Leaders of three large troubled telecom companies and a top government regulator told Congress they didn't expect major phone or Internet disruptions as a result of the companies' financial conditions.
"Protecting consumers from service disruption is our first and highest priority," Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said at a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee. Despite the financial turmoil in the telecommunications industry, he said, "I remain confident that we are not facing a crisis in the provision of services stemming from WorldCom's bankruptcy."
Rooting out corporate fraud is a top priority of the government, Powell said.
Top executives of WorldCom, which filed the biggest corporate bankruptcy in history on July 21; Global Crossing, also bankrupt; and Qwest (Q), which acknowledged major accounting errors on Sunday, also were testifying.
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Toshiba is optimistic: Toshiba said it expected no drop-off in its semiconductor revenues for July to September from the prior quarter despite grim forecasts by some of its rivals.
Brisk demand for chips used in digital cameras, DVD players and other hot-selling consumer electronics is helping to keep the company's chip plants busy, Toshiba senior executive vice president Kiyoaki Shimagami said.
Reporting fiscal first-quarter earnings for the first time, Toshiba said it earned a $19.23 million operating profit in semiconductors in April to June, beating its initial forecast of an operating loss.
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More Bertelsmann changes: Bertelsmann's new CEO Gunter Thielen is not planning to replace the head of the German media group's U.S. business after the exit of Joel Klein, sources familiar with the situation said.
Bertelsmann's U.S. CEO and Chairman Klein became the second executive to bite the dust, following group CEO Thomas Middelhoff out the door.
Sources familiar with the situation insisted the decision not to replace Klein did not mean Bertelsmann would shift its focus away from the United States, although Thielen is expected to review less-successful operations there. Among those operations, music file-swapping company Napster is expected to be one of the first casualties.
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Mini Cooper recall: About half of the fashionable new Mini Cooper compact cars that have been sold in the United States will be recalled to fix a transmission problem, federal safety regulators said.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that on 3,531 Mini Coopers with manual transmissions, the cable connecting the shift lever to the transmission could detach, leaving the transmission in the last gear selected and increasing the risk of a crash.
BMW AG, the maker of the Mini, was also hit with the eighth recall of its X5 luxury sport utility vehicle, this time for loose brake pedals.
AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
