NEW YORK (AFP) - Actress Uma Thurman has taken the stand in New York in the trial of a man accused of stalking her, recounting how he had sent threatening emails to her parents, the New York Post reported online.
The “Kill Bill” and “Pulp Fiction” star told Manhattan Supreme Court on Thursday that Jack Jordan, 37, who has been treated for mental illness, threatened to kill himself unless he could see the actress within a few days, it said.
Receiving no response, Jordan turned up at the set in Manhattan where Thurman was filming in November 2005 and tried to get into her trailer, before leaving a note under her door, the actress told the court, the Post reported.
Prosecutors say the man also turned up at Thurman's Greenwich Village home, where she lives with her two children, and rang the doorbell. An employee opened the door to find him sitting on the steps, MSNBC television reported.
“The fact that he had my parents' home number and had arrived at the set and come back when he was told to leave started to paint a picture much worse than some isolated moment,” Thurman told the court, according to the Post.
She read out passages of the note left by Jordan, including one section suggesting “my hands should be on your body at all times,” the newspaper said.
Jordan's lawyer, George Vomvolakis, told reporters that his client “may be obsessed, yes, but criminal? No,” according to a video placed on the Post's website, adding: “He thought he was just being romantic.”
Jordan was arrested in October 2007 and is on trial on charges of stalking and aggravated harassment. He has pleaded not guilty.
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Microsoft can build a competitive online advertising business without Yahoo but it “could just take more time,” CEO Steve Ballmer told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday.
The comment came as analysts and industry watchers awaited an imminent announcement on Microsoft's next move in its unresolved quest to acquire Yahoo as part of a strategy to compete with Internet advertising king Google.
Ballmer declined to say how Microsoft would react to Yahoo's rejection of its unsolicited 44.6-billion-dollar bid or when the company would announce a decision.
“With the right circumstances it'll happen. Without the right circumstances it won't happen,” Ballmer told the Journal.
Citing inside sources, the paper said the software giant was now leaning toward a hostile bid, with an announcement likely Friday.
Ballmer told employees Thursday he would not pay “a dime above” what he thinks Yahoo is worth and they would know the next move in the takeover quest “in very short order.”
“I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth and I won't go a dime above,” Ballmer said during an in-house exchange with employees posted on the Internet.
Analysts and others have spent the week eagerly awaiting Microsoft's next move in a saga that began when Microsoft made its unsolicited offer on February 1.
Microsoft gave Yahoo until April 26 to accept the offer but the California Internet pioneer let the deadline pass without response.
“We've got basically the three big options in front of us,” Ballmer told the internal forum.
“There's the friendly deal, there's an unfriendly deal, and the third path is simply to walk away. We ought to announce something in very short order.”
A source close to Yahoo told AFP the firm is awaiting Microsoft's move.
“We are all staying tuned,” the source told AFP. “It is pretty clear they will have to raise their offer. Clearly, they need the company.”
The Wall Street Journal said Wednesday that Microsoft's board had “indicated a willingness” to increase its initial 31-dollar-per-share offer to 33 dollars.
That might not be enough to consummate the deal, said Canaccord Adams analyst Colin Gillis.
“Yahoo has said they are open to any deal with anyone, even Microsoft, at the right price,” Gillis said. “From a shareholder angle the 35-dollar price target seems to be the number.”
A meeting of Microsoft's board on Wednesday reportedly ended with directors divided regarding Yahoo.
“The prevailing thought is the board has given Ballmer some leeway to make the deal and doesn't want to do a hostile takeover,” Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle told AFP.
“I have a hard time thinking Microsoft can put this together. Yahoo's expectations are still unreasonable and I don't think Microsoft has the resources to make it work.”
Every dollar added to the per-share bid bumps the price of buying Yahoo by slightly more than a billion dollars. Yahoo's board has said it believes the firm is worth 40 dollars per share.
Ballmer told employees that Microsoft is “100 percent determined” to wrest Internet market share from search and advertising king Google.
“The world hopes that there's a very strong company that's not the number one guy,” Ballmer said. “We're going to work that strategy with Yahoo or without Yahoo. Yahoo's not a strategy; it's a part of a strategy.”
Microsoft is eager to merge online resources with Yahoo to take on Google, which dominates the lucrative Internet search advertising that is expected to grow to 80 billion dollars annually worldwide in the next two years.
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Wall Street expected Sun Microsystems Inc.’s global sales base to help it weather the U.S. economic slowdown and turn a profit in the first three months of the year.
Instead, the Santa Clara-based server and software maker stunned investors Thursday by reporting a loss in its third quarter, caused in part by sagging sales to U.S. consumer-oriented companies that are putting off big-ticket spending for better times.
Sun’s shares were quickly punished, dropping almost 15 percent in after-hours trading.
The company also forecast flat revenues for the fourth quarter and revealed plans to jettison between 1,500 and 2,500 jobs as it tries to snap out of a sudden financial funk.
Sun said after the market closed Thursday that it lost $34 million, or 4 cents per share, in the three months ended March 30. That’s down from a profit of $67 million, or 7 cents per share, during the year-ago period.
The results for the latest quarter include costs of 4 cents per share from Sun’s $1 billion acquisition of open-source software company MySQL AB, a purchase that gives Sun a foothold in the rapidly expanding market for database software for Web-based companies.
Sun also took a $52 million tax hit in the third quarter, compared with a tax benefit of $3 million in the same quarter last year.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had expected Sun to earn 18 cents per share.
The stock shed $2.41, or 14.8 percent, after hours, concluding at $13.93 after the results’ release following the close of regular trading. It had ended up 67 cents, or 4.3 percent, at $16.33 in the regular session.
Sun’s sales of $3.27 billion also came in below analysts’ expectations. Wall Street was predicting Sun would have $3.38 billion in sales, a miss of more than $100 million.
The guidance for flat fourth-quarter revenue disappointed Wall Street as well. Analysts were expecting Sun’s sales for the period to grow 3 percent over last year.
Sun’s chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz, said in an interview that some of the weakness during the third quarter flowed from small businesses in the U.S. clamping down on spending.
“Smaller companies that could make discretionary decisions about (information technology) spending made discretionary decisions — they definitely tapped the brakes,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz added that slower-than-expected sales to government agencies also dragged down the results.
Despite the credit and housing crunch that is ravaging the financial community, Schwartz said its business with the financial services sector actually came in ahead of the company’s internal projections, indicating that banks and other financial institutions appear to be “using technology to drive down costs elsewhere.”
Sun executives were tightlipped on where jobs will be cut now but said many would likely be in the U.S. The company cut about 4,000 jobs through layoffs and attrition shortly after Schwartz took over from co-founder Scott McNealy in 2006 and launched a wide-ranging cost-cutting effort.
Sun, a high flyer during the dot-com heyday, survived a mortifying slump after the dot-com meltdown in which the company racked up more than $5 billion in losses. Sun had posted five straight profitable quarters before the latest setback.
The stock hasn’t been able to get back to the $20 range where it stood after Sun executed a 1-for-4 reverse stock split in November. The move was designed to shed the stigma of the slumping shares, but investors viewed it as a sign of trouble.