News In Brief

Online delivery service Kozmo.com Inc. ceased operations, pulled the plug on its website, and will lay off almost 1,100 employees, the company said. Kozmo opened for business in 1998, delivering groceries, flowers, electronics, and a range of personal items ordered online in such cities as Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington. At its peak, the service had a subscriber base of of 400,000.

Yahoo! Inc. will lay off 12 percent of its workforce, or about 420 employees, by the end of May, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said. The announcement came one day after reports that the information and shopping portal would add sexually explicit videos to its inventory. The layoffs are the first since Yahoo! began operating as a search engine in 1994. In February, it reported 57 million visitors, but it also has lost several top executives and has struggled with declining advertising revenues, which made up 90 percent of sales last year.

In other layoff news:

* LSI Logic Corp., a maker of chips for communications and data storage applications, said it will close a plant in Colorado Springs, Colo., that employs 500 people. Some will be offered transfers to another plant in Gresham, Ore., the company said. LSI Logic is based in Milpitas, Calif.

* Dow Jones & Co. announced a cut in its workforce of 202 employees. Last month, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal said it would make various cost reductions to cope with a downturn in advertising.

* Boston-based Putnam Investments, the US's fourth-largest mutual-fund company, is cutting its payroll by 256 workers, a spokesman announced.

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor