QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The accumulation of cash has become excessive. It doesn’t matter which bearish scenario you forecast, they’re never going to need this much cash”
Brian White, an analyst at New York-based Topeka Capital Markets Inc., regarding Apple Inc.’s accumulation of $137.1 billion in cash and investments. Article, 1D
Washington Post to charge online readers
Washington Post Co. plans to adopt a digital-subscription model at its flagship newspaper later this year, following The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in erecting a so-called paywall around online content.
The new approach will require readers to purchase a subscription after they view 20 articles or multimedia features a month, the Washington-based company said Monday in a statement. Home-delivery subscribers will continue to have free online access after the program begins this summer. The Washington Post is still determining pricing.
More media organizations are adopting paywalls - some of them to compensate for declining print advertising, which once served as the industry’s lifeblood. The New York Times, for example, now makes more money from readers than advertisers, and its digital-subscription program, started almost two years ago, has attracted more than 640,000 paying subscribers.
For Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth, the move represents a reversal in thinking. She said as recently as last November that a paywall wasn’t right for the newspaper. She sounded a different note in Monday announcement, saying, “News consumers are savvy; they understand the high cost of a top quality news gathering operation and the importance of maintaining the kind of in-depth reporting for which the Post is known.”
The Washington Post’s weekday circulation fell 8.9 percent from a year earlier to 462,228 during the six-month period ended Sept. 30, while the Sunday edition dropped 20 percent to 674,751, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.
AT&T hacker gets 41 months in prison
NEWARK, N.J. - An admitted online “troll” was sentenced Monday to the maximum prison term under federal guidelines - more than three years - for illegally gaining access to AT&T’s servers and stealing more than 100,000 e-mail addresses of iPad users.
Dozens of Andrew Auernheimer’s supporters packed the hearing and clapped when he made a statement castigating the government for what he characterized as an unfair prosecution. The proceeding turned tense at one point when Auernheimer apparently pulled out a cell phone and several U.S. marshals grabbed it from him and held him spread-eagle on the defense table. After a short recess, he was led back into the courtroom in shackles.
Auernheimer, formerly of Fayetteville, was convicted in November of identity theft and conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers. The counts each carry a five-year maximum sentence, but U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton had accepted federal prosecutors’ request to use a range of 33 to 41 months. Auernheimer’s attorney had sought probation. The attorney, Tor Ekeland, said he would appeal Auernheimer’s conviction and 41-month sentence.
“The one word that comes to my mind the most is ‘disappointment,’” Wigenton said as she pronounced Auernheimer’s sentence. “That someone of your intelligence and ability would use his skills in a negative way.”
Prosecutors say Auernheimer was part of a group that tricked AT&T’s website into divulging the e-mail addresses, including those of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, film mogul Harvey Weinstein and other celebrities.
The group shared the addresses with the website Gawker, which published them in redacted form. Auernheimer and his supporters have claimed he was providing a public service by exposing a flaw in AT&T’s system.
“What did the 114,000 iPad users do that was so wrong, to have their personal information exposed to Gawker?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Zach Intrater asked Wigenton.
“He could have contacted AT&T and let them know what was wrong, and they could have patched the hole and then the defendant could have published and got his reputation.”
A second defendant, Daniel Spitler of San Francisco, pleaded guilty in 2011 and testified against Auernheimer last year.
- The Associated Press
Drug firm AstraZeneca to cut 1,600 jobs
TRENTON, N.J. - Struggling Anglo-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca PLC said Monday that it will eliminate 1,600 jobs, mostly in the United States and United Kingdom, as its new chief executive starts a major research and development reorganization.
The cuts, meant to reduce costs and make research programs more productive, come just weeks after the company reported big drops in revenue and net income for 2012 and forecast continuing difficulties as generic competition hurts sales.
The job reductions amount to nearly 3 percent of AstraZeneca’s 57,200 workers worldwide and are part of moves affecting several major AstraZeneca sites in the United Kingdom, United States and Sweden.
Even the global headquarters will be shifted, from London to Cambridge, England, as the company moves many of its scientists near centers for bioscience research. Rivals have been doing the same, to be near those talent pools and to increase collaborations with scientists at universities and small biotech companies.
The changes, to be made between now and 2016, are expected to produce annual savings of about $190 million by then. They’ll result in restructuring charges of $1.4 billion, about $800 million of that likely in cash.
In the United States, AstraZeneca will scale back its site in Wilmington, Del., by about 1,200 jobs. That includes eliminating 650 positions and shifting 300 others as key functions are transferred to Gaithersburg, Md., home to AstraZeneca’s MedImmune subsidiary and research on biologic drugs - injected medicines produced in living cells rather than by mixing chemicals.
AstraZeneca’s global medicines development group, which oversees research on pills and injectable biologic drugs, will move from Wilmington to Gaithersburg, as will the global marketing staff and and U.S. sales staff for specialty drugs. Those are complex, very expensive injected medicines for chronic conditions.
Wilmington will still be AstraZeneca’s North American headquarters for sales and marketing, with about 2,000 employees remaining there. The other 250 jobs being cut in Wilmington include 80 going to a site in Waltham, Mass., and about 170 going to other U.S. or overseas locations.
Business, Pages 24 on 03/19/2013