SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. is getting ready to take its bid for Yahoo right to the Web portal’s shareholders, even as analysts wait for a higher offer.

Separately, Yahoo Inc. adopted new severance packages that protect employees in the event of a Microsoft takeover.

Microsoft has hired proxy solicitation group Innisfree M&A Inc. to help oust Yahoo’s 10-member board, all of whom are up for re-election this year.

A source close to the deal who is not authorized to speak publicly about it said Tuesday that Microsoft could spend $20 million to $30 million on that effort.

That’s much less than the $1.4 billion each $1 uptick in Microsoft’s bid would cost. Microsoft’s offer two weeks ago was originally worth about $44.6 billion, or $31 a share. Based on Microsoft’s closing share price Tuesday, the offer is now worth about $40 billion.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker’s board plans to authorize a proxy battle this week, according to The New York Times DealBook blog. It has until March 14 to nominate a slate of directors for Yahoo. Microsoft and its advisers declined to comment.

Election results would be announced at Yahoo’s annual meeting. Last year’s was held in June.

Microsoft also may simultaneously circumvent Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo’s management and ask shareholders to sell their stock to Microsoft directly.

So far, Microsoft has given no signs it will raise its bid, even though a person familiar with earlier talks between the two companies said Microsoft was willing to pay at least $40 per share for Yahoo a year ago. That person spoke on condition of anonymity because the offer was never made public.

In an interview with The Associated Press Monday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said the software maker was not talking to Yahoo about raising its bid.

Analysts, however, still believe there’s wiggle room.

“I don’t think what they’re saying now precludes” a higher offer, said Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Charles DiBona.

DiBona also said he thinks Microsoft would prefer not to go hostile but will if no progress has been made by the March deadline.

Yahoo reiterated Tuesday that its board is “carefully and thoroughly evaluating all of the company’s strategic alternatives.”

The Web portal and search company’s new severance plans — to take effect if Microsoft succeeds in its takeover bid — cover Yahoo’s top executives and all full-time employees. The plans are designed to keep workers on board even if the company changes hands. They also could make it harder for Microsoft to move Yahoo staff to Redmond and raise the overall cost of integrating the two companies.

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If Jonathan Coulton were to write a song about his own success as a rock star, there would be little mention of the booze, drugs, one-night stands and lonely road laments that typically play out the power chord mix of mythic guitar heroes and music idols.
Instead, Coulton would refer to escaping a life awash in Fritos and Mountain Dew, stuck at his desk writing computer code — “The Office,” set to music. It is, by his own admission, a fairly accurate description of his own former life as a software engineer.

“There’s very little Elvis in me,” Coulton says from his light-filled two-bedroom condo in Brooklyn. “Any rhythm that I have is here in my fingers. It’s nowhere else in my body.”
But those same rhythmic fingers, adept at multiple instruments — along with his gift for writing catchy, quirky songs anchored in sharp observation of the human condition — helped turn Coulton from just another “code monkey” to “The Godfather of Geek Rock.” And he owes much of his success to the Web.
How he did it

In the fall of 2005, Coulton told his wife he was quitting his software job to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a rock star. He could have barely picked a more inauspicious moment. At 36, he was bearing down on middle age — and his wife had just given birth to their first child, a daughter.

“I have known some bitter people in my life who never did what they wanted to do, and I didn’t wanna be that person,” says Coulton.

He also rationalized that letting go of something safe for something uncertain would be a more courageous example for his daughter of how to live.

When he was packing up his office cubicle to begin his new adventure, a colleague suggested that Coulton try to write one song every week for an entire year.

The idea both scared and intrigued him. Creativity on demand week after week was a daunting prospect, but it appealed to Coulton’s desire for at least some kind of structure in his path to making a living through playing music.

From a tiny, converted closet studio in his home he began musing about the world around him — writing songs, recording them, then posting them to his web site. He called the project ambiguously, “Thing a Week.” It was rarely an easy process.

“There were a lot of times when I would have an idea that I thought was really bad, or stupid, but sometimes that would be the only idea that I would have, and so I didn’t have any choice but to do it,” Coulton says. “That’s definitely how a lot of those songs ended up being about such weird things, or news items.”

He became a master of observation of the things that surrounded him. A Shopvac inspired a tune by the same name about a life of suburban angst and regret.

When he saw a photo online of a giant squid, he wrote a song called “I Crush Everything,” in which a lonely giant squid wants to play with the ships he sees sailing above, but fears he’ll destroy them with his innocent but deadly embrace.

Coulton also found a rich source of material from his former life. A song titled, “RE: Your Brains,” tells the story of an office worker being besieged by a co-worker-turned-zombie, who of course wants to eat his brains.

But Coulton is perhaps best known for the tune “Code Monkey,” about a software engineer who dreams of a better life. The song has become an anthem for downtrodden office workers and has helped propel his fame.

Coulton also broke through to fans on the Internet with a couple of unexpected cover songs. His rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s hip-hop ode to the bountiful behind, “Baby Got Back,” was retooled as a softly crooned folk-love song. Listeners loved it.

But while Coulton’s online audience was growing — his bank account was not, mainly because he was offering his songs for free under a creative commons license and asking for “tips.”

When he gave his fans the options of buying the music outright for a set price, making a donation or downloading for free, so many began ponying up that he was soon making more money than he did as a software engineer.

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Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Kyle Kendrick was shocked to learn that he’d been traded to the Yomiuri Giants in Japan for a player named "Kobayashi Iwamura."

"I don’t know what to think right now," he told reporters outside his locker shortly after getting the news from assistant general manager Ruben Amaro Jr.

Had he truly been thinking, he would have realized that such deals are prohibited. And with a little digging he could have found out that there is no Kobayashi Iwamura playing in Japan.

The "trade" was, in fact, a prank. The ruse was orchestrated by pitcher Brett Myers and was elaborate enough to include Amaro, manager Charlie Manuel, Kendrick’s agent, the media and others.

Source:
Philadelphia Inquirer

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PRISTINA, Kosovo - Kosovo’s parliament declared the disputed territory a nation on Sunday, mounting a historic bid to become an “independent and democratic state” backed by the U.S. and European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.

Serbia immediately denounced the declaration as illegal, and Russia also rejected it, demanding an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, which was set for Sunday afternoon.

President Bush said the U.S. would work to prevent violence after the declaration and the European Union appealed for calm, mindful of the risk that the declaration could plunge the turbulent Balkans back into instability.

In the Kosovo Serb stronghold city of Mitrovica, hand grenades were thrown at buildings of the European Union and United Nations following the declaration.

One grenade exploded at the U.N. mission causing no significant damage, a Western source in the city said. EU officials evacuated their building, which houses the team preparing a mission to supervise Kosovo’s independence.

“Officials abandoned the (EU) building. Security guards said two hand grenades had been thrown. One had exploded,” the source told Reuters.

“Kosovo is a republic — an independent, democratic and sovereign state,” Kosovo’s parliament speaker Jakup Krasniqi said as the chamber burst into applause. Across the capital, Pristina, revelers danced in the streets, fired guns into the air and waved red and black Albanian flags in jubilation at the birth of the world’s newest country.

Sunday’s declaration was carefully orchestrated with the U.S. and key European powers, and Kosovo was counting on swift international recognition that could come as early as Monday, when EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels, Belgium.

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HOUSTON - Two astronauts ventured outside Friday for the last spacewalk of the shuttle Atlantis’ mission to the international space station, preparing to attach science experiments to the exterior of the new Columbus lab.

Spacewalkers Rex Walheim and Stanley Love floated out of the hatch as the space station passed over the Pacific Ocean west of southern Chile.

They were scheduled to spend about 6 1/2 hours installing the experiments, retrieving an old space station gyroscope and, if there is time, examining a tiny chip on a handrail near the spacewalk hatch and a jammed solar rotary joint.

One of the pieces of equipment that Walheim and Love will install is an observatory to monitor the sun. The other will carry several experiments requiring exposure to the uniquely harsh environment of space.

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WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday that “our country is in more danger of an attack” because of Congress’ failure to extend a law that makes it easier for the government to spy on foreign phone calls and e-mails that pass through the United States.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney met with Republican congressional leaders in the Oval Office to discuss the impasse with the Democratic-led House. Lawmakers left Thursday for a 12-day recess without acting on the law, which expires at midnight Saturday. The president said Congress should act quickly on the measure as soon as lawmakers return.

Bush argues that without the extension, the intelligence community will not have the tools they need to protect the nation from terrorism. Democrats, equally adamant, accuse the president of fear-mongering and say he has the authority he needs to intercept terrorist communications, even if the law expires.

“American citizens must understand, clearly understand that there’s still a threat on the homeland. There’s still an enemy which would like to do us harm,” Bush said. “We’ve got to give our professionals the tools they need, to be able to figure out what the enemy is up to so we can stop it.”

“By blocking this piece of legislation, our country is more in danger of an attack,” he said.

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VIENNA, Austria - The U.S. has recently shared new intelligence with the International Atomic Energy Agency on key aspects of Iran’s nuclear program that Washington says shows Tehran was directly engaged in trying to make a bomb, diplomats said Thursday.

One of the diplomats said Washington also gave the IAEA permission to confront Iran with at least some of the evidence in an attempt to pry details out of the Islamic republic, as part of the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s attempts to investigate Iran’s suspicious nuclear past.

The diplomats suggested that such moves by the U.S. administration would be a reflection of Washington’s’ drive to pressure Iran into acknowledging that it had focused part of its nuclear efforts toward developing a weapons program.

The U.S. is leading the push for a third set of U.N. sanctions against Iran. Tehran insists its program is intended only to produce energy and has refused U.N. demands that it suspend its uranium enrichment program — technology that can produce both fuel for nuclear reactors and the fissile material for a bomb.

A recent U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran had a clandestine weapons program but stopped working on it four years ago has hurt Washington’s attempts to have the U.N. Security Council impose a third set of sanctions.

