YELLOW ***** TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2014 ~ VOL. CCLXIII NO. 34 WSJ.com HHHH $2.00 DJIA 15801.79 À 7.71 0.05% NASDAQ 4148.17 À 0.5% NIKKEI 14718.34 À 1.8% STOXX 600 325.30 À 0.1% 10-YR. TREAS. g 1/32 , yield 2.678% OIL $100.06 À $0.18 GOLD $1,274.80 À $11.50 EURO $1.3645 YEN 102.27 TODAY IN PERSONAL JOURNAL Jolt Your Math Skills PLUS The Biggest Relationship Question CONTENTS Business Tech............ B8 CFO Journal................. B6 Corporate News.... B1-4 Global Finance............ C3 Heard on Street ..... C10 In the Markets........... C4 Leisure & Arts............ D4 Markets Dashboard C6 Opinion.................. A13-15 Sports......................... D5-8 U.S. News................. A2-6 Weather Watch........ B8 World News......... A7-10 s Copyright 2014 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved > What’s News i i i World-Wide n The Obama administration said most employers won’t face a fine next year if they fail to offer health insurance, the lat- est delay in the law’s rollout. A1 n The U.S. military revised plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, giving the White House the option of waiting until Karzai leaves office. A1 n The Afghan militant group Hezb-e-Islami said it carried out a car-bomb suicide attack in Kabul that killed two. A8 n The Obama administration is considering a drone attack against an American believed to have ties to al Qaeda. A8 n Syrian loyalists voiced fury over aid to a rebel-held area in Homs, accusing the U.N. of bias against the Alawite sect. A7 n The regime and opposition didn’t meet face-to-face in Ge- neva, as talks were overshad- owed by violence at home. A7 n Turkey and Israel are near- ing a deal to repair ties that broke down after a 2010 Israeli raid killed Turkish activists. A8 n House GOP leaders sought backing for a rise in the debt limit by linking it to a reversal of a military-pension cut. A4 n California was given two more years to reduce its prison overcrowding. A2 n An accidental blast at a militant training camp in Iraq killed 21 insurgents. A9 n The River Thames burst its banks amid England’s wettest winter in over 200 years. A9 i i i I cahn ended his fight for Apple to boost its share buy- back by $50 billion, but the investor has made a paper profit of over $400 million. A1 n Nokia plans to launch a phone run by Google’s An- droid, marking a turn by Mi- crosoft toward its archrival. B1 n Corporate pension plans surged to their highest year- end funding levels since 2007, freeing up firms’ cash. B1 n A bitcoin exchange blamed a technical issue for a halt to withdrawals, which sent the currency’s price reeling. C1 n U.S. stocks edged higher as investors awaited Yellen’s testimony this week. The Dow rose 7.71 to 15801.79. C4 n GM said CEO Barra will be eligible for $14.4 million in pay this year, 60% more than her predecessor received. B1 n UBS suspended two execu- tives as the bank probes the hiring of the daughter of a Chinese company’s head. C3 n The CFTC is preparing to ease curbs on swaps trading overseas, a move that could shift some trading abroad. C5 n The FBI said hackers be- hind attacks on retailers ex- ploited software used to mon- itor and manage networks. B3 n Barclays reported full- year results a day early, after a newspaper and analysts published profit numbers. C3 n Axel Springer is bidding for Forbes and eyeing the U.S. digital-publishing market. B6 Business & Finance WASHINGTON—The U.S. mili- tary has revised plans to with- draw troops from Afghanistan to allow the White House to wait until President Hamid Karzai leaves office before completing a security pact and settling on a post-2014 U.S. troop presence, officials said. The option for waiting reflects a growing belief in Washington that there is little chance of re- pairing relations with Mr. Karzai and getting him to sign the bilat- eral security agreement before elections scheduled for the spring. “If he’s not going to be part of the solution, we have to have a way to get past him,” said a se- nior U.S. official. “It’s a prag- matic recognition that clearly Karzai may not sign the BSA and that he doesn’t represent the voice of the Afghan people.” The military plan is the most significant example to date of how the U.S. has sought to mini- mize its reliance on Mr. Karzai, whose refusal to sign the secu- rity agreement amid a flurry of anti-American statements has upset Washington policy makers. The White House has said Mr. Karzai’s refusal has raised pros- pects that President Barack Obama will order a complete U.S. troop withdrawal this year. Af- ghan officials had no immediate comment. Mr. Obama and Defense Secre- tary Chuck Hagel have signaled their displeasure with Mr. Karzai by limiting their contacts with him. The U.S. and Afghan leaders haven’t held a videoconference call to discuss the war effort since the summer, officials said. Mr. Hagel visited Afghanistan in December but didn’t meet Mr. Please turn to page A8 BY ADAM ENTOUS AND JULIAN E. BARNES Frustrated By Karzai, U.S. Shifts Exit Plans Most employers won’t face a fine next year if they fail to offer workers health insurance, the Obama administration said Mon- day, in the latest big delay of the health-law rollout. The Treasury Department, in regulations outlining the Afford- able Care Act, said employers with 50 to 99 full-time workers won’t have to comply with the law’s requirement to provide in- surance or pay a fee until 2016. Companies with more workers could avoid some penalties in 2015 if they showed they were offering coverage to at least 70% of full-time workers. The move came after employ- ers pressured the Obama admin- istration to peel back the law’s insurance requirements. Some firms had trimmed workers’ hours to below 30 hours a week to avoid paying a penalty if they didn’t offer insurance. A senior administration offi- cial said the shift was a response to businesses’ concerns, though the official said no one reason was behind the change. Under the original 2010 health law, employers with the equiva- lent of at least 50 full-time work- ers had to offer coverage or pay a penalty starting at $2,000 a worker beginning in 2014. Last year, the administration delayed the requirement for the first time by moving it to 2015. The new rules for companies with 50 to 99 workers would cover about 2% of all U.S. busi- nesses, which include 7% of workers, or 7.9 million people, according to 2011 Census figures compiled by the Small Business Administration. The rules for companies with 100 or more workers affect another 2% of businesses, which employ more than 74 million people. Monday’s announcement of fresh changes comes as the ad- ministration weighs how much of the law to adjust in the wake of its troubled rollout. Health care is expected to be a central issue in the November midterm elec- tions. Many employers have been Please turn to page A4 BY LOUISE RADNOFSKY AND THEO FRANCIS Health-Law Mandate Put Off Again No Fines for Most Employers Until 2016 as Firms Pressure White House in Wake of Troubled Rollout POCATELLO, Idaho—For years, H.J. Heinz Co. managers considered their frozen-food plant in the heart of potato country a model factory, rank- ing it the best in the U.S. in 2009 and 2011 for safety, cleanliness and efficiency. So workers here figured it was good news when they heard last February that a Brazilian firm, backed by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, was buying the venerable ketchup maker for $23 bil- lion—one of the food industry’s biggest deals ever. Workers say plant managers told them to expect expansion. Instead, the 400 workers here have become ca- sualties in a cost-cutting campaign that is the talk of the food industry. Although Heinz had been considered one of the industry’s leanest organiza- tions, the Brazilian lead investors, private-equity firm 3G Capital, believe they have identified plenty of fat. In November, Heinz said it would close the Idaho plant in the first half of this year. It may have been a model factory, but it also was an ex- ample of the kind of dubious logistics that were costing Heinz money. Frozen enchiladas, for in- stance, were trucked nearly 1,000 miles from a factory in San Diego, packaged with rice and sauce by workers in Pocatello, then shipped across the country to distribution centers on the East Coast. Heinz also will close factories in South Carolina and Ontario, Canada. There have been two major shake-ups in the executive ranks, and its core Please turn to page A12 BY ANNIE GASPARRO BRAZILIAN STYLE Tightfisted New Owners Put Heinz on a Diet Carl Icahn has proved once again that even in defeat he can turn a tidy profit. The billionaire investor gave up his fight Monday to force Ap- ple Inc. to boost its share repur- chase program by $50 billion. Before that, he had retreated from a demand that the con- sumer-technology giant load up on debt to fund a buyback three times that size. But the 77-year-old shareholder activist has made more than $400 million on paper from his Apple stake, which has grown to roughly $4 billion since he began building it over the summer, according to a person familiar with the matter. It is unclear whether Mr. Icahn has sold any shares. Last week, Apple Chief Execu- tive Tim Cook said in an inter- view that the company repur- chased some $14 billion in two weeks. That brings to more than $40 billion the value of shares the Cupertino, Calif., company has repurchased over the past 12 months, a record for any com- Please turn to page A6 BY DAVID BENOIT Icahn Ends Apple Push With Hefty Paper Profit U.S., France Look for Common Ground on a Presidential Field Trip HISTORIC TIES: President Barack Obama, right, and French President François Hollande toured Monticello, the Virginia home of devoted Francophile and founding father Thomas Jefferson, Monday to highlight the two countries’ long friendship as Mr. Hollande kicks off a state visit to the U.S. A9 Larry Downing/Reuters In William Forstchen’s new science fiction novel, “Pillar to the Sky,” there are no evil cy- borgs, alien invasions or time travel calamities. The threat to humanity is far more pedestrian: tightfisted bureau- crats who have slashed NASA’s budget. The novel is the first in a new series of “NASA-Inspired Works of Fiction,” which grew out of a collaboration be- tween the National Aeronautics and Space Adminis- tration and science fiction pub- lisher Tor. The partnership pairs up novelists with NASA scientists and engineers, who help writers develop scientifically plausible story lines and spot-check manu- scripts for technical errors. The plot of Mr. Forstchen’s novel hinges on a multibillion- dollar effort to build a 23,000- mile-high space elevator—a quest threatened by budget cuts and stingy congressmen. Forth- coming novels in the series will explore asteroid mining, wormholes and astrobiology. Fact-based sci- ence fiction may sound like a contra- diction, or a poor marketing strategy, in a literary genre that typically cele- brates flights of fantasy. But Tor and NASA say both stand to gain. Novelists get ac- cess to cutting-edge research and experts in obscure fields. A NASA official says that shaping science fiction offers “an innova- tive way to reach out to the pub- lic to raise awareness of what Please turn to page A12 BY ALEXANDRA ALTER NASA Tries to Rewrite The Book on Science Fiction i i i Agency Links Experts, Novelists in PR Push; The Alien Quarterback and the Wormhole Science fiction’s space elevator Journal Report CIOs redefine their role— and take aim at the corner office. CIO Network, R1-6 Apple Juice Apple's share price The Wall Street Journal Source: WSJ Market Data Group 350 400 450 500 $550 ’14 2013 Monday $528.99 Icahn discloses stake Suicide car bomb in Kabul kills two military contractors .......... A8 Call 1-800-iShares for a prospectus, which includes investment objectives, risks, fees, expenses and other information that you should read and consider carefully before investing. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. 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