Actual finance blog

South Africa’s jobless rate, the highest of 61 countries tracked by Bloomberg, increased to 25 percent in the first quarter as Africa’s biggest economy failed to create employment for new job-seekers.

The unemployment rate rose from 24 percent in the fourth quarter, Statistics South Africa said in a report released in the capital, Pretoria, today. The number of people in work fell by 14,000 to 13.1 million.

Jobs were cut in the agriculture and retail industries as employers reduced their workforce at the end of harvests and the year-end holiday period. While economic growth has picked up, reaching an annualized 4.4 percent in the fourth quarter, that wasn’t sufficient to create jobs for school-leavers seeking employment for the first time.

“Usually in the first quarter you see new entrants coming into the labor market, so you see unemployment going up,” Peter Buwembo, acting executive manager for labor statistics, told officials in Pretoria today. “The informal sector is turbulent.”

Employment in informal, non-farming industries dropped by 46,000 in the first quarter, while jobs in agriculture slumped by 24,000, the statistics agency said. The formal sector added 56,000 jobs, with manufacturing employment increasing by 20,000 and financial services jobs rising by 37,000.

“The formal sector has seen recovery,” Buwembo said. “It is starting to grow.”

Jobs Target

The government has estimated it needs economic growth of at least 7 percent a year over the next decade to meet a goal of slashing the jobless rate to 15 percent. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan estimated in his budget speech in February the economy will expand 3.4 percent this year.

Joblessness has fueled inequality and crime and led to violent protests in townships across Johannesburg last year. President Jacob Zuma is under pressure from labor union allies to speed up job creation as the ruling African National Congress contests municipal elections on May 18.

The weak recovery in the jobs market may prompt the Reserve Bank to delay raising interest rates until later in the year, said Peter Attard Montalto, an economist at Nomura Plc in London. The central bank has kept its benchmark interest rate at 5.5 percent this year, citing rising fuel and food costs as the biggest risks to inflation.

The data “certainly reinforces our view of rate hikes later rather than sooner,” Montalto said in an e-mail today.

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As Japan’s prime minister visited tsunami-ravaged coastal areas for the first time Saturday, frustrated evacuees complained that the government has been too focused on the nuclear crisis that followed the massive wave.

Nearly every day some new problem at the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant commands officials’ attention _ Saturday it was a newly discovered crack in a maintenance pit that is leaking highly radioactive water into the sea.

“The government has been too focused on the Fukushima power plant rather than the tsunami victims. Both deserve attention,” said 35-year-old Megumi Shimanuki, who was visiting her family at a community center converted into a shelter in hard-hit Natori, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Rikuzentakata, where Prime Minister Naoto Kan stopped Saturday. More than 165,000 people are still living in shelters.

Kan’s government has been frantically working with Tokyo Electric Power Co. to solve the crisis at the nuclear complex, which has been spewing radioactivity since cooling systems were disabled by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that preceded the tsunami on March 11.

On Saturday, nuclear safety officials announced that they had found water with levels of radioactive iodine far above the legal limit leaking from an 8-inch (20-centimeter) crack in the maintenance pit into the Pacific Ocean.

They said the crack was likely caused by the quake and may be the source of radioactive iodine that started showing up in the ocean more than a week ago.

People living within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant have been evacuated and the radioactive water will quickly dissipate in the sea, but it was unclear if the leak posed any new danger to workers. People have been uneasy about seafood from the area despite official reassurances that the risk of contamination is low.

The cracked pit houses cables for one of the six nuclear reactors, and the concentration of radioactive iodine was the same as in a puddle of contaminated water found outside the reactor earlier in the week. Because of that, officials believe the contaminated water is coming from the same place, though they are not sure where.

A nuclear plant worker who fell into the ocean Friday while trying to board a barge carrying water to help cool the plant did not show any immediate signs of being exposed to unsafe levels of radiation, nuclear safety officials said Saturday, but they were waiting for test results to be sure.

Radiation worries have compounded the misery for people trying to recover from the tsunami. Nearly 25,000 are feared dead _ 11,800 confirmed _ and in addition to those living in shelters, tens of thousands more still do not have electricity or running water.

Kan’s visit Saturday to Rikuzentakata was his first to survey damage in one of the dozens of villages, towns and cities slammed by the tsunami.

