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In a case that affects thousands of businesses and millions of workers, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that employers are under no obligation to ensure that workers take legally mandated lunch and rest breaks

The unanimous opinion came after workers’ attorneys argued that abuses are routine and widespread when companies aren’t required to issue direct orders to take the breaks. They claimed employers take advantage of workers who don’t want to leave colleagues during busy times.

The case was initially filed nine years ago against Brinker International, the parent company of Chili’s and other eateries, by restaurant workers complaining of missed breaks in violation of California labor law.

But the high court sided with businesses when it ruled that requiring companies to order breaks is unmanageable and those decisions should be left to workers.

The opinion written by Associate Justice Kathryn Werdegar explained that state law does not compel an employer to ensure employees cease all work during meal periods, instead saying the employee is at liberty to use the time as they choose.

“The employer is not obligated to police meal breaks and ensure no work thereafter is performed,” Werdegar wrote.

The court’s decision could greatly reduce the numerous class-action lawsuits surrounding the issue that cost companies millions of dollars in legal costs.

“The courts are making it clear that you have to create a system and a procedure that fully allows employees an opportunity to take breaks and meal periods, and if they do that they do not have to be Big Brother and individually monitor each employee to ensure that they’ve taken every bit of their breaks,” said Steve Hirschfeld, founder and CEO of the Employment Law Alliance, an employer-side legal trade group.

Attorneys for workers said low-wage workers such as those at Chili’s and other restaurants face unique issues that dissuade them from requesting meal and rest periods.

“The decision … should have required employers to take affirmative steps to provide meal periods, and not just adopt policies that allow them,” Fernando Flores of the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, said in a statement.

“The (court) previously held that employees who are denied their rest and meal periods face greater risk of work-related accidents _ especially low-wage workers who engage in manual labor,” Flores said.

The Brinker decision doesn’t account for the public health and general welfare argument and weakens these standards for millions of low-wage workers across California, he added.

State law has mandated meal and rest breaks for decades. But in 2001, California became one of only a few states that impose a monetary penalty for employers who violate these laws, requiring employers to pay one hour of wages for a missed half-hour meal break. There is no federal law requiring employers to provide such breaks.

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The end appears near for LightSquared, one of the wireless industry’s grandest and riskiest gambles.

It’s odd to think of a company backed by $5 billion as a startup, but that’s what LightSquared is. It wanted to become the country’s fifth nationwide wireless carrier by going toe-to-toe with giants like Verizon and AT&T — an ambitious vision it had a real shot at pulling off.

Now, after a series of potentially fatal regulatory setbacks, it’s mulling bankruptcy. Philip Falcone, head of LightSquared’s majority owner Harbinger Capital Partners, told Reuters the company is "seriously considering" the option.

In a subsequent email to CNN, Falcone said: "I’ve said it is and always has been one of our options."

Chapter 11 wouldn’t necessarily spell the end, but it would move the goal posts much farther away. That’s a disaster for a company already backed up in its own end zone.

The unraveling began in February, when government regulators said they would bar the company from launching its network. LightSquared failed to convince the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that its network would not interfere with GPS signals.

CEO Sanjiv Ahuja stepped down two weeks later. In March, LightSquared’s biggest partner, Sprint Nextel (, Fortune 500), ended its $9 billion agreement with the company.

In a time when many big companies prefer sitting on their cash to making major capital investments, LightSquared swung for the fences. Building a nationwide wireless network from scratch is bogglingly expensive, but LightSquared is backed by a nearly $3 billion investment from Harbinger and more than $2 billion from other investors.

What made those investors believe their billions could pay off was that LightSquared is sitting on a truckload of valuable wireless spectrum.

LightSquared hoped to enter the wireless market as a wholesale provider of 4G service. That means it would provide the infrastructure and the network, but it would rely on its business partners to sell the service. Carriers aren’t exactly known to be good retailers, so the thinking was, "Why not let the experts handle that?"

The idea took off: The company signed 40 partners from a wide array of businesses, including retailers like Best Buy (, Fortune 500), device manufacturers like AirTouch and other carriers like Sprint and Leap Wireless ().

By partnering with LightSquared, Best Buy could have sold devices with Best Buy branded wireless service, Sprint could get much-needed capacity, and device makers could package service with their smartphones. Imagine one day being able to buy an iPhone with Apple’s (, Fortune 500) own wireless service.

