In a statement, Yahoo said the offer "substantially undervalues" the company.
``One of them had his head smashed; I saw his brain,'' said Mustafa Guvenbag, 32, who works in a nearby sock factory and lives close to the area. ``These people have been making bombs and they are killing us. Someone has to stop them.''
The disaster, which killed 22 people and injured about 100, underscores the dangers of Turkey's unrestrained economic growth. Unlicensed businesses and those that employ unregistered workers account for almost half the country's economy, which expanded an average of 7 percent annually during the past five years, according to government estimates.
After the explosion, district Mayor Murat Aydin promised to do more to regulate businesses that have proliferated with little oversight. In the Davutpasa district, where the accident occurred, an estimated 20,000 factories have sprung up next door to homes and shops.
``We have been conducting very tight and serious inspections on such factories over the last few years, but this accident shows that we need to do more,'' Aydin said.
The destroyed factory was profiting from growing demand for sparklers and skyrockets. Increased incomes have spurred working- class families to set off fireworks at weddings and other celebrations, copying their rich neighbors.
Raining Metal
The disaster was caused by an explosion in a pressure boiler in a denim factory on the second floor of the building, Aydin said. The fire spread to the third and fourth floors, igniting materials used to make fireworks and causing a second, more powerful blast.
Metal and concrete debris rained down on an area 50 yards in diameter, blocking nearby roads and making it difficult for ambulances and aid workers to reach the scene. Most of the people killed were people on the streets outside, or workers in nearby buildings.
The fireworks plant was identified as unlicensed at the end of last year and ordered to submit a permit application, Aydin said. Inspectors who visited the site were told the factory produced plastic toys. The denim plant was also operating illegally and had been shut down by officials four times in the past, according to the mayor.
Municipalities have encouraged entrepreneurs to skirt licensing laws by repeatedly granting amnesties to businesses set up without planning permission and accepting bribes, said Tores Dincoz, a board member at the Chamber of Architects of Turkey.
800 Inspectors
``How did those explosives get there is one question, and how can the mayor claim his officials thought they were making plastic toys is another one,'' Dincoz said. ``If this is the way officials conduct inspections, I can't imagine the state of security in this country.''
Following the deaths, Labor Minister Faruk Celik ordered 800 inspectors to check all businesses in Istanbul to ensure they are being run legally.
Many factories in Davutpasa don't take basic safety precautions such as installing alarms or providing emergency exits and conducting regular machinery inspections, Aydin said. This is particularly dangerous in Davutpasa because a residential area sits about 100 yards away, separated from the plants by a gas station and a soccer field.
Persistent inflation and budget deficits may prevent policy makers in the 15 nations that share the euro from moving as aggressively as their U.S. counterparts to cut interest rates and taxes. Meanwhile, Europe's labor laws will make it harder for companies to speed a recovery in profits by reducing payrolls.
``A European downturn will take noticeably longer to run its course than the U.S. one,'' Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps, an economics professor at Columbia University in New York, said in an interview.
Next year ``might be a period of `reverse decoupling,' with the U.S. economy enjoying a sharp recovery and the euro-area economy stagnating,'' says Dario Perkins, senior European economist for ABN Amro Holding NV in London. ``A relatively inflexible economy and `sticky' inflation'' will hold Europe back, he says.
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said twice last week that there is ``unusually high uncertainty'' about growth amid signs that Europe's resistance to the U.S. slowdown is finally wearing off.
``Risks are on the downside,'' he told reporters in Tokyo on Feb. 9 after a meeting of central bankers and finance ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations. The G- 7 officials said the U.S. economy may slow further, eroding global growth, and forecast no end to financial-market turmoil.
``Europe cannot go unscathed from the U.S.'s credit crisis,'' says Phelps.
Slower Growth
December retail sales in the euro region fell the most since 1995 and service industries grew in January at the slowest pace in more than four years. The European Union's statistics office will report Feb. 14 that the economy expanded 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter, half the pace of the previous three months, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
``Euro-zone growth is in trouble, and the risk of recession at some stage should not be underplayed,'' says David Brown, chief European economist at Bear Stearns International in London. He says the region will be ``very lucky'' to expand 1.5 percent this year, which would be the weakest since 2003.
Much of what ails Europe has its origins across the Atlantic. Borrowing costs for consumers and companies jumped as BNP Paribas SA and other European banks ran up losses on investments tied to U.S. mortgages. Exporters such as Heidelberg, Germany-based Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, the world's largest maker of printing machines, blame declines in the dollar and U.S. demand for hurting profits.
Short, Shallow Recession
Economists Jan Hatzius at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley say the U.S. economy is already in a recession, and they predict that action by policy makers will ensure it is short and shallow.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues have cut interest rates five times in less than five months by a total of 2.25 percentage points. Congress last week passed an economic-stimulus package worth about $168 billion.
European policy makers have been slower to administer medicine. The ECB has left its benchmark unchanged at 4 percent for eight months as inflation accelerated to the highest level in 14 years and workers sought more pay in response.
While Trichet last week signaled that he's open to cutting interest rates for the first time in almost five years, he also said he doesn't anticipate inflation will moderate until the second half of the year. Consequently, while investors increased bets on rate cuts last week, they don't expect the ECB to start easing credit before the second quarter.
