In a story Jan. 4 about The Boeing Co.’s announcement that it is closing its plant in Wichita, Kan., The Associated Press reported erroneously that the closure will cost 2,160 workers their jobs. An unspecified number of those workers will be allowed to transfer to the company’s plants in other states cheap pay day loans.
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The lone holdout juror who prevented a Utah company from getting as much as $1.2 billion from one-time rival Microsoft Corp. for alleged antitrust violations says he’s at peace with his decision.
Corbyn Alvey, a 21-year-old security guard from Magna, told KSL-TV ( http://bit.ly/ubPwcB) that he didn’t think there was enough evidence presented during the two-month trial in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City to support the claims of Provo-based Novell Inc.
Novell sued Microsoft in 2004, claiming the software giant duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product. Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.
“I walk away feeling honestly myself, and I can’t speak for the other jurors, that I made the right decision even if it resulted in a hung jury,” Alvey said Saturday. “There were so many inferences that needed to be drawn that I felt that it was unfair to Microsoft to go out on a limb and say, `yes.’”
Alvey described the three days of jury deliberations as stressful. The 11 other jurors sided with Novell.
“Obviously, I wanted to convince them to agree with me and they wanted to convince me to agree with them,” he told KSL.
Bill Gates testified last month that he had no idea his decision to drop a tool for outside developers would sidetrack Novell payday loan lenders. Gates said he was acting to protect Windows 95 and future versions from crashing.
Novell argued that Gates ordered Microsoft engineers to reject WordPerfect as a Windows 95 word processing application because he feared it was too good.
Alvey said the jury agreed on the technical aspects of the case but disagreed on what Novell could have accomplished “but for” Gates’ decision.
“There was a lot of speculation in this `but for’ world,” he said.
As for Gates’ testimony, Alvey said, “The man was a little sarcastic at times. If anything, it provided a little break from the monotonous questions and answers … I think from his testimony, what I heard, and what I saw in the emails, Bill Gates was a man who took every threat extremely seriously.”
Jury foreman Carl Banks said he tried hard to get a verdict.
“It was a tough case. It was long and it was hard and it was grueling,” he said. “We gave it our best shot.”
Novell attorneys have said they would seek to retry the case with a new jury. Microsoft said it would file a motion asking the judge to dismiss Novell’s complaint for good and avoid a second trial.
A Yemeni military official says al-Qaida-linked militants have attacked a military barracks in an embattled southern town, leaving two soldiers and 11 militants dead.
The official said Saturday that another 36 soldiers were injured in the base in Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province.
He says that the fighting began Friday night and continued into the morning. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media payday loans.
Militants and the army have fought for control of Zinjibar since May. A 10-month-old uprising against authoritarian President Ali Abdullah Saleh has caused a breakdown of authority throughout the country.
Just as the U.S. economy is making progress despite Europe’s turmoil, here come two new threats.
Deep spending cuts are set to kick in if a congressional panel can’t agree by Thanksgiving on how to shrink the budget deficit. And Congress may let emergency unemployment aid and a Social Security tax cut expire at year’s end. Either outcome could slow growth and spook markets.
Analysts are concerned. Yet most aren’t panicking.
Many say the economy and markets can withstand the blows. That’s because Congress or the Federal Reserve could take other steps next year to blunt the automatic cuts and lift the economy. And investors expect so little from the congressional panel that they’re unlikely to overreact if no deal is reached.
“There’s no doomsday scenario in reducing government spending,” said David Kelly of JP Morgan Funds.
The 12-member bipartisan panel, or supercommittee, was created in August to defuse a political standoff over raising the federal borrowing limit. It’s supposed to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts by Nov. 23. If it fails, federal spending would automatically be cut by that amount over nine years, starting in 2013.
The law triggers cuts in programs prized by both parties: social services such as Medicare for Democrats, defense spending for Republicans.
The panel appears to be deadlocked.
Economists say a stalemate makes it harder for Congress to extend the Social Security tax cut and unemployment benefits. On the other hand, if the supercommittee does forge a deal, it might include an extension of those benefits. Or it could at least clear the way for an extension later.
The Social Security tax cut gave most Americans an extra $1,000 to $2,000 this year. Unemployment benefits provide about $300 a week. Most of that money quickly and directly boosts consumer spending, which drives the economy.
By contrast, an expiration of those benefits could cut growth by about three-quarters of a percentage point, economists say. Throw in other cuts, like those passed in the August debt deal, and all told, federal budget policies could subtract 1.7 percentage points from growth in 2012, according to JPMorgan Chase and Moody’s Analytics.
Given the tepid economy, such a hit could be damaging.
“It would be very difficult for an economy that’s doing well to digest, let alone one that’s barely growing at potential,” said Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s. “That could unwind a lot of the improvement we’ve seen so far.”
The economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the July-September quarter. Some analysts fear it could fall below 2 percent next year, especially if the emergency unemployment benefits and Social Security tax cuts aren’t renewed.
The U.S. economy faces other threats, too _ from persistently high unemployment to Europe’s spreading debt crisis, which could hasten a recession.
If the automatic spending cuts take effect, the defense budget could be cut by nearly $500 billion over nine years. Some contractors are nervous.
Wes Bush, CEO of Northrop Grumman, has told analysts that the company is bracing for spending cuts.
“It’s certainly going to be a more challenging environment” next year, he said.
Another wild card: Some investors fear that the supercommittee’s failure would spark fresh downgrades of U.S. debt. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the government’s long-term debt in August. That contributed to a stock market plunge. It’s possible that a deadlocked supercommittee would lead the two other major rating agencies _ Fitch and Moody’s _ to follow suit.
Yet S&P’s downgrade did little to tarnish U.S. debt. Treasury prices rose, and yields fell. Bond investors still saw Treasurys as a super-safe investment. Federal borrowing costs actually declined.
“S&P showed that when a rating agency downgrades the best-known security in the world, it has little impact,” Kelly said. The market for U.S. Treasurys is so broad, accessible and transparent that ratings downgrades don’t pose much threat, he noted.
Kelly said Wall Street is unlikely to panic given that expectations for the supercommittee “are so low as to be subterranean.”
Even so, some traders appear to be positioning for a shock. So-called “defensive” sectors of the stock market, like healthcare companies and utilities, which tend to retain their value in a weak economy, have been outpacing the S&P 500 index as a whole.
In the past month, the economy has shown surprising strength. Reports this week showed that manufacturers are producing more goods and consumers are spending more. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits for the first time is at a seven-month low.
Still, more than once since the recession officially ended more than two years ago, the economy has displayed vigor only to stumble again. High gas and food prices and Japan’s earthquake sharply slowed growth in the first half of the year. Congress’ debt-ceiling fight sent consumer confidence to recession levels.
Sweet thinks there’s a good chance Congress will end up extending the Social Security tax cut. Partly on that assumption, Moody’s foresees 2.6 percent growth next year. For this year, analysts generally estimate less than 2 percent growth.
Lawmakers could make other policy changes next year to energize the economy. The tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration, and extended in 2010, are set to expire after 2012. Republicans will push to renew them.
Some of the automatic cuts set to kick in in 2013 could be delayed or altered. That’s particularly true if the White House or either chamber of Congress changes sides in 2012.
And some economists say the automatic spending cuts could actually boost confidence a bit: They would reassure the world that the U.S. government can make progress in shrinking its deficit.
Even so, the supercommittee seems likely to fall short of its goal to help reduce the federal debt load.
And there’s more pressure to come.
Priya Misra, an analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, estimates that Congress will need to find $2 trillion more in cuts by August 2013 to prevent another credit downgrade.
Male CEOs with faces that are wider relative to facial height achieve better financial performance for their firms, according to research from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Elaine M. Wong, assistant professor in the school’s department of communication, analyzed the features of 55 U.S. CEOs and found that in general, the wider the face, the higher the company’s return on assets.
