The corporation – once a Web powerhouse but now agonizing over a range of options to revive flagging growth – on Tuesday said it appointed former Rovi Corp CEO and International Business Machines Corp veteran Alfred Amoroso and ex-eBay COO Maynard Webb as independent directors.

Yahoo’s board has come under fire from investors impatient with the company’s persistent inability to effect a turnaround, and frustrated with the apparent indecisiveness of stakeholders over how to handle its investments in Alibaba and other prized Asian assets.

“We have engaged with potential investors and reviewed proposals concerning an equity investment in the company, although at this time there have not been any proposals which have been deemed by the committee to be attractive to our shareholders,” Bostock said in a letter to shareholders released on Tuesday.

“We are also in active discussions with our partners in Asia regarding the possibility of restructuring our holdings in Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. The complexity and unique nature of these transactions is significant,” the letter said.

Bostock, who joined Yahoo’s board in 2003, was a lightning rod for Yahoo shareholders upset about the company’s fall from grace and the string of struggles that defined the company during his tenure. Shareholders blamed Bostock, along with Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, for turning down a rich acquisition offer by Microsoft Corp in 2008 near the height of Yahoo’s valuation.

Yang resigned from Yahoo last month. The 71 year-old Bostock, who also serves as vice chairman of the board of Delta Air Lines and who fired Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz over the phone in September, announced his plans to leave Yahoo shortly after the appointment of former PayPal President Scott Thompson to the CEO Post.

Bostock will remain chairman until the company’s annual meeting, expected in the next few months. Yahoo’s new board will decide on a new chairman at the appropriate time, according to a person familiar with the matter.

A Web pioneer, Yahoo has seen its revenue growth stall in recent years as rivals Facebook and Google Inc have increased their share of online advertising spending.

Thompson, credited with driving growth at eBay’s online payments division PayPal, joins Yahoo during a period of turmoil, as the company plows ahead with a strategic review in which discussions have included the possibility of being sold, taken private or broken up.

Many investors hope Yahoo will sell or spin off its Asian assets, with some speculating that Thompson may focus on developing Yahoo’s core online media business.

But one of Yahoo’s major institutional investors described the company’s efforts at striking a deal to spin off its Asian assets as “painfully slow.”

While the shareholder said the departure of Bostock was “monstrously overdue,” he noted that the changes to the board would not necessarily accelerate the dealmaking process or bolster his confidence in the company.

“I’m not highly confident about anything given that group, and now I don’t know who the group is,” said the shareholder, who wished to remain anonymous. “I have a choice of uncertainty or almost a certainty that they’ll make a bad decision. It’s like the lesser of two evils.”

Bostock and fellow board members Vyomesh Joshi, Gary Wilson and Arthur Kern will not stand for re-election at the next shareholders’ meeting, Bostock said in Tuesday’s letter.

The changes come a few weeks before dissident shareholders can nominate rival directors to Yahoo’s board. In November, activist hedge fund manager and Yahoo shareholder Dan Loeb, of Third Point LLC, called for Bostock and Yang to resign from the board and demanded the right to appoint two of his own directors to the board.

Third Point did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shares of Yahoo were up one penny at $15.83 in after-hours trading on Tuesday.

“A lot of this change was expected. That’s why you’re not seeing as big a reaction to the stock,” said Herman Leung, an analyst with Susquehanna Financial Group.

“Most investors are getting a little numb on the corporate governance that’s going on. At this point it’s either get your head down and focus on the business or get something sold,” he said.

Under a “cash rich split” plan being discussed, Yahoo would effectively transfer most of its 40 percent slice of Alibaba back to the Chinese company and all of its stake in Yahoo Japan to Softbank Corp in return for cash and assets, sources have told Reuters.

Yahoo had also entertained separate proposals from private equity firms TPG and Silver Lake about minority investments in the company, but those offers fell short of Yahoo’s expectations.

“Those talks are pretty much done,” said a person familiar with the matter.