Delayed Response
Trichet's ``somewhat delayed and gradual policy response'' means the euro-area economy will lag behind the U.S., growing just 1.4 percent this year and 1.6 percent in 2009, compared with 1.9 percent and 3 percent for the U.S., says Janet Henry, chief European economist at HSBC Holdings Plc in London.
Few economists yet anticipate a recession in Europe. Potential housing busts are limited to a few countries, unemployment is at a record low and demand from emerging markets offsets a decline in trade with the U.S.
The cuts would be in addition to the 33,600 union workers who left through buyouts and early retirements in 2006 and 2007, when Ford lost a combined $15.3 billion. Further reductions may help Ford restore profit by speeding the hiring of new workers who would be paid about half as much as current employees.
``These are realistic numbers,'' said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California at Berkeley. ``Workers are reassessing their options. It is a very tough choice.''
Ford doesn't have an estimate of how many workers will accept the buyouts, proposed to a first group of workers last month, the person said. The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker won't limit the number who leave if more than the target range of 8,000 to 9,000 opt for the offers, the person said.
Marcey Evans, a Ford spokeswoman, declined to comment. Roger Kerson, a spokesman for the United Auto Workers union, didn't return telephone messages. The Detroit Free Press reported Feb. 9 that Ford had an internal target of 8,000, citing people familiar with the objective. That reduction would represent more than 12 percent of the carmaker's North American factory workers.
Ford's employment fell to 64,000 at the end of last year at North American plants from 99,500 two years earlier. That decline includes the 33,600 UAW-represented jobs shed through the buyout and retirement offers.
New Contract
Ford and the UAW in November agreed on a contract that permits the company to pay lower wages for new hires while keeping open five factories targeted for closure. Under the four-year agreement, Ford can pay up to 20 percent of its U.S. factory workers the reduced wage.
Under the accord, Ford's hourly costs for new workers will be $26 to $31, or about half the $60 expense for a current UAW member's wages and benefits.
Before any new, lower-paid workers can be hired, Ford must resolve the fate of workers at closed factories and at its Automotive Components Holdings unit. Automotive Components includes factories Ford took back from former parts subsidiary Visteon Corp. Most of those plants are being closed or sold, and some of the UAW-represented employees may go to Ford plants.
UAW workers at Automotive Components are eligible for buyouts. The outcome of the buyout program will determine how many of those employees are reassigned to Ford factories.
Ford has about 54,000 UAW-represented employees, with about 12,000 eligible to retire.
Savings
UAW President Ron Gettelfinger last month estimated that new contracts at Ford, General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC will save the automakers ``somewhere in the neighborhood'' of $1,000 per vehicle. Buyouts of higher paid workers will help Ford increase the number of new hires at lower wage levels.
Ford hopes to reach the 9,000 target through offers pending at four closed U.S. plants that will be broadened to other U.S. factories next week.
Workers at St. Louis; Edison, New Jersey; Norfolk, Virginia; and Atlanta began considering buyouts Jan. 22 and have a ``buyout window'' running through Feb. 28, Ford said Jan. 24 when it released 2007 year-end earnings. Workers from that group who accept buyouts are to leave the company by March 1.
The company, which makes Pepsi Cola, Frito Lay snacks and Quaker oatmeal, said net income for the fourth quarter ended on December 29 was $1.26 billion, or 77 cents per share, compared with $1.83 billion, or $1.09 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding restructuring charges and tax items, the company earned 80 cents per share.
The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in December, dropped to 85.9 from 87.2. Economists were expecting pending home sales -- which are a key gauge of future home sales activity -- to fall 1.0 percent.
``As the reappraisal of risk in financial markets continues, there remains unusually high uncertainty about its overall impact on the real economy,'' Trichet said at a press conference in Frankfurt today after the ECB kept its key rate at 4 percent. ``We will continue to monitor very closely all developments over the coming weeks.''
The ECB has kept borrowing costs at a six-year high, declining to follow counterparts in the U.S. and Great Britain by cutting borrowing costs as it seeks to contain inflation in the 15 euro nations. Investors predict that a slowing economy will prompt the ECB to reduce its key interest rate.
``There is a greater acknowledgment that risks to growth are on the downside,'' said David Owen, chief European economist at Dresdner Kleinwort in London. ``The ECB's not going to cut in next couple of months, but it is starting to prepare the markets for rate reductions.''
The euro weakened 0.8 percent to $1.4521 at 3:21 p.m. in Frankfurt and the yield on 10-year German bunds fell 5 basis points to 3.85 percent.
Growth Forecasts
The ECB on Dec. 6 projected the euro-region economy to expand about 2 percent this year after 2.6 percent in 2007. Trichet said today that latest data confirmed the bank's assessment that ``risks surrounding the economic outlook lie on the downside.''
The International Monetary Fund on Jan. 29 cut its 2008 euro-region growth estimate by half a point to 1.6 percent, saying that ``no one is going to be exempt from some slowdown.'' The Washington-based fund also trimmed its growth estimates for the U.S. and Japan, the world's two largest economies.
Stock markets have dropped this year on concern the U.S. economy is sliding into a recession, curbing earnings growth. Germany's benchmark DAX Index has lost 16 percent this year and the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index 12 percent.