She did not find the same correlation with women. She hypothesizes that wider faces – which her research also links to greater aggression – may have been an evolutionary necessity for men, but not women.
The successful group of current and former CEOs included Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, who turned a pioneering business model into a high-flying success; Kenneth Wolfe, who expanded Hershey chocolate into new markets, dramatically increasing revenues and William Stavropoulous, who made Dow Chemical Company an industry leader.
All have faces that are wider rather than narrower, according to Wong’s research.
The Star asked her to put some Canadian CEOs to the test.
Jim Balsillie, co-chair of Research-in-Motion, the BlackBerry maker whose fortunes have tumbled this year, has a relatively narrow face, according to Wong’s calculations, forecasting less stellar results.
She put Tim Horton’s CEO Paul House and Loblaw’s chief Galen Weston Jr. squarely in the middle of the pack of 55 U.S. CEOs.
U.S. CEOs with lower facial ratios included Paul Allaire of Xerox, George Fisher of Kodak, and Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers.
Wong cautions against eyeballing it because looks are deceiving. Barack Obama appears to have a thin face, but it only looks that way because he’s tall and thin. Precise measurements reveal he has a relatively wide face.
Even Wong and her fellow researchers don’t eyeball it. They use computer software to standardize the photos and measure the distance between cheekbones and the distance between the brow and upper lip.
But if Obama has a wide face, how to explain the current state of the U.S. economy? How to explain that a year ago, RIM, run by Balsillie and his partner Michael Lazaridis, was flying high?
The research reveals a trend, not an absolute that will hold true in every case, says Wong. And facial width is only one factor among numerous other variables.
The research was based on previous work by the University of Toronto’s Nicholas Rule, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology and Canada Research Chair in Social Perception and Cognition.
Rule’s research showed that people are able to judge successful CEOs from less successful ones based on photographs. They can even judge success later in life based on photographs taken in university.
Studies at Brock University have found that hockey players with wider faces tended to be more aggressive, with more penalty minutes, says Rule.
“It suggests there is something about the face,” says Rule. “What these studies are doing is saying indeed it’s the facial metrics.”
U.S. stock futures are slipping after disappointing corporate earnings and another sign that Europe’s credit crisis isn’t solved.
Moody’s warned late Monday that it may downgrade France’s top-notch credit rating in the next three months. That country’s finance minister said Tuesday that the French economy may grow at a slower pace than expected.
In the U.S., International Business Machines Corp. fell 4 percent in premarket trading after missing Wall Street’s revenue estimates last quarter free online credit report.
Goldman Sachs, Apple and Intel will release earnings by the end of the day.
Two hours before the market opened, Dow futures fell 34 points, or 0.3 percent, to 11,267. S&P 500 futures lost 2, or 0.2 percent, to 1,191. Nasdaq 100 futures gained 7, or 0.3 percent, to 2,327.
It wasn’t just the latest iPhone that drew people to Apple stores Friday.
Many consumers waited in lines for hours _ sometimes enduring chilly temperatures and overnight thunderstorms _ to remember Steve Jobs, Apple’s visionary who died last week.
The company’s first iPhone release since Jobs’ death turned into another tribute. Some customers even joked that the new model 4S stood “for Steve.”
Tony Medina, a student from Manhattan, stood outside Apple’s flagship store on New York’s Fifth Avenue for nine hours, waiting through rain. He had originally planned to order the phone online but decided to join a crowd of about 200 people to honor Jobs.
“For loyalty, I felt I had to do the line,” he said. “I had to say thank you.”
The new phone, which went on sale Friday in seven countries, is faster than the previous model and comes with better software and an improved camera. Yet the unveiling comes at a time when Apple is finding it difficult to maintain the excitement of previous iPhone introductions.
For starters, the phone is more widely available than in the past. In addition to Apple stores, it’s also sold by three wireless carriers: AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Wireless. Some Best Buy, Target and Walmart stores also carry the phones, as do authorized resellers.
Buyers were also able to preorder the phone on Apple’s website and have it shipped to their homes or offices.
