News In Brief

Janet Yellen said she was stepping down as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and returning to the University of California, Berkeley, as a business professor. White House officials said Martin Baily, a former council member who now works for the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., was the most likely candidate to succeed Yellen. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin announced his resignation last month, and Federal Reserve Vice Chairwoman Alice Rivlin resigned last week.

Its victory in a bidding war with giant Nippon Telephone & Telegraph Corp. (NTT) apparently has given Britain's Cable & Wireless the first controlling interest by foreigners in a Japanese telecommunications company. NTT notified major stockholders in International Digital Communications that it wouldn't raise its offer for their shares. The stockholders then announced they'd sell their combined 35.4 percent interest to Cable & Wireless, giving it a 53.1 percent share. In April, AT&T and British Telecom bought a combined 30 percent stake in the nation's other large long-distance carrier, Japan Telecom, for $1.8 billion.