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Four major Silicon Valley companies have formally agreed to pay $324.5 million to settle claims brought by employees who accused them of limiting competition by colluding not to poach each other's talent. The settlement, between class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Apple Inc , class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Google Inc, class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Intel Corp , class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Adobe Systems Inc and roughly 64,000 workers, was disclosed in papers filed late on Thursday with a federal court in San Jose, California. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh has been asked to preliminarily approve the accord at a June 19 hearing, over an objection by one of the four named plaintiffs, Michael Devine, who says the settlement let the companies off too easily.   true       The payout was originally reported by Reuters but not officially confirmed. Lawyers for the plaintiffs may seek up to 25 percent of the settlement amount in legal fees. Filed

Charges against a California man accused of abducting and raping a 15-year-old girl stem from brutal crimes committed a decade ago when she was first snatched, prosecutors said on Friday in response to remarks by neighbors that the woman showed no signs of distress. Isidro Garcia, 41, was charged with kidnapping, rape and lewd acts upon a child and a judge on Thursday ordered him held on bail of $1 million, in connection with crimes Orange County prosecutors say he committed against the woman when she was a minor. Now 25, the woman told detectives she endured a decade of physical and sexual abuse by Isidro, was forced into marriage in 2007 and later bore his child. She contacted authorities this week after reaching out to her sister on class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Facebook , police said. "We're talking about the kidnapping of a 15-year-old child who was taken from her mother, taken from her home, taken from her neighborhood and for the past 10 years she has be

class="mandelbrot_refrag"> EBay Inc initially believed that its customers' data was safe as forensic investigators reviewed a network security breach discovered in early May and made public this week, a senior executive told Reuters on Friday. class="mandelbrot_refrag"> EBay has come under fire over its handling of the cyberattack, in which hackers accessed personal data of all 145 million users, ranking it among the biggest such attacks launched on a corporation to date. "For a very long period of time we did not believe that there was any eBay customer data compromised," global marketplaces chief Devin Wenig said, in the first comments by a top eBay executive since the e-commerce company disclosed the breach on Wednesday. EBay moved "swiftly to disclose" the breach after it realized customer data was involved, he said. Wenig would not say when the company first realized that the cyberattackers accessed customer data, nor how

While attention in Cannes is focused on film premieres and stars on the red carpet, movie sales and deals struck by high rollers and bit players are what keep the Mediterranean seaside town awash in money. Eighteen film titles ranging from 83-year-old French director Jean-Luc Godard's "Adieu au Langage" (Goodbye to Language) to 25-year-old Canadian director Xavier Dolan's "Mommy" are competing for the top Palme d'Or prize that will be announced on Saturday night. But that is just a drop in the bucket compared to what festival officials estimate are some 5,000 films shown here, in complete form or as trailers, to potential buyers or investors. There were fewer big-budget Hollywood titles in the Cannes market this year, but Jerome Paillard, chief executive of the Marche du Film (Film Market), sees that as cyclical. "It's not necessarily a short-term threat because most of the class="mandelbrot_refrag"> business we do isn't

British newspapers reported the following class="mandelbrot_refrag"> business stories on Sunday. Reuters has not independently verified these media reports and does not vouch for their accuracy. _0"> The Sunday Times INTERCONTINENTAL class="mandelbrot_refrag"> HOTELS SNUBS 6 BLN STG OFFER FROM U.S. Britain's biggest hotel company has rebuffed a 6 billion pound takeover approach from a U.S. suitor amid fears that it could be the next target of the corporate tax exodus from the United States. Directors at class="mandelbrot_refrag"> Intercontinental Hotels Group , which operates in 4,700 class="mandelbrot_refrag"> hotels in 100 countries are understood to have turned down an approach from an investment fund. AMAZON SHIELDS 11 BLN STG FROM TAXMAN Amazon funnelled 11 billion pounds through its small office in Luxembourg last year to minimise its tax bill in Britain and across the Continent. The online class=

The Thai military may have a well-rehearsed coup playbook after overthrowing a dozen governments, but it's never come up against the power of social media, as used by dissenters worldwide to share information - and that may prove a game-changer. Since seizing control of the state on Thursday, Thailand's armed forces have arrested protest leaders, banned gatherings, gagged domestic media, blocked cable news networks and captured weapons from militant opposition groups. But they are struggling to deal with protests in cities that are erupting more like flash mobs than political rallies. Protesters appear in droves only to melt away when soldiers link hands to encircle them. And when troops pick off and detain more vocal demonstrators, the others swiftly disperse and regroup elsewhere. In uprisings as different in origin and outcome as the so-called Arab Spring and the London riots in 2011, the tech-savvy have harnessed social media platforms such as microblogging site Twitter

The "X-Men" mutant superheroes smashed into U.S. and Canadian theaters and collected $90.7 million in ticket sales through Sunday, keeping monster hit "Godzilla" at bay and heading toward a decisive win over a long holiday weekend. "X-Men: Days of Future Past" was expected to bring in $110 million by the end of the U.S. Memorial Day holiday on Monday, distributor 20th Century Fox said. The movie has already earned a global total of $261.8 million after opening at No. 1 in all 119 countries around the world. Last week's winner, monster movie remake "Godzilla", dropped to second place with $31.4 million through Sunday, according to estimates from box office tracking firm Rentrak. Its sales were projected to reach $39 million by Monday. Romantic comedy "Blended" claimed the No. 3 spot, taking in $14.2 million and on pace for about $17 million through Monday. "X-Men: Days of Future Past" is the seventh movie in the bloc