“The government fully supports you until the end,” Kan told 250 people at an elementary school serving as an evacuation center quick payday loan. He earlier met with the mayor, whose 38-year-old wife was swept away.

He bowed his head for a moment of silence in front of the town hall, one of the few buildings still standing, though its windows are blown out and metal and debris sit tangled out front.

Kan also stopped at the sports complex being used as a base camp for nuclear plant workers, who have been hailed as heroes for laboring in dangerous conditions. He had visited the nuclear crisis zone once before, soon after the quake.

Workers have been reluctant to talk to the media about what they are experiencing, but one who spent several days at the plant described difficult conditions in an anonymous interview published Saturday in the national Mainichi newspaper.

When he was called in mid-March to help restore power at the plant, he said he did not tell his family because he did not want them to worry. But he did tell a friend to notify his parents if he did not return in two weeks.

“I feel very strongly that there is nobody but us to do this job, and we cannot go home until we finish the work,” he said.

Early on, the company ran out of full radiation suits, forcing workers to create improvised versions of items such as nylon booties they were supposed to pull over their shoes.

“But we only put something like plastic garbage bags you can buy at a convenience store and sealed them with masking tape,” he said.

He said the tsunami littered the area around the plant with dead fish and sharks, and the quake opened holes in the ground that tripped up some workers who could not see through large gas masks. They had to yell at one another to be heard through the masks.

“It’s hard to move while wearing a gas mask,” he said. “While working, the gas mask came off several times. Maybe I must have inhaled much radiation.”

Radiation is also a concern for people living around the plant. In the city of Koriyama, Tadashi and Ritsuko Yanai and their 1-month-old baby have spent the past three weeks in a sports arena converted into a shelter. Baby Kaon, born a week before the quake, has grown accustomed to life there, including frequent radiation screenings, but his parents have not. Their home is fine, but they had to leave because it is six miles (10 kilometers) from the nuclear plant.

Asked if he had anything he would like to say to the prime minister, the 32-year-old father paused to think and then replied: “We want to go home. That’s all, we just want to go home.”

In Natori, where about 1,700 people are living in shelters, others had stronger words for Kan. Toru Sato, 57, lost both his wife and his house in the tsunami and said he was bothered that Kan’s visit to the quake zone was so brief _ about a half day.

“He’s just showing up for an appearance,” Sato said. “He should spend time to talk to various people, and listen to what they need.”

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While Japan undergoes the agony of a nuclear accident, the future of Canada

Sirens wailed Friday along a devastated coastline to mark exactly one week since an earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear emergency, and the government acknowledged it was slow to respond to the disasters that the prime minister called a “great test for the Japanese people.”

The admission came as Japan welcomed U.S. help in stabilizing its overheated, radiation-leaking nuclear complex and raised the accident level for the crisis, putting it on a par with the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania.

Nuclear experts have been saying for days that Japan was underplaying the severity of the problems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant.

Still, Prime Minister Naoto Kan vowed that the disasters would not defeat his country.

“We will rebuild Japan from scratch,” he said in a nationally televised address, comparing the work with the country’s emergence as a global power from the wreckage of World War II.

“In our history, this small island nation has made miraculous economic growth thanks to the efforts of all Japanese citizens. That is how Japan was built,” he said.

Last week’s 9.0 quake and tsunami set off a cascade of problems by knocking out power to cooling systems at the nuclear plant on the northeast coast. Since then, four of Fukushima’s six reactor units have seen fires, explosions or partial meltdowns.

The unfolding disaster has left more than 6,900 dead _ exceeding the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, that killed more than 6,400. Most officials, however, put estimates of the dead from last week’s disasters at more than 10,000.

It also has led to power shortages, factory closures, hurt global manufacturing and triggered a plunge in Japanese stock prices.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano admitted that Japan was not prepared for what happened.

“The unprecedented scale of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, frankly speaking, were among many things that happened that had not been anticipated under our disaster management contingency plans,” he said.

“In hindsight, we could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation and coordinating all that information and provided it faster,” he said.

The twin disasters have officially left more than 6,900 people dead and more 10,700 missing. Emergency crews are facing two challenges: cooling the nuclear fuel in reactors where energy is generated and cooling the adjacent pools where thousands of used nuclear fuel rods are stored in water.

Both need water to stop their uranium from heating up and emitting radiation, but with radiation levels inside the complex already limiting where workers can go and how long they can stay, it’s been difficult to get enough water inside.

