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* * * * * FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2015 ~ VOL. CCLXV NO. 41 WSJ.com HHHH $3 .00

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CONTENTSBusiness News. B1-3,6Global Finance........... C3Heard on Street.... C10In the Markets.......... C4Money & Invest. D1-2,5Movies........................ D1-6

Opinion..................... A9-11Sports........................... D10Technology.............. B4-5Theater....................... D6,9U.S. News................ A2-6Weather Watch........ B7World News..... A7-8,12

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What’sNews

Hackers remain in the StateDepartment’s computer net-work, threemonths after thedepartment confirmed its emailsystem had been breached.A1At least 60 companies thatlobbied the State Departmentduring Clinton’s tenure donateda total of more than $26millionto the Clinton Foundation.A1The foundation said itwould rethink taking donationsfrom foreign governments ifClinton runs for president.A6 European leaders stood bya Ukraine cease-fire, even asthe U.S. said Russian equip-ment and troops continued toflow into the country. A8Germany rejected a Greekrequest to extend its bailoutprogram, setting up a toughround of eurozone talks. A7 The FDA issued a warningfor a medical device linked toan outbreak of a drug-resis-tant bacterial disease. A3A panel of nutrition expertssaid the government shouldconsider the environment indrafting dietary guidelines. A3 Jurors will begin deliberat-ing the fate of a Saudi manaccused of a role in the 1998U.S. embassy bombings. A5Hollande’s governmentsurvived a no-confidence voteover the French leader’s ef-forts at economic overhaul. A7 The mayor of Caracas wasdetained. Venezuela’s presi-dent accused him of “crimesagainst the country.” A12 Afghan officials plan tomeet Taliban representatives,reviving efforts at peace talkswith themilitant group. A8

Wal-Mart plans to boostpay for its U.S. employees

to at least $10 an hour by nextyear, signaling rising competi-tion for lower-paid workers. A1AmEx lost an antitrust suitby the government over thefirm’s rules banning merchantsfrom promoting other cards oroffering certain discounts. C1The FTC sued to block Sy-sco’s acquisition of US Foods,saying the tie-upwould createa dominant company that couldraise prices and cut service. B1Wall Street’s biggest banksare slashing jobs, with the num-ber of front-office posts falling20% globally since 2010. C1 The Dow edged down 44.08points to 17985.77 as energyshares fell, but Nasdaq contin-ued its winning streak. C4 Saudi Aramco is looking tocut costs as oil prices fall, in-cluding slashing spending onproduction and exploration. B1A surge in U.S. oil suppliessent prices on a roller-coasterride before ending the day at$51.16 a barrel in New York. C1Obama’s economic reportto Congress highlighted sev-eral proposals designed toboost the nation’s output. A2The ECB’s first publishedminutes showed officials wor-ried last month about the riskof consumer-price declines. A7Huntington Ingalls plans toboost investment as it preparesto bid on billions of dollars ofwork on U.S. Navy projects. B1West Coast ports andunions returned to the negoti-ating table as new data showeda drop in cargo volume. B3

Business&Finance

World-Wide

A QuestionOf Desire:Will GreecePay Debts?

The Greece crisis is reinforc-ing a cardinal rule of sovereign-debt crises: It isn’t whether agovernment can pay what itowes, it’s whether it wants to.

The new left-wing govern-ment in Greece is seeking to re-duce debts it says it can’t pay;its finance minister, Yanis Varou-fakis, has called his own country

bankrupt and in-solvent. It has ini-tiated negotia-t i o n s —w h i c h

continue in Brussels on Friday—with other eurozone govern-ments to reduce the burden itsdebt represents.

Tensions were high ahead ofthe Brussels meeting. Germanand Greek officials traded barbsthroughout the day Thursday af-ter Berlin flatly dismissed Ath-ens’s request to extend its bail-out program.

Both capitals appeared to bestaking out their positions aheadof the talks, underscoring howties between the two have frayedsince Greece’s Syriza party, ledby Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras,swept to power last month on itspromise to scrap the unpopularbailout.

Nobody is claiming—as theymight of a bankrupt company—that Greece doesn’t have thewherewithal to pay back all its€320 billion-plus ($365 billion)of foreign debt in full: The assetsof the country dwarf that figure.

What is in question iswhether the Greek governmentcan levy taxes or charges on itspeople—or can sell assets—suffi-cient to service its debts and

Please see GREECE page A7

BY STEPHEN FIDLER

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans toboost pay for its U.S. employeesto at least $10 an hour by nextyear, well above the minimumwage, signaling a tightening la-bor market and rising competi-tion for lower-paid workers.

The action could signal a turn-ing point for what have been stub-bornly stagnant wages since therecession ended almost six yearsago, and it would amplify gains forlow-wage workers across the na-tion if other companies follow thenation’s largest private employer.The new rate is 38% higher thanthe current federal minimumhourly wage of $7.25.

“Wal-Mart’s move to raise their

employee pay base is a sign thatthe labormarket has already tight-ened,” said Joel Naroff, chief econ-omist at Naroff Economic Advi-sors. “Their action could create afloor under wages and others mayneed to follow in order to retainand attract workers.”

