briefs

(MCT) SAN JOSE, Calif. – Yahoo formally rejected Microsoft’s $31-a-share offer Monday… (MCT) SAN JOSE, Calif. – Yahoo formally rejected Microsoft’s $31-a-share offer Monday morning, saying the bid “substantially undervalues Yahoo.”

The company said its board “has carefully reviewed Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal with Yahoo’s management team and financial and legal advisors and has unanimously concluded that the proposal is not in the best interests of Yahoo and our stockholders.” The board said that among the assets that make Yahoo worth more than the $44.6 billion Microsoft offered on Feb. 1 are “Yahoo’s global brand, large worldwide audience, significant recent investments in advertising platforms and future growth prospects, free cash flow and earnings potential, as well as our substantial unconsolidated investments.” Microsoft had no comment, a spokesman said. Yahoo’s shares were trading at $29.80, up 60 cents or just more than 2 percent, in afternoon trading Monday. The muted stock-market reaction, one analyst said, reflects a view that Yahoo’s rejection of Microsoft’s bid is simply a bargaining ploy. “It’s good negotiating tactics to try to get a higher price from Microsoft,” Laura Martin with Soliel said. – Pete Carey, San Jose Mercury News

(MCT) VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Hillary Clinton replaced her campaign manager Sunday, shaking up the leadership of a presidential bid that has experienced financial difficulties and fell short of an early goal to wrap up the Democratic nomination by last week’s Super Tuesday contests.

The departure of campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, a longtime aide whose tenure with the former first lady goes back to Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign in 1992, was announced hours before rival Barack Obama won Maine’s caucuses. The Illinois senator’s victory follows a sweep a day earlier of votes in three states and the Virgin Islands, though the two Democratic candidates are close together in overall delegate counts. Clinton installed as the new campaign manager her former chief of staff at the White House, Maggie Williams. The Clinton campaign faced a financial crunch in the run-up to the Super Tuesday quasi-national primary Feb. 5 that required the New York senator to lend her campaign $5 million. During January, the Obama campaign raised a staggering $32 million and expanded its donor base to 650,000 contributors. The Clinton campaign lagged far behind, raising $13.5 million. And with 91 percent of the vote counted in Maine, Obama possessed a formidable lead, with 59 percent of the vote to 41 percent for Clinton. Obama also won a Grammy Award on Sunday, defeating former President Bill Clinton, who was nominated in the same category, for best spoken word. Obama won for the audio version of his best-selling book “The Audacity of Hope.” – Mike Dorning and Jill Zuckman, Chicago Tribune

(MCT) BAGHDAD – On a day when the U.S. secretary of defense arrived in Iraq to discuss U.S. troop withdrawals and Iraq’s halting-but-real political progress, carnage from car bombs and internal battles throughout the country claimed at least 45 lives.

Pentagon chief Robert Gates arrived unannounced in the Iraqi capital Sunday evening for talks with Iraqi leaders and U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, a military spokeswoman confirmed. A few hours before he landed in Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded near a local market in Yathrib, north of Baghdad in Salahuddin province, killing at least 23 people and injuring 45. Another car bomb exploded near Ramadi, killing three, and further north two car bombs were reported in Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city. Both of them targeted Iraqi soldiers. To the west of Mosul, 21 people were killed in fighting between insurgents and members of the U.S.-funded, local awakening-council militia. – Steve Lannen, McClatchy Newspapers