LightSquared planned to severely undercut its competition. By selling only efficient 4G service — and not operating legacy 2G and 3G networks that are costly to maintain — LightSquared said it could offer its service starting at just $7 per gigabyte.

Verizon and AT&T offer data rates of around $15 per gigabyte. But smartphone customers are required to buy voice and data packages, which start at $75 for 450 minutes and 2 GB. Since few actually come close to reaching their limits, the average U flexcheck cash advance.S. smartphone customer pays about $56 for every gigabyte they use, LightSquared claims.

"You can triple or even quadruple our rate, and it’s still a dramatic savings over what consumer pays today," former CEO Ahuja told CNNMoney in late 2011. "We think the average price of wireless service should drop by 50% once we launch. The American consumer is simply paying too much."

LightSquared was attempting to fill a niche that no one else is playing in.

Verizon (, Fortune 500) and AT&T (, Fortune 500) are reluctant to sell their services wholesale, because spectrum is so scarce — and even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to match LightSquared’s proposed prices.

There’s also Clearwire (), but Clearwire’s model is primarily to sell supplementary coverage in high-density areas to existing carriers. Other potential entrants, like cable giant Comcast (, Fortune 500), kicked the market’s tires and fled. The investment costs are simply too steep, Comcast executives have said.

Of course, when things sound too good to be true, they usually are.

LightSquared’s spectrum was originally licensed only for satellite services, not the much stronger terrestrial transmissions LightSquared wants to put there. Its entire business hinges on getting a waiver for its spectrum use.

That initially seemed likely. The Federal Communications Commission granted a temporary waiver, and powerful Washington backers supported LightSquared’s vision.

But concerns about signal interference with GPS devices plagued LightSquared, and in the end, regulators decided that it was too risky. They revoked the waiver.

Falcone says he remains determined to fight the good fight. But if LightSquared doesn’t get regulatory green lights by the end of the year, the company will run out of money and will be forced to sell off its assets, according to Jonathan Chaplin, analyst at Credit Suisse.

That’s because LightSquared has relatively fixed costs — with or without customers.

The company predicts its network and infrastructure will cost $30 billion to operate and maintain over the course of the next five years. It will cost LightSquared $30 billion to operate a network with zero customers and $30 billion to run a network with 25 million customers.

With customers, Chaplin thinks the venture could have been profitable just a few years after launching. But Chaplin now thinks that other potential customers will follow Sprint’s lead and dissolve their deals.

"The great shame about LightSquared is that it could have stirred up the industry, and it could have benefited consumers tremendously," Chaplin said. "But with no spectrum, there’s just the fixed cost of running a network."

Hence the bankruptcy chatter. That’s the risk of giant gambles: Sometimes you roll snake eyes.

But if LightSquared collapses, it will take with it the wireless industry’s best shot at launching an entire wave of new rivals to the strengthening AT&T/Verizon duopoly.

-CNN’s Felicia Taylor contributed to this story 

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The sweet deal at Crestwood Court, with dirt-cheap rents and all the space you could want, may have come to an end.

But now many of the mall’s little birdies are spreading their wings. A number of the mom-and-pop shops who used the mall’s three-year-long ArtSpace experiment as a business incubator have started moving into other spaces around town.

Bryan Laughlin Jr., who runs The Option B Designery, just signed a lease to move into a building about a mile south of the St. Louis Galleria on Brentwood Boulevard. He ended up finding a generous landlord there, too.

“It’s kind of a blessing in disguise, because we’re in a situation where we’re not paying much more for a prime spot in Brentwood as opposed to paying less for a bigger space in basically a ghost town,” he said.

But he’s not complaining about his year in Crestwood Court.

While the mall didn’t get a lot of traffic, it did give he and his brother a chance to bring in more sales and run a showroom for their business, which previously operated solely online. They sell antiques, art and fashion from the Victorian Era to Yves Saint Laurent and also restore furniture with their father.

“Since we ran it ourselves, we made quite a bit of money last year to help set us up for the future of our business,” he added.

Jennifer Klayman and her mother, Lois, are also happy with their new digs on the Delmar Loop. The duo moved Re-Designz, an eclectic vintage and retro goods store, to a storefront next to the Tivoli last month.

Like many ArtSpace tenants, they had to move out of Crestwood Court by the end of February to make way for still somewhat mysterious redevelopment plans for the mall.

“Crestwood was a good foundation to get our product known and our name known – to get some recognition – so when we moved we did have a following,” she said.

The rent is higher on the Loop – and the space is about half the size – but Klayman says she gets a lot more foot traffic coming by. And, she added, the smaller quarters has forced her to edit down the selection.

“That’s good, because it makes me pick and choose pieces more carefully,” she said.

Denise Krekeler has actually upgraded to a bigger space after leaving the mall paydayloan. She and her husband moved their store, Yeti Gaming, into a 4,000-square foot space last week. They wanted to stay in the area, near their customer base, so they just moved down the street from the mall to 361 Watson Plaza.

They had quickly outgrown the 1,200-square foot space they had in the mall. Kids often spilled out into the mall’s corridors as they played in the store’s Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments.

So she was ready to move on around the same time the mall announced that tenants had to move out. Still, she was sad to say goodbye to the community that had formed in her corner of the mall with a nearby science fiction lounge and an anime store.

“We all became friends,” she said. “So that was kind of hard to leave. But it was a wonderful experience for a small business owner who wanted to try something who probably wouldn’t get a chance to do that in a regular strip mall.”

BIGGER BOXES

So last week I wrote about how big box stores are becoming smaller boxes. Then, of course, Menard Inc. had to come along and prove me wrong – or at least, give us an exception to the rule.

As you might have read this week, the Wisconsin-based home improvement retailer was chosen by the Richmond Heights city council to develop a two-story, 246,346 square foot store just east of Hanley Road. That doesn’t sound like a small – or even smaller – box at all.

The retailer has been bucking the trend and doubling the size of some of its stores. And the new ones it is building are obviously quite big.

Jeff Abbott, a Menards spokesman, didn’t respond to a question about the company’s strategy to build bigger stores. And he didn’t go into detail about the retailer’s attempts to open its first stores here.

In addition to the Richmond Heights location, the company is also seeking a zoning change to put in a store on Manchester Road in west St. Louis County.

“We’re working through approvals but have nothing official to report at this time,” Abbott wrote in an email.

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British ministers say a ban on displaying packs of cigarettes inside supermarkets and other large stores will send a message that smoking is no longer acceptable.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said Friday _ as the restrictions came into force _ that the ban would show that Britons “no longer see smoking as a part of life.”

The ban applies only in England and will be extended to smaller stores by 2015. It means cigarettes must be hidden behind screens, or under shop counters fast cash now.

England is following the lead of Iceland, Ireland, and Canada, all of which previously introduced similar measures.

A ban on smoking indoors in public places, such as pubs, was introduced in Scotland in 2006 and in England in 2007.

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Emerson said today that is has purchased the Marine Container and Boiler business of Johnson Controls, Inc.

The Ferguson-based manufacturer said it made the acquisition to expand its refrigeration technology offerings to shippers. Terms were not disclosed.

The Johnson unit is based in Denmark and supplies equipment that runs refrigerated sea containers and marine boilers, as well as equipment that monitors the temperature of shipping containers on land or at sea payday loan lenders. The technology is connects more than 650,000 containers and 2,200 ships to a centralized monitoring server.

It will become part of Emerson’s Climate Technologies division.

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More bad news for Chinese telecom giant Huawei this week is raising questions about the company’s ability to do business with the West.

Huawei, which is second only to Sweden’s Ericsson in telecom equipment sales, was blocked on Monday from bidding on a $36 billion Australian national broadband contract.

The Australian government is working to connect virtually the entire country to a high-speed fiber-optic broadband network, and Huawei wanted to supply the project with much of the necessary infrastructure equipment. The government-run National Broadband Network Co. wanted to consider Huawei, but the Australian Security Intelligence Organization recommended that the Chinese company not be allowed to bid for security reasons, Australia’s Financial Review reported.

Getting barred from foreign contracts is becoming a frequent problem for the Shenzhen, China-based company.

Also this week, the New York Times reported that a cybersecurity joint venture between Huawei and security firm Symantec (, Fortune 500) ended in November because of Symantec’s concerns that its relationship with Huawei would prevent it from getting a sensitive U.S. government security contract. Symantec did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and a spokesman for Huawei denied the Times’ account.

The setbacks for Huawei are just more links in a long chain of defeats in Western countries — particularly in the United States.

U.S. lawmakers and regulators have blocked Huawei from three proposed acquisitions and many more partnerships over the past decade, including a bid for 3Com and a supply deal with Sprint, both of which contract with the U.S. military. 3Com was eventually purchased by Hewlett-Packard (, Fortune 500).

Huawei has no problems getting contracts in many places around the globe. The company does business in 140 countries and serves 500 operators, including 45 of the 50 largest global telecom companies.

But it can’t count Verizon (, Fortune 500), AT&T (, Fortune 500), Sprint (, Fortune 500) or T-Mobile USA among its customers. Or the American government pay day loans.

Huawei faces three key obstacles, all of them geo-political in nature.

First, Huawei’s CEO is Ren Zhengfei, once a civil engineer for the People’s Liberation Army. The most advanced, persistent cyberattacks emanate from China, and the U.S. government believes many are sponsored by the Chinese government. Those attacks have captured intellectual property from U.S.-based corporations and secrets from the U.S. military.

Second, Huawei — like all companies based in the Communist country — has ties with the Chinese government.

Finally, the company has historically been willing to supply Iran with networking equipment, which Iran reportedly used to track its citizens. Huawei has since said it would scale back its relationship with Iran.

Huawei says it is being unfairly treated and mischaracterized.

"Huawei recognizes that there are geopolitial tensions; however, Huawei is a private company owned by its employees, financed by major commercial banks," said Bill Plummer, a spokesman for the company. "We would encourage anyone who wants to learn about the company to engage in facts."

Over the past year, Huawei has become increasingly vocal about what it sees as misinformation spread about the company. Most notably, Huawei released an open letter last February detailing its relationships with governments both in China and around the world.

The company constantly points to the many countries that it does do business in, including the United Kingdom, as examples of its integrity and focus on security.

There’s a big incentive to keep haggling, pushing and persuading. The United States is a $30 billion telecom market — and growing. As mobile traffic soars and 4G networks roll out, there’s a huge need for infrastructure spending.

But with Australia’s big "N-O" to Huawei and recent revelations about why Symantec was so eager to dump it as a partner, it’s clear Huawei still has a lot of convincing to do. 

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Global stocks were buoyant Tuesday while the euro struck a near one-month high against the dollar after Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke indicated that U.S. monetary policy will remain loose for some time to come to spur the economy.

On Monday, Bernanke said the U.S. job market was still weak despite recent signs of improvement. Investors interpreted his comments as a clear suggestion that the Fed will continue to prop up the economy by keeping short-term interest rates near zero. Some even speculated it could mean the Fed would be willing to buy up more bonds.

The Fed has so far embarked on two rounds of bond-buying, most recently in late 2010, known as quantitative easing. The idea is to drive down long-term interest rates and encourage investors to buy stocks. The second round ignited a 28 percent Wall Street rally over eight months.

The mere thought that a third round of bond-buying, dubbed QE3 by industry insiders, might be possible triggered a turnaround in markets, which last week had been shaken by signs of economic slowdown in China and Europe.

“Once again we are through the looking glass, in a world where stocks rise on hopes that U.S. economic data will weaken, since this then raises the probability that the Fed will launch QE3,” said Ben Critchley, a sales trader at IG Index.

“We remain stuck in a world where markets seem unable to cope without the possibility of monetary stimulus, underscoring the fact that the global economy still has some way to go before it is successfully weaned off active central bank intervention,” he said.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 0.3 percent to 5,392 while Germany’s DAX rose 0.7 percent to 7,130. The CAC-40 in France was 0.6 percent higher at 3,524.

Wall Street was also poised for a solid opening after Monday’s stellar gains, which saw the Standard & Poor’s 500 index close at 1,416.51, its best finish since May 2008 _ both Dow futures and the S&P futures indicated a 0.2 percent advance at the open.

In the currency markets, the euro continued to find support as investors became more comfortable with riskier trades. Conversely, Bernanke’s hint that rates will remain low hurt the dollar _ lower rates tend to weigh on a currency by reducing the returns investors get from holding it.

The euro was up 0.2 percent at $1.3374, its highest level for nearly a month.

Bernanke’s comments also helped support prices for commodities since they are traded in dollars _ when the U.S. currency drops, commodities become more attractive to investors holding other currencies, such as the euro.

The benchmark New York oil price was up 18 cents at $107.21 a barrel, near nine-month highs.

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Leung Chun-ying, a former property surveyor, pledged to address Hong Kong

A group of prominent Chinese writers have demanded millions of dollars in compensation from technology giant Apple Inc. for allegedly selling unlicensed versions of their books in its online store, a lawyer said Monday.

The case is a departure from the usual pattern of U.S artists or companies going after Chinese copycats. Trade groups say illegal Chinese copying of music, designer clothing and other goods costs legitimate producers billions of dollars a year in lost sales.

Three separate lawsuits have been filed with the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court on behalf of 12 writers who allege 59 of their titles were sold unlicensed through Apple’s iTunes online store, said Wang Guohua, a Beijing lawyer representing the writers.

The three suits together demand 23 million (US$3.5 million) in compensation from Apple, Wang said. Well-known novelist and race car driver Han Han is among the writers taking the legal action, he said.

Apple did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Wang said Apple uploaded the Chinese writers’ works without their permission, violating their copyright, and while Apple deleted some of the books after the suits were filed in January, some of the works quickly appeared again, apparently uploaded by developers that sell apps through the Apple Store.

“Some developers, with whom Apple has contracts, put them back online again,” said Wang of the United Zhongwen Law Firm. “It is encouragement in disguise, because they did not punish the developers. The developers could have been kicked out. But nothing happened to them.”

Wang said 10 other writers have also gotten involved since January but their suits have yet to be filed. In all, 23 writers have registered their complaints with Wang and claim that Apple sold 95 pirated titles.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported late Sunday that the writers were collectively seeking 50 million yuan ($7.7 million) in compensation from Apple but Wang could not confirm that figure.

Product piracy is a major irritant in China-US relations, but usually involves complaints that Chinese are copying American products.

However, it’s not the first time Chinese have cried foul over copyright infringement by an American company either. In 2009, the government-affiliated China Written Works Copyright Society complained that Google had scanned nearly 20,000 works by 570 Chinese authors without permission as part of its digital library project, drawing an apology from Google.

For Apple, the latest case is just one of several legal battles being fought in China. The company is embroiled in a battle over the iPad trademark with Proview Electronics Co., a Chinese computer monitor and LED light maker that says it registered the trademark more than a decade ago.

Proview wants Apple to stop selling or making the popular tablet computers under that name.

Apple says Proview sold it worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 2009, though in China the registration was never transferred.

__

AP researcher Zhao Liang contributed.

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The solar storm that seemed to be more fizzle than fury got much stronger early Friday before fading again.

At its peak, it was the most potent solar storm since 2004, space weather forecasters said.

No power outages or other technological disturbances were reported from the solar storm that started to peter out late Friday morning.

Solar storms, which can’t hurt people, can disturb electric grids, GPS systems, and satellites. They can also spread colorful Northern Lights further south than usual, as the latest storm did early Friday.

And more storms are coming. The federal government’s Space Weather Prediction Center says the same area of the sun erupted again Thursday night, with a milder storm expected to reach Earth early Sunday.

The latest storm started with a flare on Tuesday, and had been forecast to be strong and direct, with one scientist predicting it would blast Earth directly like a punch in the nose. But it arrived Thursday morning at mild levels _ at the bottom of the government’s 1-5 scale of severity. It strengthened to a level 3 for several hours early Friday as the storm neared its end. Scientists say that’s because the magnetic part of the storm flipped direction.

“We were watching the boxer, expecting the punch. It didn’t come,” said physicist Terry Onsager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s space weather center in Boulder, Colo. “It hit us with the back of the hand as it was retreating.”

Forecasters can predict a solar storm’s speed and strength, but not the direction of its magnetic field. If it is northward, like Earth’s, the jolt of energy flows harmlessly around the planet, Onsager said. A southerly direction can cause power outages and other problems.

Thursday’s storm came in northerly, but early Friday switched to the fierce southerly direction. The magnetic part of the storm spent several hours at that strong level, so combined with strong radiation and radio levels, it turned out to be the strongest solar storm since November 2004, said NOAA lead forecaster Bob Rutledge.

Skywatchers reported to NOAA shimmering colorful auroras in Michigan, Wisconsin and Seattle _ areas that don’t normally see the Northern Lights _ Rutledge said. Other space weather enthusiasts reported auroras in Alaska, Minnesota, and North Dakota and in the southern hemisphere in Australia and New Zealand.

“Up north, they got a great display,” said NASA solar physicist David Hathaway.

By late Friday morning the storm was essentially over, forecasters said. But they had a new flare from the same sunspot region to watch. Preliminary forecasts show it to be slightly weaker than the one that just hit, arriving somewhere around 1 a.m. EST Sunday.

The storms are part of the sun’s normal 11-year cycle, which is supposed to reach a peak next year.

“This is what we’re expecting as we approach solar maximum,”" Onsager said. “We should be seeing this for the next few years now.”

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