to $200 million.
In the last quarter of 2011 alone, the company paid out $87 million, the vast majority of which was for legal and consulting fees.
Zimbabwe has taken majority ownership of all foreign-owned mining companies, Zimbabwe’s black empowerment minister said Thursday, a move the prime minister told companies to ignore, saying it could create “anarchy in the industry” in the already ruptured economy.
Minister Saviour Kasukuwere said in a statement that all companies that did not meet a late 2011 deadline to submit proposals to cede a controlling stake to blacks have forfeited 51 percent of their shareholdings and are now “deemed to be owned by the state.”
Zimbabwe has large Australian, Canadian and South African mining interests _ including giants Rio Tinto, Canadile and Anglo American _ and with scores of small white-owned gold mines.
The empowerment drive has split the shaky three-year-old coalition government. Critics says it has scared off much-needed investment and is being used as a political ploy ahead of elections President Robert Mugabe wants this year.
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the former opposition leader, immediately urged the nation to ignore Kasukuwere and said the empowerment laws did not allow him to “unilaterally nationalize private entities.”
“There is no reason to create panic among investors by projecting the image of a voracious government keen to grab compulsorily people’s companies without compensation,” he said. “It is not the policy of this government to nationalize the mining businesses or any other business.”
Tsvangirai said he took a serious view of attempts to incite the public to act unlawfully against mining businesses.
Kasukuwere’s statement “poses a real risk of creating anarchy in the industry” and his party in the power sharing coalition will take “corrective measures,” he said.
In his Thursday announcement, Kasukuwere said profits since Sept. 25 from the government’s new controlling shareholdings were also regarded as “property of the state.” But he said companies that made a loss since then would have to cover losses from their side, and not draw from the “indigenized portion” held by the state to pay debt.
There was no immediate reaction from mining companies on the eve of the Easter holiday. Many Zimbabwean businesses shut down early for the four-day break.
Mining firms depend on foreign investment to maintain and replace aging equipment not financed by revenues from mineral exports already subject to royalties and tax.
Tsvangirai said Zimbabwe needed policies that created jobs for the millions of unemployed in the country.
“They want massive investment in the country and not a political campaign platform that will only benefit the elite at the expense of the majority,” he said.
Economist John Robertson said Kasukuwere’s announcement is likely to be difficult to enforce no checking account payday advance.
“It may be bullying to scare companies into handing over shares,” he said.
He said many firms let the Sept. 25 deadline pass because the government _ reeling under debt after a decade of economic turmoil _ didn’t offer payment for shares as required under the empowerment laws.
“The money isn’t here to pay or to develop the mines if they are nationalized in the same way commercial farms were deemed state land. Only foreigners have the money and they won’t bring it to have half of it taken from them,” he said.
The agriculture-based economy went into meltdown after Mugabe ordered seizures of thousands of white-owned farms in 2000. Many seizures turned violent.
Robertson described the empowerment drive in its present form as “dishonest” and said it will likely lead to mines being left to stagnate, with worsening poverty for all but an elite minority gaining foreign assets.
“Tens of thousands of our young people will be disempowered by being denied skills training and jobs,” he said.
Last month, Zimbabwe’s biggest platinum producer said it had reached an “acceptable” agreement with the government to yield 51 percent ownership to blacks.
South Africa’s Implats, owner of 87 percent of the Zimbabwe producer Zimplats, said a joint technical team of experts from both sides was working out methods of transferring a majority stake worth at least $500 million.
But Implats chief executive David Brown has said the transfer won’t take place if Zimbabwe doesn’t pay up, adding international legal steps could be taken if Zimplats is forcibly nationalized without payment.
Zimbabwe and South Africa are the world’s largest suppliers of platinum, a corrosion-resistant metal with a wide range of industrial uses that is priced in the same range as gold.
Zimplats employs 8,000 workers in Zimbabwe.
Foreign cash inflows have dwindled in recent months amid uncertainty over the security of possible investments.
Tourism, now the second-biggest hard currency earner after mining since agricultural exports collapsed, has been affected by political and economic uncertainty and security concerns ahead of the elections proposed by Mugabe. Tensions and intimidation have heightened this year, rights groups say.
Tourism Minister Walter Mzembi said Wednesday that Westerners were being discouraged by their governments from visiting Zimbabwe.
“We all know what happens when a tourism destination is plagued by insecurity,” he said.
A downtown building left vacant by businessmen brothers Mike and Steve Roberts is getting new life from a developer who is refurbishing the building as apartments.
Developer Brian Hayden said Tuesday he plans to open the $6.5 million project, at 400 Washington Avenue, on April 13 to coincide with the Cardinals’ home opener.
But Hayden said a more basic reason for undertaking the project is to profit from St. Louis University’s decision to relocate its law school to downtown from the main campus in midtown. Hayden, who has a SLU degree in aerospace administration, already has two apartment projects near the university’s main or medical school campuses.
About five years ago, the Roberts brothers had a plan to develop 400 Washington as a hotel. Their Roberts Downtown Development Co. bought the former WS Hotel with an eye toward redoing it as extended-stay lodging. They later abandoned that plan and put the building up for sale last year.
Hayden said he is refurbishing the former WS Hotel rooms as 78 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments. The WS Hotel suites, developed for extended stays, have full kitchens, Hayden noted. He said work on his project, called Gallery 400, began as soon as he completed the building’s purchase on Feb. 7.
The structure, across Washington Avenue from the Missouri Athletic Club, was built as the headquarters of Edison Brothers Stores.
Hayden is an anomaly among St. Louis developers because he uses no tax incentives or tax credits in his projects. Like his Gallery 3450 project on Russell Boulevard and his Gallery on Washington, near SLU, the new downtown project is financed without public incentives, he said.
“If the project can’t support itself financially, then it shouldn’t be done,” Hayden said. “Every project should stand on its own merit.”
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