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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.”

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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

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McKendree University has acquired the 18-hole Locust Hills Golf Course in Lebanon for $1.4 million, nearly doubling the size of the school’s campus. 

McKendree bought the public golf course for its future development needs but plans to keep the course open for now, the school said in a statement. The golf course is located at 1015 Belleville St. and is adjacent to the school’s McKendree West student apartment complex on College Road.

The purchase increases the size of the school’s campus from 125 acres to 234 acres.

“Our immediate plans are to operate it as a public golf course and to make any necessary improvements or enhancements as we are able,” the university’s president, Dr. James Dennis, said in the statement.

Long-term, the school will evaluate potential educational uses for the property. “Owning the golf course allows us to offer our students a variety of educational opportunities in the future,” Dennis said in the statement. “Locust Hills has natural water features that our biology department could potentially use as an outdoor laboratory to study aquatic organisms and plant habitats. Our sport management majors could learn about golf course and recreational facilities management. It’s exciting to imagine the possibilities.”

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IBM posted first-quarter earnings Tuesday that beat analysts’ estimates.

The tech giant reported a profit of $3.1 billion, an increase of 7% versus last year. Revenue for the quarter was $24.7 billion, up slightly from a year ago.

Excluding certain charges, earnings per share came in at $2.78, above estimates of $2.65. The company, which is the enterprise world’s largest vendor, is one of the hottest stocks in tech and has consistently topped Wall Street profit expectations for the past few quarters.

However, shares of IBM (, Fortune 500) were down 2% in after-hours trading as sales narrowly missed analysts’ forecasts of $24.8 billion.

IBM expects the future to be brighter: It raised its full-year earnings per share estimates to "at least" $15, up from a previous forecast of $14.85.

"We delivered another excellent software performance, expanded services margins, and continued the momentum in our growth initiatives," IBM CEO Ginni Rometty in a release, citing those factors for IBM’s decision to to raise its guidance.

Rometty, formerly the company’s senior vice president for sales, marketing and strategy, succeeded CEO Sam Palmisano after he stepped down in October.

IBM has made a big push into software and services, two of the more rapidly growing and profitable areas of tech, over the past few years.

"When you look at our offerings in business analytics, cloud, and Smarter Planet, about half of the revenue is software," IBM CFO Mark Loughridge said during a conference call with analysts.

IBM’s earnings report came on a busy day for the tech sector. Intel (, Fortune 500) and Yahoo (, Fortune 500) also both released their latest financial results after the closing bell Tuesday.  

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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.

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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.

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Federal Reserve policymakers are worried that recent strong gains in hiring could fizzle if U.S. economic growth doesn’t pick up.

Minutes of the Fed’s March 13 meeting show that members expressed those concerns before sticking with a plan to keep interest rates at record lows until at least late 2014.

A couple of members said they want to take further steps to boost the economy if conditions worsen or inflation remains tame, according to the minutes, which were released Tuesday.

Stocks fell further after the minutes were released. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 105 points to 13,159.

The Fed sketched a slightly sunnier view of the economy after its last meeting, largely because of the best three months of hiring in two years. But members noted that there have been similar bursts of hiring in the past two years that ended up fading.

The readout from the Fed’s last meeting largely echoed a speech Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered last week to a gathering of economists.

The Fed is concerned that the recovery could falter, as it did last year. Americans aren’t receiving meaningful pay increases. Gas prices are high. And Europe’s debt crisis could weigh on the U.S. economy.

As long as inflation remains tame, analysts think the Fed will likely hold interest rates down to give the economy more support. Most economists don’t think Fed officials will change their interest-rate policy at their next meeting on April 24-25 and will ease credit only if the economy slows further.

Still, the outlook for the economy is improving.

Employers added an average of 245,000 jobs a month from December through February pay day loans. The unemployment rate has fallen nearly a full percentage point since summer, to 8.3 percent.

The government will report Friday on the job market in March. Many economists believe that report will show another strong month of job creation with a net gain of 210,000 jobs. They expect the unemployment rate will hold steady at 8.3 percent.