Many diehard Apple fans and investors were disappointed that Apple did not launch a more radically redesigned new model _ an iPhone 5. It’s been more than a year since Apple’s previous model was released.
That also may have contributed to smaller gatherings at some Apple locations.
“People are not as excited about this version as they might have been if a (iPhone) 5 came out,” said Charles Prosser, a retired teacher and computer technician from Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Even so, hundreds of buyers camped out in front of stores for hours to be among the first to get an iPhone 4S.
Steve Wozniak, who created Apple with Jobs in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was first in line at a store in Los Gatos, Calif., having arrived on his Segway the afternoon before.
Wozniak, who typically waits in line for new Apple products, said he barely slept Thursday night as he was busy chatting with Apple fans, taking photos and giving autographs. Wozniak pre-ordered two new iPhones. He bought two more Friday Payday advance.
“I just want to be part of an important event, so I feel it more deeply,” he said.
Many said the event resembled a remembrance to Jobs, who died a day after Apple Inc. announced the new phone.
Emily Smith, a Web designer, checked in to the line in New York on the location-centric social network Foursquare. She got a virtual Steve Jobs badge that read: “Here’s to the crazy ones. ThankYouSteve.”
In Chicago, Nicole Pacheco dragged her brother and a friend out to buy Apple’s latest gadget.
“I wanted to see how it was, to come out here for once,” she said as she looked at the line that stretched past her. “We’re kind of a memory for Steve Jobs. It’s one of his last inventions. It kind of motivated me to get the next one.”
Apple and phone companies started taking orders for the iPhone 4S last Friday. Apple said Monday that more than 1 million orders came in, breaking the record set by last year’s model, which was available in fewer countries and on fewer carriers.
Jobs’ death could be helping sales. Marketing experts say products designed by widely admired figures such as Jobs usually see an upsurge in sales after their death.
The base model of the iPhone 4S costs $199 in the U.S. with a two-year contract. It comes with 16 gigabytes of storage. Customers can get 32 gigabytes for $299 and 64 gigabytes for $399. The phones come in white or black.
The phones also debuted Friday in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Britain. They are coming to 22 more countries by the end of the month.
Besides a better processor and camera, the new phone has a new operating system that allows users to sync content without needing a computer. It also includes a futuristic, voice-activated service that responds to spoken commands and questions such as “Do I need an umbrella today?”
The new features appealed to Dina Nguyen, who came to the Apple store in Palo Alto, Calif., the same location where Jobs was known to show up on sale days. She and her brother, Kennedy, picked up four iPhones for their family.
The siblings said it was a bit sentimental to get the phones now, right after Jobs’ death.
“He left a good legacy. He had a good life. He wanted to make people happy,” Kennedy Nguyen said. “It’s good to support that.”
Ford Motor Co. said Tuesday it will add 5,750 jobs and invest $4.8 billion in its U.S. factories as part of a new contract deal with the United Auto Workers union.
The four-year deal was reached early Tuesday after eight straight days of bargaining. UAW leaders were expected to release further details of the contract later Tuesday at a meeting of union leaders in Detroit. The deal is subject to a vote by union members.
John Fleming, Ford vice president of manufacturing, said most of the new hires will be paid a lower wage than Ford’s older workers. The agreement is expected to lower Ford’s labor costs, which are the highest in the U.S. auto industry.
“The tentative agreement will enable us to improve our overall competitiveness here in the United States,” Fleming told reporters at Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn.
Fleming would not give details about where the new jobs would go. He said the jobs are in addition to 7,000 new positions that Ford announced earlier this year. The $4.8 billion in investments is also in addition to $1.4 billion previously announced.
Ford likely matched some of the provisions in the General Motors Co. agreement that was reached last month. The GM deal gives workers $5,000 signing bonuses, $1,000 a year for three years to cover inflation and at least $3,500 in profit-sharing this year. GM was able to avoid a pension increase for the first time since 1953, and Ford’s terms are expected to match that.
The pact still must be approved by Ford’s 41,000 UAW members, who work at 27 plants and other facilities around the country. Voting is expected next week. Approval could be a problem because many expected the company to restore pay raises and other benefits they sacrificed to help Ford through tough financial times starting in 2007.
UAW leaders said the contract keeps Ford’s costs and prices competitive but increases profit sharing.
“UAW members sacrificed when the company was struggling and now will share in Ford’s prosperity,” UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles said in a statement.
Up next is Chrysler Group LLC, where the talks could be more contentious. The company isn’t making as much money as Ford and GM and probably can’t afford the same deals.
The UAW talks are watched closely because they set wages for more than 112,000 workers in the auto industry and set the bar for pay at auto parts makers and foreign-owned automakers.
Ford shares fell 22 cents to $9.15 a share in morning trading Tuesday after sinking to a 52-week low of $9.05 earlier in the session.
Katia became the second named hurricane of the season in the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday, but forecasters said it was too soon to determine where it might head.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami cautioned the public _ still recovering along parts of the East Coast from Irene _ not to stress over the storm. It is over warm waters and in a low wind shear environment, two ingredients that could propel it to become a major hurricane, likely by the weekend. But it’s too soon to tell if it will ever come near land.
“It’s got a lot of ocean to go. There’s no way at this point to say if it will make any impacts, let alone when it might make them,” said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman at the National Hurricane Center. “There’s a reason we don’t do forecasts more than five days in advance _ the information just isn’t good. The error beyond that just isn’t acceptable.”
As of 11 p.m., Katia was still centered about 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) east of the Leeward Islands and was moving west-northwest near 20 mph (32 kph).
Maximum sustained winds were 75 mph (121 kph).
Also becoming an area of concern is a thunderstorm cluster over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico. It has a high chance of becoming a tropical storm in the next two days, the hurricane center said instant payday loans.
National Weather Service meteorologist Fred Zeigler said the system could bring rain to coastal Mississippi and Louisiana but it’s too early to tell whether it will mean anything worse.
Most models used to track such systems are struggling to predict whether it will move toward Brownsville, Texas, or the Florida Panhandle, he said.
As for Katia, some models show it veering away from the East Coast. But Feltgen said it’s simply too soon for coastal residents to tell.
“Folks along the East Coast shouldn’t be getting a lot of heartburn over this _ not yet,” he said.
The storm’s name replaces Katrina in the rotating storm roster because of the catastrophic damage from the 2005 storm that devastated New Orleans and the coast. The World Meteorological Organization maintains six rotating lists of storm names, but it strikes names associated with storms that were catastrophically deadly or costly.
Meantime, a tropical depression in the Pacific has fallen apart over southwestern Mexico with winds dropping and the hazard dissipating.
Britain will not let a “culture of fear” take over its streets, Prime Minister David Cameron insisted Wednesday, saying police have drawn up contingency plans to use water cannon if necessary to remove rioters from the streets.
Thousands of extra police officers on the streets kept a nervous London quiet after three nights of rioting, but looting flared in Manchester and Birmingham, where a murder probe was opened after three men were killed in a hit-and-run reportedly as they took to the streets to deter potential rioters.
“We will do whatever is necessary to restore law and order onto our streets,” Cameron said in a somber televised statement. “Nothing is off the table” _ including water cannon, commonly used in Northern Ireland but never deployed in mainland Britain.
Cameron has recalled Parliament from its summer recess for an emergency debate on the riots Thursday.
An eerie calm prevailed in the capital Wednesday, where hundreds of shops were shuttered early or boarded up Tuesday night as a precaution, but unrest spread across England on a fourth night of violence by brazen crowds of young people.
Scenes of ransacked stores, torched cars and blackened buildings have frightened and outraged Britons just a year before their country is to host next summer’s Olympic Games, bringing demands for a tougher response from law enforcement. Police across the country have made almost 1,200 arrests _ including 800 in London _ since the violence broke out in the capital on Saturday.
Armored vehicles and convoys of police vans backed up some 16,000 officers on duty _ almost triple the number who were out Monday night. The show of force seems to have worked _ there were no reports of major trouble in London on Tuesday night, although there were scores of arrests.
“What happened in London last night was, when community leaders and the police came together, there were significant arrests,” said police deputy assistant chief constable Stephen Kavanagh. “Some looters were taken away before they got into doing anything, but it was that joint action that made the difference.”
London courts worked through the night to process all those charged. Defendants appearing Wednesday included a 31-year-old primary school worker who admitted looting an electronics store, and a 15-year-old boy originally from Ukraine accused of throwing stones at police.
The violence has revived debate about the Conservative-led government’s austerity measures, which will slash 80 billion pounds ($130 billion) from public spending by 2015 to reduce the country’s swollen budget deficit.
Cameron’s government has slashed police budgets as part of the cuts. A report last month said the cuts will mean 16,000 fewer police officers by 2015.
London mayor Boris Johnson _ like Cameron, a Conservative _ broke with the government to say such cuts are wrong.
“That case was always pretty frail and it has been substantially weakened,” he told BBC radio. “This is not a time to think about making substantial cuts in police numbers.”
Outside the capital, more looting was reported Tuesday night but not on the scale of Monday’s violence in London.
Some 250 people were arrested after two days of violence in Birmingham, and police launched a murder investigation into the deaths of three men hit by a car. Residents said the dead men, aged 20 to 31, were members of Birmingham’s South Asian community who had been patrolling their neighborhood to keep it safe from looters.
“They lost their lives for other people, doing the job of the police,” said witness Mohammed Shakiel, 34. “They weren’t standing outside a mosque, a temple, a synagogue or a church _ they were standing outside shops where everybody goes. They were protecting the community.”
Chris Sims, chief constable of West Midlands Police, said a man had been arrested on suspicion of murder.
“The information we have at the moment would support the idea that the car was deliberately driven,” he said, appealing for calm. “My concern would be that that single incident doesn’t lead to a much wider level of distress and even violence between different communities.”
In the northwestern city of Manchester, hundreds of youths rampaged through the city center, hurling bottles and stones at police and vandalizing stores. A women’s clothing store on the city’s main shopping street was set ablaze, along with a disused library in nearby Salford.
Manchester assistant chief constable Garry Shewan said it was simple lawlessness.
“We want to make it absolutely clear _ they have nothing to protest against,” he said. “There is nothing in a sense of injustice and there has been no spark that has led to this.”
Britain’s soccer authorities were talking with police to see whether this weekend’s season-opening matches of the Premier League could still go ahead in London. A Wednesday match between England and the Netherlands at London’s Wembley stadium was canceled.
Britain’s riots began Saturday when an initially peaceful protest over a police shooting in London’s Tottenham neighborhood turned violent. That clash has morphed into a general lawlessness in London and several other cities that police have struggled to halt.
While the rioters have run off with goods every teen wants _ new sneakers, bikes, electronics and leather goods _ they also have torched stores apparently just to see something burn. They were left virtually unchallenged in several neighborhoods, and when police did arrive they often were able to flee quickly and regroup.
Some residents stood guard to protect their neighborhoods _ Sikhs protected their temple in Southall, west London, and some 1,000 far-right members reportedly took to the streets to deter rioters.
In the central England city of Nottingham, police said rioters hurled firebombs though the window of a police station, and set fire to a school and a vehicle. Some 90 people were arrested.
In the northern city of Liverpool, about 200 youths hurled missiles at police and firefighters in a second night of unrest, and 44 arrests were reported.
There also were minor clashes in the central and western England locations of Leicester, Wolverhampton, West Bromwich, Bristol, and Gloucester.
In London, hundreds of stores, offices, pubs and restaurants closed early Tuesday. Normally busy streets were eerily quiet and the smell of plywood filled the air as business owners rushed to secure their shops before nightfall.
In east London’s Bethnal Green district, convenience store owner Adnan Butt, 28, said the situation was still tense.
“People are all at home _ they’re scared,” he said.
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