Sick Days:

We will no longer accept a doctor statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

Personal Days:

Each employee will receive 104 personal days a year. They are called Saturday and Sunday.

Restroom Use:

Entirely too much time is being spent in the restroom. There is now a strict 3-minute time limit in the stalls. At the end of 3 minutes, an alarm will sound, the toilet pater roll will retract, the stall door will open and a picture will be taken. After your second offence, your picture will be posted on the company bulletin board under the “Chronic Offender” category.

On Wednesday, the five-year borrowing costs of Italy are expected to rise further above 6 percent to mark a new euro lifetime high. This would be at an auction that will provide a first test of bond market sentiment towards the euro zone after EU summit that took place last week.

The yield on the five-year BTP bond Italy will sell on Wednesday topped 7 percent on Monday. Italy paid 6.3 percent in November to sell five-year bonds, which was its highest cost of borrowing since the single currency’s adoption in 1999.

“ECB buying in the secondary market will help, but, if the crisis worsens, it is difficult to see how Italy will retain independent market access in 2012 and help from the International Monetary Fund may at some stage be needed,” Citi analysts said.

Political and economic crisis in Italy spurred fears of a split in the euro zone with borrowing costs for the country at unsustainable levels and the bloc unable to afford a bailout.

Officials from France and Germany had held discussions on a two-speed Europe with a smaller, more tightly integrated euro zone and a looser outer circle.

From news.yahoo.com:

The discussions among senior policymakers, still in the realms of the theoretical, have focused on how to protect the euro zone from breaking up via tighter common policies which some members may by unable or unwilling to live with.

A German government spokesman said on Thursday that Berlin was not pursuing the idea of a smaller euro zone.

Asian shares fell more than 3 percent after similar falls on Wall Street and in Europe as investors took fright at the accelerating sovereign debt crisis and at buck-passing among European leaders and institutions.

“There cannot be peace and prosperity in the North or in the West of Europe, if there is no peace and prosperity in the South or in the East,” Barroso said in a speech in Berlin.

According to a source, Sony Corp is in talks to buy out the stake of Ericsson in their mobile phone joint venture.

The move may help Sony recoup ground in the battle against Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

Sony and Telefon AB LM Ericsson have been talking for weeks about the future of the 50:50 joint venture because the companies must decide this month whether to renew their 10-year-old pact, two industry sources told Reuters.

A source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Friday Sony was discussing a buyout. The source did not want to identified because the talks were not public.

Yoshiharu Izumi, an analyst at J.P. Morgan in Tokyo, said the deal could be worth upwards of $1.3 billion, depending on what agreement the two reach about the continuing use of Ericsson’s telecoms patents.

“Up to now Sony’s products and network services have all been separate. Unifying them would be positive,” Izumi said.

“The talks are not something that have been announced by Sony. We are declining to comment,” said Mami Imada, a Sony spokeswoman in Tokyo.

A top US official has acknowledged that Indian companies employ tens of thousands of Americans.

The official also noted that direct investment of India in the United States has grown by an average of 33 percent each year since 2005.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

In the decade between 2000 and 2010, Indian investment has increased from a negligible $96 million to over $3.3 billion, deputy secretary of state Bill Burns said at the 3rd FICCI-Brookings Dialogue on ‘Is there a future of India-US strategic dialogue’ here Tuesday.

India-US bilateral economic relationship is anchored in the realisation that their long-term interests are essentially congruent and mutually reinforcing, he said at the event organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry with the Washington think tank.

‘Together, we are drawing the best from both of our societies to make better products that compete and win in the global economy,’ Burns said noting Tata Steel has a plant in Ohio, while Boeing uses engineers in Bangalore to design 787s whose parts are manufactured across America.

‘There is no more important partner for India in this endeavour than the United States,’ Burns said.

A federal grand jury investigation is examining the role of eight offshore banks. The investigation is about whether these banks helped Americans evade taxes.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in a highly unusual action late on Monday, disclosed the probes on a website page discussing its tax division’s Offshore Compliance Initiative.

From news.yahoo.com:

The disclosure that eight offshore banks are under criminal investigation comes amid efforts by certain Swiss banks to reach a settlement with U.S. authorities over their offshore private banking services. Those talks have bogged down over questions of immunity for foreign bankers, among other issues.

Much of the campaign has focused on Switzerland, and the Justice Department said in the website disclosure that it had “dealt fabled Swiss bank secrecy a devastating blow and provided tools that should yield information on thousands of additional U.S. offshore account holders who have undisclosed accounts at UBS and other banks.”

The U.S. Department of Justice, however, did not identify the eight banks by name, a move that would have been a felony under criminal procedure rules, and removed the reference on Tuesday.