For Ronald Luri, getting fired for not firing employees was worth it after a jury in Cuyahoga County, Ohio awarded him nearly $47 million in compensation for lost income and punitive damage. The 55-year-old former general manager for trash hauler Republic Services Inc. said he was vindicated upon learning of the award, the largest ever in Ohio's history, issued by a Common Pleas Court jury on Thursday.

Jeff Taylor, the founder of online job site Monster. com, is now touting his latest Internet project: online obituaries. Taylor said his newest venture, Tributes. com, is aimed at moving death notices from the newspaper to the Internet. Unlike Legacy. com, which is owned partly by the Tribune Co. and receives fees from 650 newspapers to publish online death notices, Taylor intends to obtain obituaries directly from funeral homes and earn revenue by selling advertising, among other ways.

It's impossible to know which side drew first blood. For as long as Wimbledon has existed, it has had to contend with the pigeons, invaders hell bent on dive-bombing players, leaving droppings on tables, and even taking a stroll on Centre Court. On Monday, tournament officials escalated the conflict by calling in special forces to cull the offensive. Wimbledon's usual security measures to keep the pigeon offensive at bay were just not cutting it on Monday. It was time to move to more extreme contingencies.

The school board here decided Friday to fire a science teacher accused of burning a cross on a student's arm and teaching creationism in his class. The board, however, will give John Freshwater, 51, of Mount Vernon Middle School two weeks to appeal the decision to end his contract and argue his case before the firing is made official on July 7.

A survey of 2,520 executive made by a New York-based online job search website said office cursing topped the reasons why bosses fire employees. According to TheLadders. com, 38 percent of the respondents to the online survey pointed to violation of office etiquette, primarily using cuss words, as their number one reason for terminating workers.