Employers are adding jobs atthe best pace since the late 1990s.As a result, the unemploymentrate fell to 5.7% last month from6.6% a year earlier, a sign of dimin-ishing slack in the labor market.

Economists have been waitingfor years for wage growth to kickin, and more signs of that areemerging. Companies say theyare having to fight harder to at-tract and keep good employees.Starbucks Corp. raised its start-ing pay last month, and AetnaInc. said it would begin payingits lowest-rung workers $16 anhour in April. Gap Inc. last yearsaid it would raise starting payto $10 an hour. Others such asCostco Wholesale, Hobby Lobby

Please see WAGES page A2

BY PAUL ZIOBROAND ERIC MORATH

Wal-Mart LiftsPay asMarketGets TighterRetailer to boost hourlywage to at least $10 bynext year as competitionrises for workers

LUNAR NEW YEAR: Chinese artists perform a traditional dragon dance Thursday in Beijing.

Dragon Ushers in Year of the Sheep

Three months after the StateDepartment confirmed hackersbreached its unclassified emailsystem, the government stillhasn’t been able to evict themfrom the department’s network,according to three people famil-iar with the investigation.

Government officials, assistedby outside contractors and theNational Security Agency, haverepeatedly scanned the network

and taken some systems offline.But investigators still see signs ofthe hackers on State Departmentcomputers, the people familiarwith the matter said. Each timeinvestigators find a hacker tooland block it, these people said,the intruders tweak it slightly toattempt to sneak past defenses.

It isn’t clear how much datathe hackers have taken, the peo-ple said. They reaffirmed whatthe State Department said in No-

Please see STATE page A4

BY DANNY YADRON

State DepartmentCan’t BeatHackers

KevinFrayer/G

etty

Images

South Carolina’s Giant Peach,A Butt of Jokes, Is Ripe for Renewal

i i i

Refresh of ‘Peachoid’ water tower pits workersagainst weather; boosters keen on appeal

GAFFNEY, S.C.—It is no simplematter to keep the nation’s mostrecognizable and giggle-inducingwater tower as pretty as a peach.

The “Peachoid” sits high aboveInterstate 85 in Gaffney, S.C., andbrightens the lonelyfour-hour stretch be-tween Atlanta and Char-lotte for tens of thou-sands of drivers a day.Its round shape, warmtones and indentationbetween halves drivesome drivers to anatom-ical distraction, includ-ing a character on Net-flix’s “House of Cards,”who crashed on an epi-sode of the show whiletexting, “Doesn’t the Peachoidlook like a giant…”

“It’s great if you’re 12 years oldor just have a 12-year-old’s sense ofhumor,” says Jill Sochacki, a Char-lotte, N.C.-based travel blogger.

Last winter’s harsh weatherproved tough on peaches,though, both real and replica.Repeated cycles of freezing andwarming caused the Peachoid’spaint to peel in 6-foot swaths,mostly in its cleft, leavingpatches of dull yellow that Gaff-

ney boosters saw as ablemish on this formermill town of 12,000.

Gaffney producesonly a fraction of thepeaches it did when thePeachoid was builtpartly in honor of theregion’s peach farmers.Many have since soldtheir land, and the topmanufacturing em-ployer in the countythese days is Nestlé

USA.Still, the Gaffney Board of Pub-

lic Works decided the famous wa-ter tower must be made fresh.They hoped to get away with a

Please see PEACH page A5

BY VALERIE BAUERLEIN

The Peachoid

ANALYSIS

CLINTON’S CORPORATE TIESFamily charities collected donations from companies she promoted as secretary of state

Among recent secretaries of state,Hillary Clinton was one of the most ag-gressive global cheerleaders for Ameri-can companies, pushing governmentsto sign deals and change policies tothe advantage of corporate giants suchas General Electric Co., Exxon MobilCorp., Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co.

At the same time, those companieswere among the many that gave to theClinton family’s global foundation setup by her husband, former President

Bill Clinton. At least 60 companies thatlobbied the State Department duringher tenure donated a total of morethan $26 million to the Clinton Foun-dation, according to a Wall StreetJournal analysis of public and founda-tion disclosures.

As Mrs. Clinton prepares to embarkon a race for the presidency, she has aweb of connections to big corporationsunique in American politics—tiesforged both as secretary of state andby her family’s charitable interests.Those relationships are emerging as anissue for Mrs. Clinton’s expected presi-

dential campaign as income disparityand other populist themes gain earlyattention.

Indeed, Clinton Foundation money-raising already is drawing attention.“To a lot of progressive Democrats,Clinton’s ties to corporate America aredisturbing,” says Jack Pitney, a politicsprofessor at Claremont McKenna Col-lege who once worked for congressio-nal Republicans. Mrs. Clinton’s connec-tions to companies, he says, “are abonanza for opposition researchers be-cause they enable her critics to sug-

Please see CLINTON page A6

BY JAMES V. GRIMALDIAND REBECCA BALLHAUS

Berlin scorns bid for aid........... A7 Europe bonds weather storm... C1

At the Oscars‘Birdman’ and ‘Boyhood’ battle itout for Academy Award gloryARENA, D1

Million-DollarBuyer’s Remorse

MANSION, M1

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