Water in at least one fuel pool _ in the complex’s Unit 3 _ is believed to be dangerously low. Without enough water, the rods may heat further and spew radiation.

“Dealing with Unit 3 is our utmost priority,” Edano told reporters.

At the stricken complex, military fire trucks sprayed the reactor units Friday for a second day, with tons of water arcing over the facility in desperate attempts to prevent the fuel from overheating and emitting dangerous levels of radiation.

“I think they are racing against the clock,” Yukiya Amano, the head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency said of the efforts to cool the complex, after arriving in Tokyo.

Japan’s nuclear safety agency ratcheted up its rating for the Fukushima crisis, reclassifying the nuclear accident from Level 4 to Level 5 on a seven-level international scale. The International Nuclear Event Scale defines a Level 4 incident as having local consequences and a Level 5 as having wider consequences. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster was rated as 7.

While nuclear experts have been saying for days that Japan was underplaying the crisis’ severity, Hidehiko Nishiyama of the nuclear safety agency said the rating was raised when officials realized that at least 3 percent of the fuel in three of the complex’s reactors had been severely damaged. That suggests those reactor cores have partially melted down and thrown radioactivity into the environment.

While Tokyo has welcomed international help for the natural disasters, the government initially balked at assistance with the nuclear crisis. That reluctance softened as the problems at Fukushima multiplied.

On Friday, though, Edano said Tokyo was asking Washington for help and that the two were discussing the specifics of the problem guaranteed personal loan approval.

The U.S. said its technical experts are now exchanging information with officials from Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the plant, and with government agencies.

A U.S. military fire truck was also used to help spray water into Unit 3, according to air force Chief of Staff Shigeru Iwasaki, though the vehicle was apparently driven by Japanese workers. The Tokyo Fire Department said five of their trucks have joined in dousing operations at the unit.

The U.S. has also conducted overflights of the reactor site, strapping sophisticated pods onto aircraft to measure airborne radiation, U.S. officials said. Two tests conducted Thursday gave readings that U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel B. Poneman said reinforced the U.S. recommendation that people stay 50 miles (80 kilometers) away from the Fukushima plant.

Low levels of radiation have been detected well beyond Tokyo, which is 140 miles (220 kilometers) south of the plant, but hazardous levels have been limited to the plant itself. Still, the crisis has forced thousands to evacuate and drained Tokyo’s normally vibrant streets of life, its residents either leaving town or staying in their homes.

The Japanese government has been slow in releasing information on the crisis. In a country where the nuclear industry has a long history of hiding safety problems, this has left many people, in Japan and among governments overseas, confused and anxious.

In the disaster zone, tsunami survivors, rescue workers and ordinary people observed a minute of silence Friday at 2:46 p.m. _ the moment a week ago when the quake struck. Many were bundled up against the cold. As a siren blared, they lowered their heads and clasped their hands in prayer.

In the largely destroyed town of Hirota, 70-year-old Tetsuko Ito wept as she hugged an old friend she met at a refugee center. One of her sons was missing and another had been evacuated from his home near the Fukushima complex.

“Every day is terrifying. Is there going to be an explosion at the reactor? Is there going to be word my other son is dead?” she said.

She searched for her missing son for three days, then her car ran out of gas.

“I think he’s dead. If he was alive, he would have contacted someone, somehow,” she said. “My other son is alive, but we don’t know if there’s going to be a nuclear explosion.”

If the situation gets worse in Fukushima, she said her son and his family will have to live at her already crowded house, which escaped the tsunami.

“It’s strange when this destroyed area is a place someone would consider safe,” she said.

Police said more than 452,000 people made homeless by the quake and tsunami were staying in schools and other shelters, as supplies of fuel, medicine and other necessities ran short. Both victims and aid workers appealed for more help as the chances of finding more survivors dwindled.

About 343,000 Japanese households still do not have electricity and about 1 million have no water.

At times, Japan and the U.S. _ two very close allies _ have offered starkly differing assessments over the dangers at Fukushima. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jazcko said Thursday that it could take days and “possibly weeks” to get the complex under control. He defended the U.S. decision to recommend a 50-mile (80-kilometer) evacuation zone for its citizens, wider than the 12-mile (20-kilometer) band Japan has ordered.

