You're About to Be Even More Uncomfortable on Planes & Other News You Can't Miss Today

THIS JUST IN – Reynolds American confirmed it is buying its smaller rival Lorillard for $24.7 billion. The Imperial Tobacco Group and British American Tobacco are also involved in the deal, the first one buying several brands from the new company and the second one shares to maintain its 42% ownership stake. Big Tobacco companies are banding together in the face of ever increasing scrutiny and a declining market – 18 percent of American adults smoke versus 45 percent 50 years ago, writes the New York Times. The deal also gives Reynolds a foothold into the two "healthy" markets for the industry (healthy markets, not products): menthols and e-cigarettes. That is, until regulators come knocking again.

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TOUR DE AIRBUS – Planes will soon be packed even tighter than a Tour de France peloton. (Or isn't that the case already?) Airbus has filed a patent for what must be the skinniest, most uncomfortable airplane seat yet. The apparatus – "seat" is a generous word – ressembles a foldable bicycle seat with a backrest like on a preschool chair. The drawings from the patent application speak for themselves. Imagine rowing oars through the windows and a big guy banging on a drum... (I'm not the only one who noted the ressemblance.)

This obviously is only being considered for short flights – for now. Added bonus: no need to provide meals since there is no table on which to eat them. And forget about the seatback entertainment system. Airbus is being totally candid in its application: it has become impossible to reduce seat width or legroom any more than they already have. Our waistlines would not cooperate. The bulk of the seat was the last frontier. Why encase a passenger in mildly comfortable metal, plastic and textile when you can give them a cane to sit on? Very serious advantage of the invention: getting rid of the bulky seats should lighten aircrafts and save fuel. Now if only passengers would pedal their way into the air...

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A NEW CULTURE & FEWER PEOPLE – As it integrates the handset business it bought from Nokia, Microsoft is about to announce its largest round of job cuts in five years, maybe even more than when the company cut 5,800 positions in 2009, according to Bloomberg's Dina Bass. New CEO Satya Nadella recently said he intends to refocus the company on mobile devices, cloud-computing and productivity software. And to do that, he said yesterday, "culture eats strategy." Speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm conference, he added:

"We need places where we innovate and we need renewal is in the core. When I think of our challenge today ... the core priority is renewal of mainstream work [processes]. Let's take what we are good at and rethink it. That’s not a side project. That is the very company itself." (Read the full story.)

The redundancies will mostly concern those positions that overlap between old Microsoft divisions and the new Nokia business, as well as marketing and engineering, Bass reports. The company has just shy of 130,000 employees, including 30,000 it integrated when acquiring Nokia's mobile phone business.

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GREEN & GREENBACKS – The World Trade Organization ruled that the US was out of line when it imposed tariffs on steel, solar panels and other imports from China and India. Washington had argued that those emerging nations competed unfairly because their corporate giants are either state-owned or so fully supported by the state that it artificially lowered their cost of production. Government subsidies to export industries are indeed banned by the WTO and American tariffs were only rectifying a wrong, according to the US. The WTO applied a stricter definition of its rules, saying they only apply to public bodies, or governments, which the companies in question are not. Washington is "carefully evaluating its options, and will take all appropriate steps to ensure that US remedies against unfair subsidies remain strong and effective”, said a US trade representative to the Financial Times. The market for solar panels was long a bone of contention between China and the US. What this means is the US will no longer be able to close off its domestic market and protect its manufacturing sector from the cut-throat competition of cheaper producers in the emerging world.

Would you agree to fly, for cheap, on a bicycle seat? Is the WTO decision affecting your business? If you have insider knowledge of these or other topics in the news today, write your own post explaining what's happening. Share the URL here in the comments mentioning me or tweet @LinkedInPulse. (Want to write, but don't yet have access? Leave your info here.)