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SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. is discussing a possible Internet partnership with media conglomerate News Corp., its latest effort to repel Microsoft Corp.’s takeover bid or pry a better offer from the unsolicited suitor, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday.

The specifics of the proposed joint venture haven’t been worked out, according to the person, who didn’t want to be identified because the talks are considered confidential.

Both The Wall Street Journal and a prominent blog, TechCrunch, reported that News Corp. is interested in folding its popular online social network, MySpace.com, and other Internet assets into Yahoo — an idea that first came up last year. News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.

News Corp. and a private equity firm reportedly would buy significant stakes in Yahoo as part of a complex deal designed to boost the Sunnyvale-based company’s market value above Microsoft’s initial bid of $44.6 billion, or $31 per share.

A Yahoo spokesman said the company continues to “carefully and thoroughly” evaluate alternatives that will enrich its long-term shareholders. Yahoo’s board reportedly is to meet again Thursday or Friday to consider the company’s next move.

News Corp. spokeswoman Teri Everett declined to comment on the Yahoo talks.

Yahoo shares climbed 31 cents to $29.88 Wednesday while Microsoft shares gained 62 cents to $28.96 News Corp. shares slipped 10 cents to finish at $19.93.

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WASHINGTON - Conspiracy theorists take note: The myths surrounding one of America’s oldest and most enduring national symbols are about to be debunked … if you believe the government, that is.

he keepers of the Great Seal of the United States, the familiar emblem on the back of the $1 bill, want you to know what it is not. It is not a sign that Freemasons run the country, it has nothing to do with the occult, and it does not contain clues to a fabulous hidden treasure.

It is rather the nation’s stamp of authority, sovereignty and power, gracing our cash and embossing the most important of documents from its home at the State Department, which has held it since the days of Thomas Jefferson, the first secretary of state.

Not that the Seal’s symbols — the all-seeing eye, the unfinished pyramid, the Latin phrases, the bald eagle clutching an olive branch and arrows and the number 13 — aren’t powerful.

They are, historians say. Yet their meanings have been misidentified, misunderstood and misrepresented almost since the Continental Congress first commissioned the Seal in 1776.

It would be another six years before the original design was approved and another 128 before it evolved into its current form. Along the way, a movement to decipher the Seal’s meaning with ancient Egyptian, mystical and otherwise otherworldly explanations has gained currency.

The Internet age has seen an explosion in such conspiracy theories, many which have now been ingrained in public consciousness through the popular “National Treasure” movie franchise that serves up a combination of Masonic lore and historical myths in blockbuster Hollywood fashion.

Among them:

_That the Seal proves the domination of the United States by a powerful, quasi-religious cult. The Ancient Scottish Rite of Freemasonry is a perennial favorite of conspiracy theorists as some Founding Fathers were Masons and the Seal uses several Masonic symbols.

_That the Seal draws on Satanism or polytheistic ritual to promote a universal new world order under which Earth would be ruled by a single omnipotent government.

_That repeated references to 13 — the number of steps in the unfinished pyramid, stars in the constellation over the eagle’s head, arrows in the eagle’s claw, stripes on the eagle’s shield, letters in the phrase “Annuit Coeptis” — demonstrate the power of 13 American families.

_That there are two seals: one in which the eagle’s head faces the arrows for times of war and another in which the eagle’s head faces the olive branch for times of peace.

All rubbish, according to historians, who say the Seal’s symbolism is far less ominous or revelatory than many believe.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Seal’s 66th and current custodian, on Tuesday inaugurated a new exhibition to commemorate its 225th birthday and trace the history and evolution of the symbolism.

“This exhibit honoring the Great Seal affirms our continued belief in the values of our founding,” she said. “The Great Seal symbolizes the unity, strength and independence of a new nation, the United States of America.”

The Seal will remain at the State Department but the interactive exhibit is designed to travel and curators hope it will dispel the rumors and educate Americans about the real meaning of the symbols.

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WASHINGTON - U.S. fighter planes intercepted two Russian bombers, including one that buzzed an American aircraft carrier in the western Pacific during the weekend, The Associated Press has learned.

A U.S. military official says that one Russian Tupolev 95 flew directly over the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz twice, at a low altitude of about 2,000 feet, while another bomber circled about 58 miles out. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity because the reports on the flights were classified as secret.

The Saturday incident, which never escalated beyond the flyover, comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and Russia over U.S. plans for a missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Such Russian bomber flights were common during the Cold War, but have been rare since.

The bombers were among four Russian Tupolev 95s launched from Ukrainka in the middle of the night, including one that Japanese officials say violated their country’s airspace over an uninhabited island south of Tokyo.

U.S. officials tracked and monitored the bombers as two flew south along the Japanese coast, and two others flew farther east, coming closer to the Nimitz and the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton.

As the bombers got about 500 miles out from the U.S. ships, four F/A-18 fighters were launched from the Nimitz, the official said. The fighters intercepted the Russian bombers about 50 miles south of the Nimitz.

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