The person added that Yahoo had not received any offers to purchase the entire company in the five months since it undertook a broad “strategic review” of its business.

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In October, an Italian appeals court overturned the young Seattle woman’s murder conviction in the 2007 death of her British roommate in Perugia. But the same court upheld Knox’s conviction for slander — for falsely accusing bar owner Diya “Patrick” Lumumba of involvement in the slaying.

Lumumba was freed after two weeks in prison for lack of evidence.

Knox later said she was “manipulated” during her lengthy police interrogation.

An appeal of the slander conviction was filed Monday, Knox family spokesman Dave Marriott confirmed. He doesn’t know when the Italian court might consider it.

Knox returned to Seattle after her murder conviction was overturned. The former exchange student had been in custody since 2007.

In its ruling last fall, the Italian appeals court also acquitted Knox’s then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, in the murder of Meredith Kercher.

A third defendant, Ivory Coast-born drifter Rudy Guede, was convicted in a separate trial of sexually assaulting and stabbing Kercher. His 16-year prison sentence — reduced on appeal from an initial 30 years — was upheld by Italy’s highest court in 2010.

In a lengthy court document explaining the ruling that cleared Knox and Sollecito, presiding appeals court Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann wrote that Knox implicated Lumumba after hours of intense police questioning because “she was convinced that was what the police wanted her to do; to name a guilty person.”

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Santorum largely bypassed Florida and Nevada to blanket the two caucus states with criticism of Romney and lay the groundwork among conservatives who have great sway in the process. RivalNewt Gingrich praised Santorum’s strategy as shrewd even as he signaled he had no interest in exiting the four-way race, which also includes Ron Paul.

“I think that Santorum’s going to have a pretty good day,” Gingrich told reporters on the eve of the caucuses. “He targeted differently than I did. I stayed in Florida to fight it out. … He took the same amount of time and energy and he came to Minnesota and Missouriand Colorado. For him, that was the right decision.”

Missouri’s GOP primary, also scheduled for Tuesday, promised Republicans a chance to show their allegiance to a candidate, but the effort is largely for show. No delegates will be awarded based on the outcome of the primary vote. Instead, Missouri will select delegates through a system of GOP caucuses and conventions that starts with local caucuses in mid-March. Moreover, Gingrich failed to get on the ballot in Missouri, which meant the vote there couldn’t be read as a referendum on the former House speaker’s viability.

Santorum, who for weeks has hammered Romney and Gingrich, seemed optimistic at his final campaign event before the contests got under way.

“This is a big day for us to see whether all the work that we put in in the past few weeks, when not so much attention was paid here as to Florida and Nevada, pays off,” Santorum said at a Denver rally.

Santorum seemed to spare Gingrich after the former House speaker suffered back-to-back losses to Romney in Florida and Nevada. With stepped-up intensity, Santorum castigated Romney as an unfit candidate and warned that Republicans were heading toward defeat if Romney were the nominee.

“A Romney nomination would not be in the best interest of us wining the general election and we need to have a conservative alternative. And my feeling is that Speaker Gingrich sort of had his chance in the arena and came up short in Florida and Nevada,” Santorum told reporters in Golden on Monday. “And now it’s our turn hopefully to get a one-on-one in Missouri.”

Romney sensed a possible threat from Santorum on Monday and went after Santorum’s time in the Senate as “not effective” because of his past support for spending on pork-barrel projects. Santorum flatly countered that Romney was “uniquely unqualified.”

Clearly mindful of the late shift in the race, Santorum has been working aggressively in Minnesota and in conservative areas of Colorado in the past two weeks while Romney campaigned in Florida and Nevada. It was clear Monday that Santorum saw an opportunity to rise in the GOP race.

But he was also facing coordinated criticism from Romney’s headquarters for the first time.

“Any time someone challenges Gov. Romney, Gov. Romney goes out and instead of talking about what he’s for … he just simply goes out and attacks and tries to destroy,” Santorum said.

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Glencore, the world’s largest diversified commodities tradinghouse, will issue 2.8 new shares for each Xstrata share in a deal they said was a “merger of equals.”

The ratio is a 15.2 percent premium to Xstrata shareholders compared with its share price last Wednesday before word leaked out about the merger talks, a joint statement said.

“A merger between Glencore and Xstrata offers a unique opportunity to create a new business model in our industry to respond to a changing environment. It is the logical next step for two complementary businesses,” said Xstrata chief executive Mick Davis, who will be CEO of the enlarged Glencore.

Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg will be deputy CEO and Xstrata chairman John Bond will retain his post.

Xstrata shareholders other than Glencore, which already has a 34 percent stake in the mining group, will hold 45 percent of the new group.

Bringing together Xstrata, the world’s fourth-biggest diversified miner, and Glencore will create a group looking to ride an extended surge in demand in coming years for commodities from China and other emerging nations.

As the world’s biggest exporter of coal for power plants and a top copper producer, the combined firm aims to have the bulk to compete with mining sector leaders BHP Billiton, Vale and Rio Tinto.

On Monday, Xstrata shares closed down 1.7 percent while Glencore declined 4.5 percent, against a 1.0 percent fall in the sector, with both still above the level they were at before the potential deal was announced.

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Polls suggest he should triumph easily in the western US state — where he scored 60 percent in 2008 — although there is a tighter race in Minnesota, where last-placed Rick Santorum is hoping to snatch a win.

Romney’s main rival, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, is battling to stay in the race after two heavy losses in a row to the former Massachusetts governor, who won in Florida last week and Nevada over the weekend.

Romney is on a roll in his bid to become the Republican Party’s nominee to take on President Barack Obama in the general election in November, having taken three of the five state polls so far.

His financial and campaigning muscle were on display on the eve of Tuesday’s caucuses, when he held a rally in a packed school sports hall.

“Mitt, Mitt, Mitt!” chanted several thousand supporters packed into the Arapahoe High School hall, with others forced to listen through loudspeakers in a neighboring hall as Romney gave a cheer-buoyed version of his stump address.

By contrast Gingrich spoke to a few hundred supporters in a barely half-full hotel ballroom in Golden, west of Denver, drawing cheers with an attack on a Romney gaffe from last week about poor Americans.

“He said last week that he didn’t really worry very much about the very poor because after all they had a safety net,” Gingrich said, calling Romney’s verbal stumble “backwards” in terms of traditional conservative thinking.

The candidates are battling for the biggest share of the 1,144 delegates at the Republican Party’s convention in Tampa, Florida, in August. With Nevada, Romney has 99, against 33 for Gingrich, 15 for Paul and 11 for Santorum.

Tuesday’s non-binding caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota will be the last contests before Maine’s week-long straw poll begins on February 11 and Michigan Republicans vote in a February 28 primary.

The caucuses begin at 7 pm (0100 GMT in Minnesota and 0200 GMT in Colorado) and results may not immediately be available.

Full results for Nevada published on Monday gave Romney 50 percent of the vote, more than twice his nearest rival Gingrich, with 21 percent. Paul came in third with 19 followed by Santorum with 10.

In Colorado Romney’s win might not be that crushing, but should still be comfortable: a Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey on Sunday put Romney at 40 percent, Santorum at 26, Gingrich at 18 and Paul at 12.

While the Colorado result is barely in doubt, Romney could see his momentum slowed by a narrow victory — or even a loss — in the heartland state of Minnesota.

He was in a statistical tie with conservative darling Santorum, who is hoping to carry Minnesota’s caucuses on Tuesday with the help of the state’s large base of evangelical Christian and ultraconservative Tea Party voters.

Santorum, who has seen his campaign flag after scoring an early victory in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus, is hoping for another upset in Minnesota’s non-binding caucus, where turnout is expected to be low.

Romney — who carried Minnesota in 2008 with 41 percent of the vote — has not returned to the midwestern state since last week, relying instead on former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty to press his cause.

“The only candidate in the race who hasn’t spent the bulk of his adult life either in Washington, DC or in a parasitic relationship with Washington, DC is Mitt Romney,” Pawlenty told a group of around 40 supporters gathered at Romney’s suburban Minnesota headquarters.

While the Republicans slug it out on the ground, Obama saw his approval rating soar Monday to the 50-percent mark, with a solid lead over Romney, seen as his likely Republican opponent in November.

Obama leads Romney 52 to 43 percent among all Americans, and a narrower 51 to 45 percent among registered voters, according to a poll by the Washington Post and ABC television.

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“We are very concerned that people seem to be starting to think that all politicians behave like Wulff, and that would be fatal,” Christian Humborg, TI Germany’s managing director told The Local.

“I think the Wulff affair is a wonderful opportunity for German politicians to react to the cynical attitude that this is normal, and improve things,” he said.

He said the fact that the authorities were investigating whether Wulff and his aide had committed crimes showed that Germany already had the laws necessary to tackle his case.

But for Wulff, the problem was one of the credibility invested in his constitutional office.

“The president doesn’t have power in Germany; the only power he has is his word. And the power of the word is a function of his integrity. He doesn’t fulfil the level of integrity necessary for his position.

“Let’s not forget that a lot of people want to see him resign – less than half of the population want him to stay. And we’ve heard from many of those that they only want him to stay because they are convinced that any other candidate would have similar allegations thrown at them. We need a poll to ask why people think he should stay in office. I wouldn’t assume that the people who want him to stay approve of his behaviour.”

The question of whether Wulff should resign was one for him to answer personally, and although opposition politicians were increasing pressure on the president, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s continued support for him was questionable, said Humborg.

“We have to ask ourselves why the chancellor is still publicly supporting his behaviour and allowing the public image of politicians to be tainted further. She has some responsibility to safeguard our democracy so that people do not lose trust in the system as a result of politicians’ questionable practices.”

Most of the allegations against Wulff date back to his state premiership of Lower Saxony between 2003 and 2010.

Asked whether the dense web of overlapping personal, business and political relationships that Wulff seemed to have spun during this time were normal for a man in his position, Humborg said, “We don’t have enough empirical data to say to what degree politicians have such relationships in general, but I would be surprised if that was a widespread phenomenon.”

Humborg said he recognized that state politicians must promote their regional economy, but that high moral standards could still be expected of them.

“I don’t think it is so difficult to have a close interaction with people and businesses while still respecting a responsible distance when it comes to personal advantage,” he said.

While Humborg acknowledged that the laws concerning Wulff’s case were sufficient, he called for four major changes to increase transparency elsewhere in Germany’s political life.

He pointed out that there was currently no regulation to force transparency in sponsoring political parties, that Germany has not signed up to the United Nations convention against corruption, and that the law against bribing politicians was too weak.

And he said there needed to be more public information on how federal MPs earn money outside their parliamentary remuneration.

The final additional measure would be to govern what is known as revolving door employment – where ministers and deputy parliamentary ministers who have had contact with businesses in their public positions then go to work for them.

Other countries impose a quarantine period after politicians leave office, during which they cannot work for a firm with which they have had dealings.

Overall, Humborg said Germany had a high levels of integrity, but that there was a need for greater transparency.

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Despite accusations in both countries of interference, Merkel used a visit to Paris for a joint Franco-German cabinet session to make clear her support for Sarkozy, who has increasingly cited Germany as a model for France.

“We belong to the same political family. He supported me and it is natural that I support him in his campaign,” Merkel said during a joint television interview with Sarkozy to be broadcast later on French and German television.

Saying the two had worked together in a “friendly atmosphere” on the eurozone debt crisis, Merkel said they had a strong personal relationship.

Sarkozy said he was pleased to have won her support.

“The French people will decide themselves, like Germans decide, freely,” he said in the interview, but added: “When someone for whom you have affection and whom you admire says ‘I support your actions’, that pleases me.”

