New York, Nov 4 (DPA) US consumer goods and pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday it would cut around 8,000 jobs in a bid to trim costs in the wake of the recession.
The lay-offs amount to some 6 percent to 7 percent of the company’s employees.
They are designed to save some $1.7 billion by 2011, the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company said. One-time costs of up to $1.3 billion will fall in the current quarter.
Los Angeles, Nov 4 (DPA) A California man has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail for aiming a laser beam at two jets as they were coming in to land at the John Wayne Airport in southern California, NBC Los Angeles reported Tuesday.
The report said that Dana Christian Welch, 37, was the first person in the US to be convicted of interfering with pilots by aiming lasers at their planes.
Assistant US Attorney Sherilyn Peace Garnett said that Welch aimed a laser beam at two Boeing jets as the pilots were about to land at the airport May 21, 2008. The first plane, a United Airlines jet, was carrying more than 180 passengers and crew members while the second was carrying more than 80 people. The laser beam struck a United pilot in the eye, causing ‘flash blindness,’ Garnett said.
New York, Nov 3 (DPA) New Yorkers began voting Tuesday in an election that is likely to see billionaire Michael Bloomberg win an unprecedented third four-year term as mayor.
Opinion polls ahead of the vote put the 67-year old Bloomberg 12 percentage points ahead of his Democratic challenger William Thompson, 56.
Bloomberg spent more than $100 million on his campaign, against $6 million by Thompson.
Bloomberg’s personal wealth is estimated at $16 billion.
New York media have kept a close watch over each of Bloomberg’s moves and rarely found fault. When he asked the City Council to change laws increasing mayoral term limits from two to three, there was a muted outcry that did not last long.
Bloomberg was first elected mayor in the wake of Sep 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that killed more than 2,700 people in the destroyed World Trade Center and inflicted tens of billions of dollars in damage to the city’s infrastructure, Wall Street firms and jobs.
Washington, Nov 3 (DPA) US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Tuesday to discuss the war in Afghanistan and ongoing negotiations to produce an international climate change pact.
Merkel met Obama for the first time since her re-election in September and as the Obama administration conducts a comprehensive review in Afghanistan, where the war remains deeply unpopular in Germany and increasingly so in the US.
‘Germany has been an extraordinary strong ally on a whole host of international issues,’ Obama said in brief remarks to reporters. ‘We appreciate the sacrifices of German soldiers in Afghanistan.’
The US and the European Union as well as other major powers have been in discussions to establish a climate change agreement ahead of a UN meeting in Copenhagen in December.
Merkel has been one of the leading advocates for an agreement to rein in global warming. Obama has endorsed reaching an agreement as well, but has not gone as far as Merkel would like for greater reductions in the greenhouse gases blamed for warming.
During her meeting with Obama, Merkel expressed her gratitude for America’s support for reuniting Germany. Merkel grew up in the former East Germany. Her meeting with Obama took place on the sidelines of the EU-US summit.
New York, Nov 3 (DPA) Legendary US investor Warren Buffett has spent a record $44 billion buying an American rail freight company, in the largest transaction in the history of his Berkshire Hathaway holding company.
The purchase of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp was agreed upon at $100 a share, paid for in both cash and stock. The purchase price includes $10 billion of outstanding debt.
‘Its an all-in wager on the economic future of the United States,’ Buffett said in the statement. Buffett added that the rising costs of oil would make rail freight more profitable against the rival truck-based freight.
Berkshire Hathaway already owned a fifth of the rail company, which is one of the few to have a nationwide network.
That network was itself created by mergers.
Berkshire Hathaway is based in Omaha, Nebraska, and largely concentrates on insurance and the financial sector under the leadership of the 79-year old Buffett.
Berkshire Hathaway stock is priced currently at around $100,000 a share – the most expensive on the New York Stock Exchange.
Washington, Nov 3 (DPA) Iran’s denial of Israel’s right to exist is unacceptable and Tehran must be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a speech before the US Congress Tuesday.
A nuclear armed Iran would pose a threat to international security, Merkel said, adding that there is limited patience in the ongoing talks with Iran to come clean about its nuclear activities.
‘Iran needs to be aware of this, Iran knows our offer, but Iran also knows where we draw the line,’ Merkel said.
She also said trivialising the Holocaust and rejecting Israel’s right to exist by Iran’s leaders was ‘not acceptable’.
‘Whoever threatens Israel also threatens us,’ she said.
She was addressing Congress to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which took place Nov 9, 1989.
Cancun (Mexico), Nov 3 (EFE) The restoration work of the beaches washed away during Hurricane Wilma has begun in Mexico’s Caribbean resort city of Cancun, officials said.
More than seven million cubic meters of sand will be required for the project in Cancun and Maya Riviera, but the current source in La Ollita has only 1.5 million cubic meters of sand, Felix Gonzalez Canto, governor of the Quintana Roo state, said Tuesday.
The decision to meet the shortfall will be taken in the coming days, he said, adding that the project will be completed by the yearend.
The sandbanks located close to the Cozumel island are being considered.
Meanwhile, the authorities are getting sand from the La Ollita area near Isla Mujeres for the project.
The first replacement of sand on the beaches was carried out in 2006 at a cost of more than $27 million. Hurricane Wilma battered the country in 2005.
United Nations, Nov 3 – Objecting to Pakistan raising the Kashmir issue at a UN panel on humanitarian issues, India has asked Islamabad to take credible action against terrorists and their support base to create conditions for meaningful dialogue.
‘Pakistan would be well advised to concentrate its focus on combating terrorism and not allowing the use of its territory by terrorists and their infrastructure,’ Indian delegate B.K. Hariprasad said at a special session of the panel Monday.
‘Pakistan has already been advised that they should take credible action against terrorists and their support base,’ he said, regretting the ‘unacceptable reference’ to Kashmir in the debate on self-determination by the Pakistani delegation.
‘This is necessary to create conditions for meaningful dialogue,’ Hariprasad, a Congress member of parliament, said.
‘We regret the unacceptable reference made by the delegation of Pakistan to the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir,’ he said adding, ‘I would like to reiterate that the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of the Union of India and its people regularly participate in free, fair and open elections.’
Earlier, Pakistan’s acting permanent representative to the UN Amjad Hussain alleged the people of Jammu and Kashmir had been denied the ‘right to exercise the right of self-determination.’
Pakistan, he said, remains committed to the composite dialogue process with India, and that a peaceful resolution of that dispute was imperative for durable peace, stability and progress in South Asia.
Havana, Nov 3 (EFE) Cuba has said the autobiography of Juanita Castro, in which she revealed her association with the CIA and her estranged relationship with her elder brothers Raul and Fidel Castro, is ‘a commercial venture in bad taste and of low morality’.
The Cuban culture ministry made its first official reaction to the book in a magazine published Monday.
‘Miami’s anti-Castro industry, under the auspices of the publisher Santillana and the PRISA Group in Spain, has launched a new product on the market: the memoirs of Juanita Castro,’ an article in La Jiribilla magazine said.
The article titled ‘Memorias para el Olvido’ (Memoirs to Forget) broke the official silence on last week’s launch of the book.
‘The fact is more shocking precisely because for more than 50 years Fidel Castro has made an effort to preserve the privacy of his family from the vicissitudes of his public activities,’ La Jiribilla said.
The book is ‘a rag created to spread statements that are frankly trivial,’ the article said.
It added that ‘if it’s true that at the beginning of the 1960s the author worked for the CIA, she would be just one more among thousands of Cubans who for money or other motives, worked for the CIA and offered to serve as pawns of US policy against Cuba’.
Juanita revealed her collaboration with the CIA in her memoirs ‘Fidel y Raul, Mis Hermanos: La Historia Secreta’ (‘Fidel and Raul, My Brothers: The Secret History’).
The younger sister of Fidel and Raul Castro said Tuesday in an interview with EFE that it was not easy to decide between preserving her family ties and joining the CIA.
Juanita said she has not spoken with Fidel or Raul since 1963.
Washington, Nov 3 – Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder and chairman of India’s Unique Identification Database Authority, is set to become the first Indian to receive Yale university’s prestigious Legend in Leadership Award.
The award of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute will be presented to Nilekani by varsity’s president Richard C. Levin at a ceremony in New Delhi Nov 6, the New Haven based business school announced Tuesday.
The Yale CEO Leadership Summit will bring together over 100 world-renowned business leaders in New Delhi Nov 5-6 to discuss the theme of ‘Navigating the Global Oceans of Opportunity for Indian Business.’
The universal ID card project under Nilekani, who co-founded IT bellwether Infosys in 1981 and served as its CEO from 2002 to 2007, is expected to help ensure that most of the billions of dollars India and other organisations spend on aid reach the people for whom it was intended.
In 2009, Time magazine placed Nilekani on the Time 100 list of the World’s Most Influential People.
He is the inspiration for New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s book ‘The World Is Flat’.
Nilekani’s own book, ‘Imagining India,’ dissected a range of political, economic and social issues confronting the country.
In 2006, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, one of the highest civilian honours awarded by the government of India.
The Legend in Leadership Award was created 20 years ago to honour current and former CEOs who serve as living legends to inspire chief executives across industries, sectors, and nations.
Past winners of the award include: Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, Robert Iger of The Walt Disney Company, Stephen Schwarzman of The Blackstone Group, Roger Enrico of PepsiCo, John Pepper of Proctor & Gamble and Don Keough of The Coca-Cola.
The Yale CEO Leadership Summit is an invitation-only event that is held each June and December in New York city by The Chief Executive Leadership Institute, part of the Yale School of Management. The Institute is the world ‘s first school for incumbent CEOs.
The New Delhi summit, The Chief Executive Leadership Institute’s 60th programme and its first in India, is organised in association with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). The US-India Business Council is a strategic partner for the event.
Supporters of the event include: PepsiCo, UPS, HSBC India, Modi Enterprises, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd. (ONGC), GAIL (India) Ltd, and the Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL).