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Massive cost of Greek exit from euro emerges
The government was last night making urgent preparations to cope with the fallout of a possible Greek exit from the single currency, after the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, warned that Europe was “tearing itself apart”.
Reports from Athens that massive sums of money were being spirited out of the country intensified concern in Whitehall about the impact of a splintering of the eurozone on a UK economy that is stuck in double-dip recession.
Report: Yahoo director who didn’t catch fabrication in CEO’s academic record to resign
SAN FRANCISCO – A Yahoo director who didn’t challenge an inaccuracy in CEO Scott Thompson’s academic record will step down from the troubled Internet company’s board, according to a report published Tuesday.
Patti Hart, the head of the Yahoo search committee that hired Thompson in January, reportedly won’t seek re-election at the company’s annual meeting later this year. That’s what unnamed people close to the situation told All Things D, a technology blog affiliated with The Wall Street Journal.
Yahoo Inc., which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., had no immediate comment.
Hart’s resignation would make her the first casualty of a dust-up caused by the recent exposure of a bogus college degree that has periodically appeared in Thompson’s official biography.
The bio included a computer science degree that Thompson never received from Stonehill College, a Catholic school near Boston.
Connecticut the best place for women to work, live: state data
HARTFORD, Conn. — State officials say data gathered from a variety of sources show that Connecticut is the best state for women in which to live and work.
The state Permanent Commission on the Status of Women and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal are scheduled to release details of the findings on Monday at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford.
Officials say data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Council of State Legislatures and several other sources show Connecticut women do better overall than their counterparts in all other states in terms of health care coverage, education and economic well-being.
Blumenthal will be joined by state lawmakers and women’s advocacy groups to discuss the report’s details on Monday.
Nationwide refunds £1,940 despite ombudsman’s ruling
More than a year ago, we sent a cheque by post to pay for carpet we were having laid. The cheque was intercepted and the payee’s name changed from MM Carpet Contractors Ltd to Miss Fengming Zhuang in clearly different handwriting. She paid the cheque into a Barclays account.
Nationwide refused to refund the money, saying it was Barclays’ responsibility. Barclays told Nationwide there was no money left in the account, so we have had to pay for the carpet twice.
We complained to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and appealed when the decision went against us, to no avail. If, as the FOS says, the cheque indicates that we had left the payee line blank so it could be filled in by someone else, why did Nationwide acknowledge to us in writing that the payee name had been altered? Nationwide does not keep cheques, only copies, so the evidence has been destroyed.
The lottery’s hometown pitch
With hometown heroes Bert Blyleven and Kent Hrbek, the Minnesota State Lottery starts a new advertising campaign this week touting its homegrown contributions to taxpayers.
Created by the Minneapolis ad agency Olson, the lottery spots emphasize, in song and banter, the organization’s $2 billion contribution to the state treasury since the first lottery ticket was sold in 1990.
“It’s just a feel-good piece to let people know the good that comes from playing the lottery,” said lottery executive director Ed Van Petten in a phone interview Monday.
Van Petten said the advertising campaign was in the works for several months and was not designed to address any exterior issues at a time when casino and charitable gambling is an object of scrutiny in the Vikings stadium debate.
The ads started appearing on television during prime time Monday night and will continue to run, along with radio spots, until the end of the agency’s fiscal year on June 30.
Kraft to be renamed Modelez after grocery unit is spun off
Kraft Foods Inc., the food manufacturer spinning off its grocery business later this year, will change its name to Mondelez International Inc. after the split as it seeks a new identity as a global snacks company.
Pronounced Mohn-dah-LEEZ, the new name is a combination of the Latin word for world and an expression meant to evoke the word delicious, Northfield, Illinois-based Kraft said today in a statement. The grocery business will be named Kraft Foods Group Inc.
Mondelez will be strictly a corporate name on the back of packages of such snack foods as Oreo cookies and Newtons snacks. After the split, the snacks business will market those brands directly to consumers and Mondelez will remain in the background.
The intention is for Mondelez to be a corporate name, Michael Mitchell, a Kraft spokesman, said in a phone interview.
Bord Gáis warns of higher prices
The company warned of the price hikes if changes proposed to charges for the use of natural gas pipelines are not implemented.
Last month, the Commission for Energy Regulation proposed that suppliers pay for Ireland’s interconnectors, which supply 95% of the country’s gas, irrespective of whether they use them.
This provoked an angry reaction from Shannon LNG, which is currently planning to build a €600m liquid natural gas facility at Ballylongford, Co Kerry.
The construction of the facility is expected to bring 800 jobs — Shannon LNG has already spent €40m to get the project to this stage and has secured planning permission and obtained a foreshore licence.
However, a question now lies over the project with Shannon LNG chief executive Paddy Power telling the February meeting of Kerry County Council that the Commission decision could force the firm to pay €75m per annum to the State.
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GOP debate foreign policy: prolific proliferators of confusion | Ed Husain
Remember that promise by Michele Bachmann to shut down the US embassy in Iran? Only to be informed that there was no embassy in Tehran to shut down. As the field for the Republican presidential nomination has been winnowed out, I assumed we would see more attention to facts, particularly when addressing the sensitive and volatile developments in the Middle East. I was wrong.
The Republican presidential debates are not just watched by Americans, but people all over the world. Iranians and Arabs will not recognize descriptions of their countries. In their opening statements, both Gingrich and Santorum felt an impulsive need to frame Arabs in a negative light, in need of Republican benevolence. Within seconds of stating his name, Santorum declared that “the Middle East is in flames.” Is it really?