Crucial to the effort to regain control over the Fukushima plant is laying a new power line to the complex, allowing operators to restore cooling systems. Tokyo Electric missed a deadline late Thursday, said nuclear safety agency spokesman Minoru Ohgoda.

Power company official Teruaki Kobayashi warned that experts will have to check for anything volatile to avoid an explosion when the electricity is turned on.

“There may be sparks, so I can’t deny the risk,” he said.

Even once the power is reconnected, it is not clear if the cooling systems will still work.

The storage pools need a constant source of cooling water. Even when removed from reactors, uranium rods are still extremely hot and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.

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A group of local residents opposed to expansion plans for the Creemore Springs brewery have taken their fight to the Ontario Municipal Board.

The expansion would triple capacity of the brewery to 150,000 hectolitres per year. It

Stocks appear poised for further gains Monday, after a week in which major indexes reached levels last seen more than two years ago.

Stronger earnings and economic reports helped both the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 index surpass significant milestones last week. The Dow closed above 12,000 and the S&P 500 index above 1,300 for the first time since 2008.

This week is light on economic data, but plenty of companies will release quarterly earnings.

Ahead of the opening bell Monday, toy maker Hasbro reported a drop in quarterly profit. But Hasbro’s results still beat analysts’ expectations. Loews Corp. said earnings rose 16 percent, even as revenue slipped slightly. Costs fell 5.8 percent.

Lorillard said profits rose 7 percent as the maker of Newport and Maverick brands sold more cigarettes at higher prices. Lorillard rose 4 percent in pre-market trading.

Online company AOL Inc. said early Monday that it will buy the Huffington Post, an online news and opinion website, for $315 million payday loans. Arianna Huffington, the site’s co-founder and political pundit, will join AOL’s management team as part of the deal.

In the afternoon, the Federal Reserve will give its monthly snapshot of Americans’ borrowing. Private economists forecast that consumer borrowing rose at an annual rate of $2.5 billion in December, nearly double the rate of the previous month.

Dow Jones industrial average futures are up 25 points, or 0.2 percent, at 12,070. S&P 500 futures are up 4, or 0.3 percent, at 1,310. Nasdaq 100 futures are up 3, or 0.1 percent, at 2,340.

Stocks made solid gains last week: The Dow rose 2.3 percent and the S&P 500 2.7 percent. Both indexes are trading at levels last seen in June 2008, three months before the worst of the financial crisis.

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Stocks are finishing with modest gains after the government reported a sharp drop in the unemployment rate. Information technology companies led stocks higher.

The Labor Department said Friday that the unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent in January, the lowest rate since April 2009. But in a separate survey, the government said 36,000 new jobs were created last month, the fewest in four months.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 30 points, or 0.2 percent, to close at 12,092. The S&P 500 index rose 3 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,310. The Nasdaq gained 15 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,769.

Falling shares outnumbered rising ones by a small margin on the New York Stock Exchange. Preliminary trading volume was 912 million shares.

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Under pressure to energize the economy, President Barack Obama said Saturday he will use his State of the Union address to outline an agenda to create jobs now and boost American competitiveness over the long term.

Heading quickly into re-election mode, Obama is expected to use Tuesday’s prime-time speech to promote spending on innovation while also promising to reduce the national debt and cooperate with emboldened Republicans.

“I’m focused on making sure the economy is working for everybody, for the entire American family,” Obama said Saturday in an uncommon preview of his speech, offered up in an online video to his supporters late Saturday afternoon. The president announced that the economy would be the main topic of his speech, a nod to how important that issue is to the country’s standing and his own as well.

At the halfway point of his term, Obama said the economy is on firmer footing than it was two years ago: it is growing again, albeit slowly, while the stock market is rising, and corporate profits are climbing. But with the unemployment rate stubbornly stuck above 9 percent, Obama will signal a shift Tuesday from short-term stabilization policies toward ones focused on job creation and longer-term growth.

Obama offered no details on specific proposals he will call for in his address, though he has offered hints in recent weeks.

Perhaps the clearest came in an overlooked speech in North Carolina last month, one that will likely serve as a template of what the nation is about to hear. Obama said then that making the U.S. more competitive means investing in a more educated work force, committing more to research and technology, and improving everything from highways and airports to high-speed Internet.

In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama also highlighted free trade as a way to increase U.S. exports and put Americans to work.

“That’s how we’ll create jobs today,” Obama said. “That’s how we’ll make America more competitive tomorrow. And that’s how we’ll win the future.”

