News In Brief

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. became the latest major US employer to announce deep job cuts. The company said it would lay off 7,200 workers in a cost-cutting move due to cutbacks in production by automakers, rising costs of raw materials, and the weakness of the euro against the US dollar. Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear reported a net loss of $102 million in the fourth quarter of last year.

Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, is ending the nine-month-old Internet media services venture it had estimated would serve a $2.5 billion-a-year market, reports said. The Santa Clara, Calif., company said jobs would be found elsewhere in the organization for the 200 employees who worked on the project. A spokesman cited an oversupply of competition in the streaming media content field for the closure, meaning that the new venture would take too long to become profitable.

Plans for a $1.5 billion high-tech steel mill that would generate up to 20,000 jobs were unveiled by an international consortium of investors in Australia's most populous state, New South Wales. The facility, to be financed largely by the Industrial Bank of Japan, would replace a plant at Newcastle that was closed in September 1999 by oil, copper, iron, and steel conglomerate BHP Ltd.

Half the workforce - 2,000 employees - will be laid off in a last-ditch effort to save money-losing Air Afrique from collapsing before it can be privatized, the company announced. The Ivory Coast-based carrier is in its fifth rescue plan since 1993 but still owes an estimated $474 million. Five of its planes have been seized by creditors. Air Afrique has operations in 30 countries, 11 of which are co-owners.

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