Harold Maass of The Week The Best of Today's Business

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Ford's big plan

Ford Motor Co. is set to unveil a plan to close several plants and lay off thousands of employees to turn around its money-losing operations in North America. "Everybody's worried," said the mayor of a Georgia town with a Ford assembly plant at risk of being closed. (USA Today) Ford already cut 35,000 jobs and five plants four years ago. This time, the No. 2 U.S. automaker, which has 87,000 hourly workers and 35,000 salaried employees in North America, is expected to slash about 25,000 jobs. (CBSNews.com)

The weight of oil

Rising oil prices contributed to the sharp drop in U.S. stocks on Friday, and they could do more damage this week. "The bulls have gotten ground up for burgers," said Ken Tower, chief market strategist at CyberTrader. Disappointing quarterly reports from Intel, GE, and Citigroup were another sign that stock prices had gotten "frothy," one money manager said. (The Wall Street Journal, paid registration required) Oil briefly rose above $69 a barrel as the week started. A diplomatic standoff over Iran's nuclear program and labor tensions in oil-rich Nigeria have stoked fears of a supply crunch. (AP in Yahoo! Finance) If the United Nations slaps sanctions on Iran, OPEC's No. 2 producer, experts warn that prices could shoot to $100 a barrel. (AP in Yahoo! Finance)

Grocery deal near

Supermarket giant Albertsons hopes today to announce it will sell itself to a consortium that includes CVS drug stores and SuperValu supermarkets. A deal with the same investors unraveled in December, but this time the buyers agreed to assume any risk if antitrust regulators object to the deal. The sale comes after five years of stagnant sales and weak profits for grocery chains getting squeezed by giant discounters such as Wal-Mart and Costco. (The New York Times, free registration required)

Renewed beef over beef

Japan ordered the inspection of all U.S. beef imported over the last month after spinal bone was found in a shipment of American veal -- a violation of a pact designed to protect Japanese consumers from mad-cow disease. Japan halted U.S. imports last week, just a month after partially lifting a two-year ban imposed after the first case of mad-cow was reported in the U.S. Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Shinzo Abe, said imports wouldn't resume until the U.S. explained how the shipment got past U.S. inspectors. (AP in the Chicago Tribune)

BEST COLUMNS OF THE DAY

Filling Walt Disney's shoes

Steve Jobs has the "brash confidence" to become the next Walt Disney, says Dawn Chmielewski in the Los Angeles Times. Jobs is not just the "mercurial visionary" behind Apple Computer. His Pixar Animation Studios has "re-energized" the cartoon industry Disney pioneered. Disney board members are meeting this week to discuss buying Pixar. If the deal goes through, Jobs will become a board member and Disney's largest individual stockholder, giving the company a larger-than-life character to shake things up just the way Walt did.

Revenge of the computer geek

Tech jobs are back, says Spencer Ante in BusinessWeek Online. The industry lost 545,000 jobs in 2002 during the dot-com bust. Last year the U.S. added 125,000 tech jobs, and this year is expected to be even better as companies realize they're doing well enough to upgrade technology they neglected during the gloomy years. Wages are rising too. Every year, says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Economy.com, "the memory of the tech bust fades."

GOOD DAY FOR: Hitting the campaign trail, as the average former member of Congress receives between $41,000 and $55,000 a year in pension payments, according to the Congressional Research Service. (CNNMoney.com)

BAD DAY FOR: Hitting the books, as nearly 60 percent of American college students choose not to buy everything on their lists of course materials, according to the National Association of College Stores. Textbook prices have risen at twice the rate of inflation over the last two decades. (The Washington Post)

NOTED: Households connected to the Internet spend an average $214 a month on phone service, movies, cable, satellite, and digital downloads, according to Parks Associates. (BusinessWeek Online)