Word: derfully
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...from holding jobs in Western Europe. Fearing the effect of cheap labor on already high unemployment - and damage to Germany's Christian heritage - politicians from the conservative opposition claimed that Germany was "not a country of immigration." So it comes as a pleasant surprise that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is suddenly rethinking that view. Last week he agreed on groundbreaking new legislation to allow large numbers of new workers to move in. "We're going to have a modern immigration law," Schröder said. It's about time. Germany, like most other European countries, is sitting...
...since you asked, my favorite era is Northern Renaissance and my favorite painter is van der Weyden,” he said...
...pummeling its stock price and angering shareholders. Regulators on two continents had started investigations. So in early March the board acted, ousting Philip Watts, who had been managing director of the Anglo-Dutch company for almost seven years and chairman since 2001, and replacing him with Jeroen van der Veer, president of Shell's Dutch sister company, Royal Dutch Petroleum. A quick cure for all those headaches...
Hardly. Just six days after Van der Veer took the helm, internal memos leaked to the press suggested that other top Shell executives still in office, including Van der Veer, may have known about the reserves problem as early as two years ago. Van der Veer vigorously denied the charges but failed to calm the jangled nerves of Shell's institutional investors. And so the company was forced to ask itself an unpleasant question: How many times can you fire your CEO in a year...
...board gave what it hopes is the definitive answer: Just once. It said the probe had uncovered "disturbing deficiencies" in company practices, and announced the replacement of chief financial officer Judith Boynton. And for the third time this year, the company reduced the figure for its oil reserves. Van der Veer was spared. "We have complete and unreserved confidence in [his] leadership," the board said, although the internal inquiry handed further ammunition to a swarm of U.S. lawyers who have filed class actions against the firm. Shell said the company is accelerating its review of management practices but made...