A US job seeker searches for employment opportunities.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2--US employers cut payrolls for the first time in 4-1/2 years in January, the Labor Department said on Friday in a report that showed the slowing economy was at growing risk of sliding into recession.
A separate report showing a modest revival in manufacturing at the beginning of 2008 took some sting out of the jobs loss but financial market participants were betting the Federal Reserve will have to keep cutting interest rates.
A series of contrasting reports whipsawed financial markets, leaving stock prices basically unchanged in early afternoon trading and bond prices mixed. The dollar recovered earlier losses to show modest gains against the euro.
Uncertainty about US economic prospects was widespread, Reuters said.
“The economy is very weak. It’s on the edge of recession but the data are mixed enough so that you can’t say a recession has begun,“ said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist for PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh. “It’s hanging by a thread but it hasn’t been cut yet.“
President George W. Bush acknowledged to a Kansas City, Missouri, audience there were “troubling signs, serious signs that the economy is weakening“ and said Congress should speed up work on fiscal measures to get tax rebates to consumers.
Some 17,000 jobs were cut last month, sharply contrary to Wall Street analysts’ forecasts that 80,000 would be created. December’s new-job total was revised up to 82,000 from 18,000 but October and November gains were revised lower.
At midmorning, the Institute for Supply Management said its index of national factory activity rose to 50.7 in January from 48.4 in December, a sign of expansion. Consumer sentiment also rose, according to a Reuters/University of Michigan Survey, though not as much as had been forecast.
The soft jobs numbers convinced some analysts that the economy already was in deep trouble.
“We are on the brink of a recession now,“ said Daniel North, chief economist for Euler Hermes ACI in Owings Mill, Maryland. “The job market is always a lagging indicator. This is a nail-in-the-coffin.“

An Indian farmer harvests his crop of wheat in a field at a village on the outskirts of Amritsar. (File Photo)

BROOKLIN, Canada, Feb. 2--Climate change will cause major disruptions in the global food system, and adaptation to those changes needs to begin immediately, experts say.
Otherwise one-fifth of the world’s population could starve and millions of others become climate refugees, forced by heat and drought to abandon their lands and hunt for food elsewhere in the coming decades.
To prevent this nightmarish future, researcher David Lobell says the world community should focus its efforts where climate threats are likely to make the greatest impacts, IPS reported.
“We used historical data to determine what food-producing regions of the world were most sensitive to changes in temperature and rainfall,“ said Lobell, author of the study published in the journal Science today.
“Impoverished regions of Southern Africa and South Asia will be hit first and hardest by climate change,“ Lobell told IPS from his office at Stanford University’s Program on Food Security and the Environment.
Other climate risk hot spots include Central America and Brazil. The analysis compared 20 climate change models for those areas and determined that average temperatures would rise one-degree Celsius in most areas by 2030.
An already hungry Southern Africa could face a 30-percent decline in maize production in the next two decades. Production of other staples like millet and rice are projected to fall by at least 10 percent, the analysis found.
“Rainfall and temperatures in the region are changing quite fast,“ Lobell said.
Maize requires a great deal of water and rich soils--or lots of fertiliser--so it is not the best crop for regions that will get drier. Drought-resistant sorghum might be a better choice for farmers to plant from now on, Lobell suggested. In other areas, crops could be planted earlier than normal to avoid heat-related losses in summer.
Still, these strategies won’t be enough for some regions and they’ll require more expensive remedies, including new crop varieties and expanded irrigation.
Knowing these regions will only become hotter and drier provides a target for adaptation. However, making changes in agriculture and food production is difficult and complex.
“Innovations in policy are needed--not in technology,“ said Geoff Tansey, a food policy researcher, writer and editor of a number of books on food policy, including the forthcoming “The Future Control of Food“.

Unable to topple Google Inc. on its own, Microsoft Corp. is trying to force crippled rival Yahoo Inc. into a shotgun marriage, with a wager worth nearly $42 billion that the two companies together will have a better chance of tackling the Internet search leader.
Microsoft’s audacious attempt to buy Yahoo, spelled out in an unsolicited offer announced Friday, shows just how much Google threatens the world’s largest software maker’s grip on how people interact with computers, AP reported.
For Yahoo, the bid represents another painful reminder of how missed opportunities and mismanagement combined to open the door for Google to supplant it as the Internet’s main gateway, decimating its stock price in the process.
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft is trying to avoid a similar fate at Google’s hands as more people access services and computer programs online instead of relying on packaged software applications.
Although Microsoft remains the world’s most valuable technology company, its position will become more precarious unless it can cultivate a more loyal Internet audience and generate more online ad revenue to subsidize the free services taken for granted on the Internet.
Microsoft is acutely aware of the upheaval that can be caused by a pivotal shift in technology, having been the biggest beneficiary during the 1980s and 1990s of a transition from mainframe computers to personal computers that knocked IBM Corp. off its pedestal.
“Microsoft has to do this deal. It’s a battle that Microsoft needs to win,“ said AMR Research analyst Jonathan Yarmis.
But there’s no guarantee that Yahoo will be willing to sell to Microsoft--or that the deal will win the necessary approvals from antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe if Yahoo capitulates.
Sunnyvale-based Yahoo had little to say Friday beyond a terse statement assuring its shareholders that its board will “carefully and promptly“ study the bid.
In a conference call Friday, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer indicated he won’t take no for an answer after Yahoo rebuffed takeover overtures a year ago.
“This is a decision we have--and I have--thought long and hard about,“ Ballmer said. “We are confident it’s the right path for Microsoft and Yahoo.“
Yahoo will likely face intense pressure to accept, given its steadily sliding profits and a murky 2008 outlook that caused its stock price to drop to a four-year low earlier this week.
Microsoft’s $31-per-share offer--originally valued at $44.6 billion--represented a 62 percent premium to Yahoo’s closing price late Thursday, although it’s below Yahoo’s 52-week high of $34.08 reached less than four months ago. On Friday, the total value of the cash-and-stock deal fell to $41.7 billion, or $28.95 per share, because Microsoft’s shares declined on the news.
Yahoo shares soared to a split-adjusted high of $118.75 in 2000 before the dot-com bust. That peak coincidentally also was just before Yahoo gave Google its first big break by hiring it to run its search engine.
Search engines are crucial tools because they have become a central hub in hugely profitable ad networks.
Advertisers around the world are expected to double their spending on the Internet during the next three years as more people get their news and entertainment on the Web instead of television, radio, newspapers and magazines. The trend is expected to create an $80 billion online ad market in 2010, up from an estimated $40 billion last year.
After realizing how much money Google was making from search, Yahoo introduced its own technology in 2004, but by then it was too little, too late.
Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li expects Yahoo to resist, predicting the company “will do everything possible to stay independent,“ even if it means swallowing its pride and rehiring Google to run its search engine and sell ads on its site.
Other analysts still think Yahoo might try to line up a white knight rather than fall into Microsoft’s clutches. Analysts mentioned several other potential suitors, including News Corp. and InterActiveCorp.
Dinosaur Securities analyst David Garrity even thinks it’s possible that China’s search leader, Baidu.com Inc., or Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba.com Inc. might bid for Yahoo. Alibaba.com is 40 percent owned by Yahoo.
In what most analysts regard as a long shot, there was even some chatter that longtime Microsoft rival Apple Inc. and its CEO, Steve Jobs, might come to Yahoo’s rescue.

