Yahoo Inc Chairman Roy Bostock and three other directors will step down as the struggling company ploughs ahead with an internal overhaul, including discussions on dealing with its stakes in China's Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. 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 ...
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has vowed to fight an "anti-business culture" in Britain, warning that a row overexecutive pay and bonuses threatens the country's fragile economic recovery. "Let me say something about the row over bonuses and pay," Osborne said in a speech to the Federation of Small Businesses. "Of course rewards for failure are unacceptable -- and those who believe in the free market are the first to say so. But a strong, free market economy must be built on rewards for success." The Labour Party has heaped pressure on the ruling coalition to curb excessive pay for top executives, using a House of Commons debate to demand the return ...
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Tuesday he is resolved to settle a longstanding territorial dispute with Russia at an annual rally calling for the return of all four Russian-held islands off Hokkaido in northern Japan, the Kyodo news agency reported. "We'll continue to make steady and determined efforts to move ahead with negotiations," Noda said, stressing the need to sign a peace treaty with Russia. The four islands - which Russia calls the Southern Kurils and Japan calls the Northern Territories - has been the subject of a territorial dispute between the two nations since the end of World War ...
Amanda Knox's Italian lawyer has filed an appeal of her slander conviction in Italy, a Knox family spokesman inSeattle said Monday. 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 ...
The Dutch railway will remain 'vulnerable' during wintry weather but Dutch Rail (NS) and track operator ProRail did not help matters during the current cold snap by the late introduction of schedule adjustments to cope with the conditions, transport minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen told parliament in a briefing on Tuesday. The NS and ProRail assumed on Thursday of last week that there would be three to five centimetres of snow. When the forecast was increased on Friday morning to between 10 and 15 centimetres, it was too late to change the timetables automatically, Schultz van Haegen told parliament. Drivers and conductors ...
Greece can leave the eurozone without damaging monetary union, European digital affairs commissioner Neelie Kroes says in an interview with the Volkskrant on Tuesday. Kroes, a member of the Dutch ruling right-wing Liberal party VVD, is not a supporter of Greece exchanging the euro for the drachma, but says: 'It is absolutely not a case of man overboard if someone leaves the eurozone.' The commissioner is very critical of the new Greek government and says they are not fulfilling their promises. 'Too few spending cuts, too little restructuring,' she says. She says the Greeks should follow the example of Italy where the new ...
Mitt Romney hopes his presidential campaign hasn't ignored Rick Santorum's aggressive attacks for too long, as caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota on Tuesday could reshuffle the race for the Republican presidential nomination. 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 ...
Glencore and Xstrata agreed an all-share merger worth $90 billion (56 billion pounds) on Tuesday in the industry's largest ever deal, creating a commodities powerhouse spanning mining, agriculture and trading. 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 ...
US White House hopeful Mitt Romney aims for another big caucus win in Colorado on Tuesday, as his well-oiled campaign machine works to cement his position as the Republican front runner in the US presidential race. 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 ...
As President Christian Wulff remains mired in allegations of impropriety, anti-corruption group Transparency International (TI) has called for politicians to use the case as a chance to open up German politics. “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 ...
A statue of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, will be unveiled on The Mall in July to mark the 50th Anniversary of manned space flight, the British Council has revealed. The statue, a gift from the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) to the council, will remain in The Mall for a year, opposite the statue of Captain Cook and outside the council’s offices. “Gagarin belongs not only to Russia but to all countries and nations, and... [more]
Engineers failed to seal a crack where highly radioactive water was spilling into the Pacific from a Japanese nuclear power plant incapacitated by last month’s earthquake-spawned tsunami but said a search of the site found no other leaks Sunday. The wave has carved a path of destruction up and down the coast and is believed to have killed 25,000 people. The first deaths at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant itself, though, were confirmed... [more]
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called on Thursday for the creation of new global nuclear regulations by the end of 2011 during a first visit by a foreign leader to Japan since the earthquake and tsunami that triggered its atomic disaster. Group of 20 chairman Sarkozy said France wanted to host a meeting of the bloc’s nuclear officials in May to fix new norms in the wake of the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant. “We... [more]
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s parliamentary computer and the foreign and defence ministers’ machines are all suspected of being hacked, with China under suspicion, reports said Tuesday. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph said American intelligence officials tipped off the government that several thousand emails may have been accessed from the computers of at least 10 ministers. As well as Gillard, they reportedly included... [more]
The Japanese government has blasted the operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant for giving an erroneous radiation reading, calling it “unforgivable”. Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said on Sunday radiation in puddles in the turbine building of reactor two at the plant was 10 million times higher than normal, before later correcting the information to say it was 100,000 times higher. Top government spokesman... [more]
THE head of the world’s nuclear watchdog agency has warned that Japan is “still far from the end of the accident” that struck its Fukushima nuclear complex. The New York Times has reported that Japanese authorities were still unsure about whether the reactor cores and spent fuel were covered with the water needed to cool them. Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the newspaper... [more]
Germany is expected to see its biggest-ever anti-nuclear demonstrations on Saturday, with major protests expected in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne. The protests are being organized by an alliance of environmental groups, churches and trade unions, while opposition political parties are also calling on people to turn out. As many as 50,000 people have been registered in Berlin alone, where a procession will go past the headquarters... [more]
Iran on Friday dismissed the UN human rights council’s appointment of an investigator to monitor abuses there for the first time since 2002, the state news agency IRNA reported. “This resolution is unjust, unjustifiable and totally political, and has been approved despite the reticence of certain countries, under pressure from the United States,” foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said. “The objective of... [more]
Officials are racing to restore electricity to Japan’s leaking nuclear plant, but getting the power flowing will hardly be the end of their battle: With its mangled machinery and partly melted reactor cores, bringing the complex under control is a monstrous job. Restoring the power to all six units at the tsunami-damaged complex is key, because it will, in theory, drive the maze of motors, valves and switches that help deliver cooling... [more]
Smoke and steam again rose from damaged reactors on Tuesday at Japan’s quake-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant, where workers have battled to avert a large-scale disaster, Kyodo News reported. White steam-like vapour was seen rising from the number two reactor and what looked like white hazy smoke from the number three reactor, Kyodo said, adding that efforts to spray water and restore electricity had temporarily stalled. Japan has... [more]
