Fred Meyer store has added do-it-yourself checkout technology for customers at its Marysville grocery. U-Scan Express features four checkout stations, each equipped with a scanner, weighing platform, bagging racks, monitor and pay station. The stations are designed for customers purchasing 15 items or less.
Time Inc. is closing down three magazines – On, Asiaweek and Family Life – as an advertising recession continues to wreak havoc on the publishing industry. The staff of all three magazines will be laid off, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. It wasn’t clear how many jobs would be lost.
Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday it has waived its right to a hearing before European regulators in hopes of speeding resolution of its antitrust woes in Europe as well as the United States. The procedural move does not mean an automatic start to settlement talks with the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. But it could hurry the process along by skipping over what might have been a contentious face-off originally set for Dec. 20 and 21. A spokeswoman for the commission’s antitrust office, Amelia Torres, declined to comment on whether the case would now move faster.
Facing a stubborn slowdown in the microprocessor industry, IBM Corp. announced Wednesday it would cut about 1,000 jobs from its seven U.S. chip manufacturing and development plants and another 180 jobs at a storage technology plant in Minnesota. Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM said it aimed to reduce the size of its Microelectronics Division by 4.7 percent to about 20,500 employees from 21,500 workers. IBM employs about 320,000 people worldwide. The largest share of the cuts will occur at IBM’s manufacturing plant in Burlington, Vt., where some 500 employees, roughly 6 percent of the plant’s 8,300 workers, will be laid off.
Palm Inc., the Santa Clara-based hand-held device maker, plans to cut its staff by 250 people. Palm, which has been struggling to recover from steep losses this past year, said Wednesday it expects revenue for the fiscal second quarter ending Nov. 30 to range from $250 million to $280 million. That is toward the upper end of its prior guidance, Palm said. The latest job cuts will reduce Palm’s workforce of 1,500 by about 16 percent.
From Herald news services
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