NEW DELHI, India, Feb. 2--A third undersea Internet cable has been damaged in the Middle East, adding to the disruption in online services after two other lines were cut earlier this week, the cable operating firm said.
The Falcon cable was cut 56 kilometers (35 miles) from Dubai, between Oman and the United Arab Emirates, according to its owner, Flag Telecom, which is part of India’s Reliance Communications, AFP said.
The repair ship had been notified and was expected to arrive at the site in the next few days, the company said on its website.
Flag Telecom owns another cable that was damaged off Egypt on Wednesday. A repair ship was expected to arrive by Tuesday to restore that cable and repairs were expected to take a week, the company said.
The outages have disrupted business across the Middle East and South Asia, including in India, where businesses said it may take up to 15 days to return to normal.
Egypt lost more than half its Internet capacity because of Wednesday’s breaks. Egypt is to ask Flag and SEA-ME-WE to compensate its Internet and call center companies.

PARIS, Feb. 2--France, Japan and the United States agreed Friday to cooperate in making prototypes of so-called “4th generation“ nuclear reactors, according to statements released by each country’s energy ministries.
These sodium-cooled reactors, which would not come on line until mid-century, produce more energy per unit of fuel than nuclear reactors currently in operation.
But early prototypes have been plagued with problems. The liquid sodium cooling agent is highly volatile, bursting into flames if it comes into contact with air, and exploding if it comes into contact with water.
In 1997 France shut down its Superphenix reactor, while the Phenix, built earlier, is scheduled to close in 2009. Both are in southeastern France.
In Japan, the Monju reactor had to be shuttered after a fire broke out in 1995.
“Work is underway to resolve these problems, and the objective is to obtain safety levels at least as high as with third generation reactors,“ an official in France’s Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Sunil Felix, told AFP.
The memorandum of understanding, also signed by Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency and the US Department of Energy, seeks to “avoid duplication in technological development“ by adopting common standards for the prototypes, the AEC said in a statement.
The cooperative effort, which is open to other countries as well, also aims to set common safety standards, and to reduce costs.
Fourth generation reactors, said Felix, “will make it possible to reduce the production of radioactive waste by recycling a certain percentage into new fuel rods,“ he said.
Another potential advantage is that the new technology would make it far more difficult to divert the plutonium used to fuel the reactors for other purposes, thus reinforcing non-proliferation goals, he said.

A two-euro coin

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Feb. 2--EU citizens were invited Friday to vote for the design of a special two-euro coin to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the launch of the common European currency, with a golden prize to lure entries.
Five designs have been pre-selected for the competition with a set of gold coins worth “several thousand euros,“ to be awarded to the lucky winner who will be picked at random from those who choose the most popular design, a European Commission spokeswoman said.
Residents and citizens of all 27 EU member states are eligible to vote, regardless of whether their country uses the euro, she said.
The chosen coin will be launched throughout the 15-nation eurozone next January to mark the official birth of the euro on January 1, 1999, although euro coins and notes were only issued in 2002, AFP reported.
The designs range from a cave drawing-style depiction of a stick man holding the euro’s “e“ logo, representing “the long history of trade, from pre-historic barter“ to a series of curved lines “reminiscent of the European Parliament’s semi-circular debating chamber,“ according to the commission website, eurodesigncontest.eu, where one can vote.
European Commission spokeswoman on economic and monetary affairs Amelia Torres said the commemorative coin would be only the second to be issued throughout the whole eurozone.
The first was another two-euro piece, the largest denomination coin, issued last year to mark 50 years since the signing of the EU’s founding Treaty of Rome.
All other euro coins are issued by individual member states.
The voting on the design will close on February 22.
The eurozone, which began with 11 nations, now covers 15 member states with a total population of 317 million, more than the United States.
Cyprus and Malta became the latest members of the euro family last month.
The other eurozone nations are Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain.