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 ...
Highly toxic plutonium is seeping from the damaged nuclear power plant in Japan’s tsunami disaster zone into the soil outside, officials said Tuesday, further complicating the delicate operation to stabilize the overheated facility. Plutonium has been detected in small amounts at several spots outside the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant for the first time, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. Safety officials said the amounts... [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]
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives suffered a historic loss in Baden-Württemberg on Sunday, ending nearly six decades in power. The Greens will lead a German state for the first time. The environmentalist Greens and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) managed an unprecedented political upset in the wealthy southwestern state, which is normally a stronghold for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Official results... [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]
People in 134 countries and territories including the UK switched off their lights for an hour to support action to create a sustainable future for the planet. Environment charity WWF organised the Earth Hour event which saw buildings such as Big Ben, the BT Tower, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Edinburgh Castle, Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, Stormont in Northern Ireland and Cardiff’s Millennium Centre blacking out for... [more]
Håkan Juholt, the new leader of Sweden’s Social Democrat party, attacked the government’s record on youth unemployment, child poverty and ‘growing divides’ in society, in his inaugural speech on Saturday. “There is another way and a different choice,” Juholt said in delivering his first speech as leader to the party congress in Stockholm. While conceding that the economy was strong and that unemployment... [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]
Battered by a week of air strikes, forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi still remain a potent threat to civilians, according to Pentagon officials, who are considering more firepower and airborne surveillance systems to find and attack the enemy troops. As the military eyes other tools in its arsenal, the White House announced late Friday that President Barack Obama will give a speech to the nation Monday evening explaining his... [more]
Ambassadors and senior diplomats in The Hague are guilty of exploiting and imprisoning their domestic staff. Embassy servants have told Radio Netherlands Worldwide and Dutch dailyTrouw their stories of abuse. An Indonesian domestic servant working for a South American diplomat had to hand in her passport and employment contract, was forbidden to leave the house and had to work seven days a week for a low wage. A Philippine servant of a former... [more]
The giant TVs are silent, the neon lights dark and the bars of Tokyo half-empty. Two weeks after Japan’s deadly earthquake, the city that once never slept is learning to live with a new era of frugality. Many public escalators are idle, the trains less frequent and the usually overflowing shelves of the round-the-clock convenience stores sparsely stocked. In the daytime, under the crisp winter skies, the city almost seems to have recovered... [more]
