December 9, 2004

IBM, dogged by complaints about changes it made in employee pensions in 1990's, decides to close its pension plan to new employees at end of year and give all new workers 401(k) plan instead; spokeswoman says that despite change, company is 'still committed to defined-benefit pensions' (M)

VimpelCom, second-largest cellphone company in Russia, receives first notice for $157 million in back taxes, sending its stock plunging; company confirms it received preliminary audit from Russian tax ministry stating it owes 4.4 billion rubles ($157.8 million) in taxes for 2001; company says it will fight claim; analysts and investors say tax claim is probably latest installment in bitter dispute between Mikhail M Fridman, high-profile VimpelCom shareholder, and Leonid D Reiman, leader of Russia's newly renamed Information Technology Ministry; fight is over 25 percent stake that Fridman's holding company, Alfa Group, bought last year in MegaFon, another rapidly growing Russian company and nation's third-largest mobile phone operator; MegaFon is majority owned by Telecominvest; Reiman is widely believed to own stake in Telecominvest and to be waging harassment campaign against Fridman seeking to get him to relinquish his stake in MegaFon--all of which Reiman vehemently denies; photos (M)

General Motors will refrain from forced layoffs and plant shutdowns at its money-losing European operations (S)

Advocates for reducing New York's Rockefeller-era drug sentencing laws say bill passed by Legislature does hardly anything to change harshness of sentences; note that judges must still sentence offenders to prison rather than to alternatives like drug treatment; those in favor of keeping sentences steep counter that people arrested for felony drug law offenses have average of three previous felony arrests and four prior misdemeanors; law cuts some minimun sentences in half and doubles amount of drug that automatically turns cases into top-level felonies; prisoners with especially long sentences will now be able to petition courts for reduction to new lower levels; photo (M)

Prime Min Silvio Berlusconi and many other celebrities attend grand reopening of Teatro Alla Scala in Milan after nearly three years of renovation; opening-night performance of Antonio Salieri's long-forgotten opera Europa Riconosciuta, commissioned for house's original opening in 1778, is met by thousands of protesters opposing expenditure of public funds at time of high unemployment and government cutbacks; photos (M)