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Lufthansa canceled more flights Thursday including 28 long-haul flights because of a strike by technical and catering staff now in its fourth day the airline said The German-based airline said it expected to cancel a total of 128 flights Thursday — 50 more than the day before They included 28 international flights including 10 to North American destinations including New York Washington Atlanta and Calgary Canada spokesman Aage Duenhaupt said Lufthansa was rebooking affected passengers on other Lufthansa flights or on partner airlines he said The canceled flights represent six percent of Lufthansa s daily schedule he said Lufthansa blamed the cancelations on aircraft that had to be grounded because technical staff were on strike and unable to do required checks on the planes Duenhaupt said About 5 000 of Lufthansa s ground staff are on strike according to the ver di trade union The staff work for Lufthansa Technik which provides technical services for the aircraft and LSG Sky Chefs the airline s catering subsidiary The staff walked off the job Monday in a dispute over pay The union wants a pay rise of almost 10 percent over the next year but Lufthansa has offered 6 7 percent over 21 months plus a one-off payment Lufthansa s management has said it s the best offer they can make Duenhaupt said quot We have told ver di that we are open to any new discussions with them quot he said quot They have declined and said they ll only talk with us if we come with a new offer quot The strike has hit the airline during the busy summer holiday season and at a time when Lufthansa like other carriers struggles to deal with the high cost of fuel Duenhaupt would not speculate on the financial impact of the strike on Lufthansa Lufthansa canceled eight international flights and 70 domestic flights Wednesday the company said as a strike by technical and catering workers entered its third day It was the first day the labor action affected Lufthansa s intercontinental routes Lufthansa canceled flights to and from New York s Kennedy airport Calcutta Calgary and Chicago a spokesman said The total number of canceled flights represents four percent of Lufthansa s daily schedule About 5 000 of Lufthansa s ground staff are on strike according to the ver di trade union The staff work for Lufthansa Technik which provides technical services for the aircraft and LSG Sky Chefs the airline s catering subsidiary the Lufthansa spokesman said Staff walked off the job Monday in a dispute over pay The union wants a pay rise of almost 10 percent over the next year but Lufthansa has offered 6 7 percent over 21 months plus a one-off payment quot We made a really substantial offer to ver di and ver di decided to leave the table and abandon the talks quot the Lufthansa spokesman said quot We say come back We re open to dialogue we re open to discussion and we really ask ver di to come back to the table to negotiate again quot The strike comes at a difficult time for the airline in the middle of the summer holiday season and as airlines struggle to deal with the impact of high fuel prices The spokesman said he could not predict how many flights would have to be canceled in the coming days if the strike continued In the meantime he said Lufthansa was rebooking affected passengers onto other flights quot We re pretty confident that we can enable the passengers to reach their destinations quot he said

Today Microsoft began rolling out a new look for its Live Search start page The company is going away from the spartan search box on a mostly empty white page — the design most-closely associated with Google s world-beating search engine — in favor of a look that leaves room for it to highlight various features of its search and online services offerings Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said last week that he was no fan of the blank start page Ballmer was asked a relatively friendly question by an analyst who didn t give his name at the very end of the company s Financial Analyst Meeting last week One of the advantages that Google seems to have is its one face its one brand And at Microsoft you have three or four Internet brands and portals How much of a priority is it for you to integrate those so you have one common brand and one common interface that takes advantage of all your capabilities so that the world can see that you have better tools than they do and you can finally win Ballmer s response in part emphasis added The real question in my opinion is not a brand question The real question is when you type www whatevermicrosoftwantsyoutoseefirst com that s not a brand that s a logical statement what does that page look like and what s the appropriate brand I don t think it s going to be a blank page I don t think that makes sense not for us and from where we come from I think given the monetization model it s got to prominently feature search but at the same time it should have a range of content that is tailored and directed at you I think we do need whatever that page is called we do need an identity to talk about our search and yet when you go www oursearchidentity com it s still not clear to me that you want to get a blank page The redesigned Live Search definitely keeps search front and center But instead of the blank background — one observer actually termed it less than awe-inspiring blue-gray — Microsoft has placed a picture which will change periodically This afternoon I was getting a picture of a man in a dugout canoe in what looks like a wetlands The image behaves kind of like an advent calendar with a couple of squares that gleam when the page is first loaded Hover the mouse over one of the squares — Microsoft is calling them hotspots — and up pops a text box asking What will you see on your safari in Botswana Click on it and it launches a search for videos of animals in Botswana We think hotspots will help users discover parts of Live Search they might not know while not distracting from the core purpose of the page — searching write Chris Rayner and Zach Gutt managers of the Live Search User Experience team in a blog post explaining the changes That speaks to the broader challenge they are facing Microsoft s search team believes its service is competitive with Google s on features and relevancy but people don t know that because Live Search is not widely used Its U S market share is around 10 percent compared with more than 60 percent for Google Microsoft has explored several ways to expand awareness of its search engine and its features this year This particular change was tested last month according to the blog post It s being rolled out in the U S with other markets planned for some time in the future Kip Kniskern a contributor to the Microsoft-tracking LiveSide net spotted the test last month He called it a nice surprise This would seem to open up a number of opportunities for special occasions personalization and or promotions as well as just brightening up my day a bit Maybe all the cold gray weather here in the Pacific Northwest prompted the Live Search team to remind us that the sun does indeed shine somewhere in the world Of course this isn t going to have anything to do with market share or stock prices or buying or not buying Yahoo but truthfully it looks great Incidentally Ballmer noted that work on squaring away Microsoft s online brand was put on short-term hold during the course of the Yahoo offer T he way we would have approached that problem would be quite a bit different if we had purchased Yahoo Ballmer said

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