At a press conference after the cabinet session, Merkel dismissed criticism of her support for Sarkozy, saying: “It is normal that we support parties that are friends.”

Merkel recalled that Sarkozy had supported her in 2009 during her own election campaign, and said the French leader’s Socialist opponent François Hollande had recently come to Germany to address the opposition SPD.

Sarkozy thanked Merkel for her “friendship and trust” and — without citing him by name — slammed Hollande’s plan to renegotiate a eurozone fiscal compact seen by Berlin and Paris as a solution to the eurozone debt crisis.

He also denounced critics, in particular from the left, who have slammed Sarkozy for taking inspiration from the German model in efforts to reform France’s faltering economy.

“We are not jealous of them (Germany), we want to draw inspiration from them,” Sarkozy said, warning his opponents against “playing with feelings that remind us of periods that we do not want to see again.”

France and Germany were once seen as the twin motors of the European Union, but Paris is now clearly the junior partner, its economy lagging behind by any measure, and Sarkozy has turned to Berlin for ideas.

Sarkozy trails Hollande in opinion polls and Merkel fears that a new left-wing French administration will diverge from her austerity plans.

Speaking to reporters in Dijon, Hollande said “it says a lot about (Sarkozy’s) situation” that he was seeking Merkel’s support.

“For me the only test is the French people…. I don’t need the support of anyone but the votes of the French people,” he said, adding that Merkel would face a “tough task” in winning support for Sarkozy.

Sarkozy, still smarting from France’s loss of its AAA debt rating, cites Germany’s success almost daily to justify his own policies, drawing inspiration from both Merkel and her centre-left predecessor Gerhard Schroeder.

In Berlin, Merkel’s spokesman Georg Streiter said her active support for Sarkozy’s re-election campaign was a “personal” engagement as leader of Germany’s centre-right CDU party and not as the nation’s chancellor.

According to CDU general secretary Hermann Groehe, Merkel plans to support Sarkozy at campaign rallies ahead of France’s two-round presidential election, with a first round on April 22nd and a run-off on May 6th.

Sabine von Oppeln, a Berlin-based expert on Franco-German relations, said Merkel’s backing of Sarkozy was motivated by her efforts to reform Europe.

“With the euro crisis, she found in Sarkozy a partner who has largely supported her or at least not worked against her,” she said.

“There were numerous tensions between Merkel and Sarkozy in the past but today she is making a tactical calculation based on the fact that the two governments need Europe.”

German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung meanwhile wrote that Sarkozy had “latched his destiny to that of ‘dear Angela’ and the ‘German model’.”

“The time is long gone when he would, in private, call the chancellor ‘fatso’ and the Germans ‘the Boche’,” it wrote.

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“The pensions scheme isn’t based on magic. It is a welfare ambition based on large-scale re-distribution and citizens’ own work. If people think that we can live longer and shorten our work life, then pensions will get lower,” Reinfeldt said in interview with daily Dagens Nyheter (DN).

According to Reinfeldt, the expectation to retire at 65 is a problem in Sweden today.

He thinks that Swedes may have to stretch their working life to 75 years of age in order to keep the same living standard. Not many would be willing to sacrifice the way they live, he said to the paper.

“Are people on a large scale willing to give this up? I think not,” he said.

To keep going that long, Reinfeldt isn’t ruling out that Swedes would need to have more than one career during their working life.

“It is a very challenging view. Our entire life is characterized by the idea that once we have spoken to the student career counselor, we think we are going to do the same thing our entire life,” said Reinfeldt.

But instead, Swedes need to be able to change their career at a later stage in life, said the prime minister

He also said that student loans for the over 55s wasn’t out of the question.

“Maybe it is worth looking into that,” he told DN.

Reinfeldt also said that those who are 55+ would immediately become more attractive with employers if they were expected to work for another 20 years instead of ramping down after 5-6 years.

“But it is important to understand that a 30-year-old wouldn’t do the same work as a 70-year-old,” said Reinfeldt.

