Midway Games (MWY) today announced that it will lay off 25% of its staff and take other steps to reduce costs, including shutting its Austin, Texas studio. Other jobs will be cut at studios in Chicago and San Diego. The struggling video game company is also suspending development of “several non-core games.” Midway has about 900 employees. (Barron’s)

Bristol-Myers Squibb will be handing layoff notices to another 10 percent of its 37,000 remaining workers, likely due to weak pipelines, increasing regulatory burdens, looming generic competition and (do we even need to say it?) the economy. This, along with a 10 percent cut the company announced in July of this year, will bring the total to 8,000 layoffs. (FiercePharma)

Agilent Technologies will lay off much of its remaining workforce in the Spokane suburb of Liberty Lake next year.

The company said 120 to 150 of its 220 workers will lose their jobs as the California-based company tries to stay competitive. Many of those jobs pay from $65,000 to more than $80,000. About 20 other Liberty Lake workers will be asked to move to a plant in Santa Rosa, Calif. (Seattle PI)

Just in time for the holidays, it’s Tickle Me Layoffs. Western Digital is cutting loose 5% of its workforce — that’s 2,500 more people who’ll be staying home against their will. (Engadget)

Isn’t the market just one big Ponzi scheme?

Nomura Holdings Inc., Japan’s largest brokerage, said it has 27.5 billion yen ($302 million) at risk linked to Bernard Madoff’s investment funds.

Nomura joined firms including Spain’s Banco Santander SA in disclosing investments tied to Madoff, who was arrested Dec. 11 and charged with defrauding investors of as much as $50 billion through a Ponzi scheme at his New York-based firm’s business advising rich people, hedge funds and institutions. (Bloomberg)

Thirty states are at risk of having the funds that pay out unemployment benefits become insolvent over the next few months, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Funds in two states, Indiana and Michigan, have dried up, and both states are borrowing from the federal government to make payments to the jobless. (Detroit News)

MA-based technology media publisher TechTarget (NASDAQ: TTGT) said in an SEC filing Thursday that it plans to cut costs by laying off 76 employees, or about 12 percent of its total workforce. (Xconomy)

CSC is reducing its workforce on the Internal Revenue Service’s multimillion-dollar contract to modernize its tax collection system known as Customer Account Data Engine.

“I can confirm that we did announce that there will be staff reductions on the program starting in January,” a CSC spokesman told Washington Technology. The spokesman asked not to be named in the story and declined to provide any further details. (Washington Technology)

At least a dozen employees had been celebrating when the gunman, who had been recently laid off, entered the party and began firing a gun, according to Vancouver Police spokesperson Const. Tim Fanning. (CTV)

St. Louis-based Furniture Brands International Inc. said Thursday it will cut 1,400 jobs, or 15 percent of its U.S. work force, potentially the largest one-time job cut in its history.
The staff reductions, which will be effective immediately, were blamed on weak retail market. (TopNews)