Labor

Brazilian civil servants have discovered the world’s oldest living man still going on strong at the age of 131 and drawing a pension. The man lives with his wife who is 69 years his junior, eats three meals a day and has three children, including a daughter aged thirty. Mail Online reports: The Guinness Book of Records recognises 112-year-old Yasutaro Koide from Japan as the oldest person alive. And Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died aged 122 in 1997, holds the record for the world’s longest living person.

According to a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, employers have the right to monitor their workers’ online private messages. The Strasbourg court sided with the employer of a Romanian engineer who was dismissed from his job after using Yahoo Messenger to communicate with his fiancée and brother while at work. The Independent reports: Bogdan Mihai Barbulescu was asked to create the Yahoo account in order to answer clients’ queries.

Supposedly, the Fed’s decision to hike rates last month conveyed something about the strength of the US economy. “I think the economy is on the road to recovery,” diminutive Chairwoman Yellen told the the Economic Club of Washington two weeks before liftoff.  “We’re doing well,” she added, for good measure.

The U.S. Supreme Court have rejected a please by Nestle to throw out a lawsuit holding them liable for the use of child labor slaves to harvest cocoa in the Ivory Coast.  The court says that Nestle must face the charges filed by former victims of child slavery represented by Global Exchange (a human rights organization) Msn.com reports: The plaintiffs, who were originally from Mali, contend the companies aided and abetted human rights violations through their active involvement in purchasing cocoa from Ivory Coast.

Back in September, we noted that Chicago’s schools are in trouble. Deep trouble.

Amid Illinois’ intractable budget crisis, the city’s public school system opened with a budget shortfall of nearly a half billion dollars.

Borrowing and trimming the proverbial fat helped close some of the $1.1 billion hole but once the board reached the point where “further cuts would reach deep into the classroom” (to quote system chief Forrest Claypool), the schools asked Springfield to make up the difference which amounts to $480 million.