Obama’s challenge will be to find the money and political will to spend it, at a time when he’s pledged to reduce spending and tackle the mountainous debt. In his preview to supporters Saturday, Obama said he would emphasize fiscal restraint Tuesday, but didn’t go into detail, saying only that any spending cuts should be done in a “responsible way.”

The president is under growing pressure to tackle the debt from the public and lawmakers, particularly some newly elected Republicans who ran on pledges to cut spending. Obama, too, has made spending cuts a priority, setting up a bipartisan fiscal commission which recommended tax hikes and cuts to entitlement programs _ both efforts that would likely be a hard sell with the American people.

Obama will speak Tuesday to a Congress changed both by Republican wins in the November election and the attempted assassination of one of its own. Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head two weeks ago during an event in her district in Tucson, Ariz.

Since then, the president has appealed for more civility in politics, and in a nod to that ideal, some Democrats and Republicans will break with tradition and sit alongside each other in the House chamber Tuesday night online cash advance. Obama hinted Saturday that he would build on that theme during the State of the Union, tying the country’s economic success to bipartisan cooperation.

“We’re up to it, as long as we come together as a people_Republicans, Democrats, Independents_as long as we focus on what binds us together as a people, as long as we’re willing to find common ground even as we’re having some very vigorous debates,” Obama said.

The White House sees competitiveness as a framework Republicans could support. GOP lawmakers traditionally have backed the types of trade deals and research-and-development efforts that Obama is promoting. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appeared to give the president an opening when he said last week in a speech that “my advice to my colleagues is if the president is willing to do what we would do anyway, then we should say yes.”

Yet for all the talk of bipartisanship, Obama will deliver Tuesday’s address at a time when his White House is shifting into re-election mode. Obama plans to file papers to formally run for re-election around March, and several aides are moving to Chicago to run the 2012 campaign. Saturday’s video preview to supporters signaled a return to the campaign-style outreach Obama’s team mastered in 2008, and underscored his need to rally his base around his agenda.

The White House is keenly aware that Obama’s re-election prospects likely hinge on the state of the economy. More than half of those questioned in a new Associated Press-GfK poll disapproved of how he’s handled the economy, and just 35 percent said it’s improved on his watch. Three-quarters of those surveyed did say it’s unrealistic to expect noticeable improvements after two years. They said it will take longer.

Obama’s preview Saturday focused exclusively on his domestic agenda, with no mention of foreign policy. Obama is, however, expected to frame his call for competitiveness in global terms, calling for a new Sputnik moment _ a reference to the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of the first satellite, ahead of the U.S. He intends to say the U.S. is again facing challenges from abroad, this time from fast-growing economies in China, India and throughout Southeast Asia.

In his travels to Asia and during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s recent trip to Washington, Obama has said he’s been struck by the rapid rise of that region and the laser-like focus on competing in the global economy.

“They are thinking each and every day about how to educate their work force, rebuild their infrastructure, enter into new markets,” Obama said in November, after wrapping up a 10-day Asia trip. “We should feel confident about our ability to compete, but we are going to have to step up our game.”

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President Barack Obama on Tuesday ordered a review of federal regulations with an eye toward getting rid of those that stifle job creation and hurt economic growth, a move aimed at both soothing anger over the government’s reach and mending Obama’s relationship with the business community.

The president signed an executive order telling federal agencies to look for rules that place an unreasonable burden on businesses. Specifically, Obama said any regulations must reduce uncertainty, be written in plain language, be built upon public participation, and identify the “least burdensome tools” for achieving the goals of the new government rules.

In an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal, the president also said he wants agencies to look for outdated regulations that make the U.S. economy less competitive.

“It’s a review that will help bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislators of both parties and the influence of special interests in Washington over decades,” Obama wrote.

However, the executive order, which is similar to an order former President Bill Clinton signed in 1993, doesn’t cover some independent agencies that oversee the financial services industry, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve.

The order comes as Republican lawmakers, emboldened by broad victories in the midterm elections, move to scrap many of the administration’s programs and regulations, from the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations on greenhouse gases to regulation of the Internet.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote 150 trade associations, companies and think tanks last month seeking to identify regulations that businesses believe hurt job creation. He also named GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio to chair a new subcommittee that will investigate wasteful spending and federal regulations.

In a statement Tuesday, Issa said Obama’s review, “must be an effort that stretches beyond ideological entrenchments to identify the regulatory impediments that have prevented real and sustained job growth in the private sector.” He offered to provide Obama guidance based on the responses his committee gets from the business groups it has contacted.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday’s executive order was not tied to GOP action on Capitol Hill, and said the proposal had been in the works for several months. The regulatory review follows several incidents over the past two years that have been blamed in part on insufficient or ineffective regulation, including the BP oil spill and the financial crisis.

Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, said while Obama’s review is a welcome acknowledgment that government regulations have economic consequences, the president should take bolder steps to immediately reduce regulatory burdens on businesses.

Agencies have 120 days to submit a plan for how they intend to review existing regulations, and officials said it was too soon to say how their reviews could impact regulations already on the books, including the contentious greenhouse gas restrictions, which many business leaders and Republican lawmakers oppose.

The administration is hoping that the review, with its emphasis on eliminating regulations that limit the competitiveness of U.S. businesses, is another step toward repairing Obama’s relationship with the private sector.

Business groups have complained that new regulations implementing health care and financial reforms, among others, are holding back hiring and economic growth. The private sector has also been reluctant to invest some of the $2 trillion in assets it’s sitting on, in part because of uncertainty over government regulations and tax policies.

Obama has acknowledged that he needed to better manage his relationship with the private sector. He held a five-hour meeting with CEOs in December; he named William Daley, a business executive, as his new chief of staff; and next month, he’ll speak at the Chamber of Commerce, a trade group that has battled his top policy initiatives on health care and financial regulation.

Chamber president Tom Donohue welcomed the regulatory review Tuesday, but also said Congress should reclaim some the authority to implement checks and balances on agencies.

Aric Newhouse, spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, said the regulatory review was a positive first step toward job growth.

“This is an opportunity for the president to demonstrate results by eliminating unnecessary regulations already in the pipeline or delaying poorly thought-out proposals that are costing jobs,” said Newhouse, singling out EPA regulations as among those that are a threat to U.S. jobs.

While the review aims to streamline regulations, Obama said federal agencies won’t shy away from addressing regulatory gaps, such as new safety rules for infant formula and procedures that stop preventable infections from spreading in hospitals.

“We are also making it our mission to root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb,” the president wrote.

Other regulations, such as the Clean Air Act or child labor laws, are necessary to prevent abuse, he wrote, and “strengthen our country without unduly interfering with the pursuit of progress and the growth of our economy.”

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Associated Press writers Chris Rugaber and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

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Days after cutting its global workforce by 4%, Yahoo turned the axe on its product portfolio. Yahoo said Friday that it is killing Buzz, a two-year-old experiment in community news curation.

Buzz never took off, and its termination isn’t much of a surprise. But deeper and more painful cuts are coming: According to a leaked screenshot of an internal webcast by Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving, the list of products slated for "sunset" also includes MyBlogLog, Yahoo Picks, AltaVista, Yahoo Bookmarks and Delicious.

Ex-Yahoo Eric Marcoullier — who created MyBlogLog — posted the screenshot, which has since been taken down, to his Twitter account. Irving shot back on Twitter: "Really dude? Can’t wait to find out how you got the web cast. Whoever it is, gone!"

A Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) spokeswoman confirmed by e-mail that the company is "cutting our investment in underperforming or off-strategy products" does "plan to shut down some products in the coming months such as Yahoo Buzz, our Traffic APIs, and others."

She declined to comment on the leaked screenshot or the fate of the other services, saying "we will communicate specific plans when appropriate."

But late Friday, Delicious posted on its blog: "No, we are not shutting down Delicious online pay day loans. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive. We’re in the process of exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now."

Users of the targeted services weren’t waiting around for official death notices. They took to Twitter early Friday to lash out at Yahoo. Fans of bookmarking site Delicious were especially irate.

"Dear #yahoo, you officially suck for shutting down Delicious, and I vow to never use you or your services again. Love, pissed-off-user," blasted one tweeter.

Launched in 2003, Delicious was acquired by Yahoo acquired in 2005 for an undisclosed sum. Though the bookmarking site is a cult favorite, data from Internet traffic tracker Compete shows a big dropoff in traffic: Around 525,000 unique users visited Delicious this November, versus almost 930,000 in the same month last year.

– CNNMoney producer Allie Bell contributed to this report. 

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