U.S. consumers boosted their spending in February by the most in seven months, raising expectations for stronger growth at the start of the year.

Americans spent more even as their income barely grew. To make up the difference, many saved less.

Many people are more confident in the economy, despite stagnant wages and higher gas prices. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey index rose last month to its highest level since February 2011.

The economy grew at an annual pace of 3 percent in the October-December quarter. Most economists expect slightly slower growth in the current January-March quarter.

Bernanke said the combination of modest economic growth and rapid declines in unemployment is something of a puzzle. Normally, it takes growth of roughly 4 percent annual growth to lower the rate by 1 percentage point over a year.

Bernanke cautioned that he doesn’t expect the unemployment rate to keep falling at its current pace without much stronger growth and more robust hiring.

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The economy grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the final three months of 2011, the best pace in a year and a half. But that growth has likely slowed in the current quarter.

Businesses have been restocking their shelves more slowly and shipping fewer long-lasting manufactured goods. In addition, Europe’s debt crisis and weaker growth in Asia have slowed demand for U.S. exports.

Stronger hiring in the first two months of the year probably hasn’t offset those weaknesses. That’s because Americans’ pay has barely kept pace with inflation even as gas prices have spiked. So consumer spending, which drives about 70 percent of economic activity, probably hasn’t increased much from the end of last year.

Most economists expect growth to pick up later this year as further hiring lifts the economy.

The Commerce Department reported no change Thursday in its previous growth estimate for the October-December quarter. The 3 percent annual rate was the strongest since the spring of 2010. Slower growth in exports than previously estimated was offset by stronger business investment.

Still, economists expect growth has probably slowed to 2 percent or less in the current January-March quarter.

A key reason for that: Businesses haven’t been restocking their shelves as fast as they did at the end of last year. Many had slashed inventories over the summer out of fear that the economy was on the verge of another recession. When that didn’t happen, many stepped up restocking. Inventory building was a key driver of growth in the October-December quarter.

Even though businesses are still replenishing their shelves, the pace has likely slowed. That has likely slowed growth this quarter.

Businesses also are investing less in machinery and equipment this year after a tax credit expired at the end of last year. Orders for durable goods plunged in January. Though orders rebounded in February, that increase didn’t offset the entire January decline. And shipments of core capital goods, a gauge of business investment, grew sluggishly in the three months that ended in February, economists said. That’s also likely holding back growth this quarter.

One bright spot is that hiring has picked up. The economy has added an average of 245,000 jobs per month from December through February. The unemployment rate has fallen by nearly a full percentage point since the summer to 8.3 percent, the lowest level in three years.

The Labor Department said Thursday that the number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell to 359,000 last week, the lowest level in four years. That suggests March was another solid month for hiring.

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The unemployment rates in almost all metropolitan areas dropped in January from a year earlier, and a majority were lower than the national rate, the Labor Department said on Friday.

Jobless rates decreased in 345 of the 372 areas, which typically include a city and its surrounding suburbs, and those in Decatur, Alabama, and Monroe, Michigan, dropped the most.

At the same time, 201 areas recorded January unemployment rates below the U.S. rate of 8.8 percent, not seasonally adjusted. Frequently, the Labor Department will adjust jobs numbers to account for seasonal factors such as holiday hiring or weather.

The seasonally adjusted national jobless rate in February and January was 8.3 percent.

While the effects of the recession that began in 2007 were nearly uniform across the country, the recovery has been far more uneven, with areas where housing had fueled the local economies still hurting fast cash advance.

The states of Nevada and California have the highest unemployment rates in the country, and their limping job markets can be seen on the local level.

El Centro, an inland town in southern California, held the highest unemployment rate in the country in January, 26.4 percent, followed by Arizona’s Yuma, where the rate was 24.5 percent. Meanwhile, 10 of the other 11 areas with jobless rates of at least 15 percent or more were in California.

Of the 49 areas with a population of 1 million or more, Nevada’s Las Vegas-Paradise region had the highest jobless rate, 13.1 percent.

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