The prime minister is scheduled to host a meeting in Sweden on Wednesday with the leaders of the Nordic nations, as well as with British PM David Cameron, to discuss among other things the implications of an aging population.

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The leaders are caught between their increasingly frustrated partners in the European Union for failing to pass the reforms quickly and workers who went on strike on Tuesday to protest against the austerity measures.

European Union (EU) officials say the full package must be agreed with Greece and approved by the euro zone, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund before February 15 to allow time for complex legal procedures involved in the bond swap to be completed in time for a March 20 bond redemption.

In some euro zone countries, including Germany and Finland, parliamentary approval is required to raise the bailout money.

In Paris, German Chancellor Angel Merkel on Monday expressed the exasperation among euro zone leaders at seemingly endless arguing in Athens that has yet to produce a definitive acceptance of the austerity and reform demanded by the lenders.

“I honestly can’t understand how additional days will help. Time is of the essence. A lot is at stake for the entire euro zone,” she told a news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But leaders of the three parties in the coalition government appeared to need at least one additional day.

The office of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, a former central banker who heads a government of politicians, said that a meeting of leaders from the conservative, socialist and far-right parties due on Monday had been postponed to Tuesday.

No reason was given for the delay. Papademos held further talks with the “troika” of lenders – the European Commission, ECB and IMF – on Monday.

The party leaders, positioning themselves for a likely general election in April, have balked at accepting another package of deeply unpopular wage and pension reductions, job cuts and tougher tax enforcement measures.

Alarmed by the prospect of yet more budget cuts, Greece’s two main trade unions said they would hold a 24-hour strike on Tuesday in protest against policies they say have only driven the economy into a downward spiral.

Demonstrations are planned in central Athens.

PATIENCE WEARING THIN

Greeks watched the political drama with the same exasperation they have shown throughout the nation’s nearly three-year crisis, mixed with fear of the consequences of leaving the euro.

“We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We are lost either way but political leaders have to agree,” said Kosmas Georgiou, a 31-year old company inspector. “Going back to the drachma is not an option, it’s disaster.”

“They are delaying this just to look like heroes.”

Merkel made clear that her patience was wearing thin on a deal that affects not only Greece but the wider currency bloc, which fears that a default would hit much larger economies such as Spain and Italy.

One government official said the entire Greek side had to agree terms of the rescue, which would be the second for Athens since 2010, with international lenders before the next meeting of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers.

No date has been set for the Eurogroup meeting, and a European Commission spokesman said it would be held only when Greece had made a commitment to the deal.

Papademos said after five hours of talks on Sunday that party chiefs had agreed measures including wage cuts and other reforms as part of spending cuts worth 1.5 percent of gross domestic product.

But leaders of the PASOK socialist party, the conservative New Democracy and the far-right LAOS party still have to reach agreement on several unresolved issues.

These include labour market reform and shoring up domestic banks. Greece needs the bailout money by mid-March to meet big debt repayments but tempers are rising in the EU over what it sees as Greek dithering on implementing reforms.

Greeks have been worn down by a deep recession, now in its fifth year, and wave after wave of austerity measures imposed under the first bailout.

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The diminutive singer told her more than one million followers on the site that she adored her supporters, but one among them was not her ‘lover’ — her nickname for her fans.

“I love 1,033,861 of you LOVERS, but 1 is not a lover, just a deluded weirdo making threat #andthatdoesnotmakeyouspecial So..police alerted,” she tweeted Tuesday.

The announcement prompted a groundswell of support for the 43-year-old on the social networking site, with fans vowing to protect her and offering support.

“I hope whoever’s threatening @kylieminogue knows there’s more than 1,000,000 of us ready to jump to her defence,” wrote one.

Former television soap star Minogue this year celebrates 25 years in the music business since her hit debut single “Locomotion” was released in 1987.

The singer, who has successfully battled breast cancer, has attracted unwanted attention in the past, reportedly receiving hundreds of threatening letters at her British home and office in 2003.

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