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Sony Corp. Chief Executive Howard Stringer credited “very loyal” PlayStation Network gamers for flocking back to the service in big numbers, as he sought Tuesday to reassure shareholders following a series of embarrassing hacker attacks.

Stringer apologized for the data breach in April, which compromised personal data from more than 100 million online gaming and entertainment accounts. Sony was subsequently criticized for lax security and acting too slowly to inform customers as it grappled with one of the largest-ever security thefts.

Stringer said at an annual shareholders meeting held at a Tokyo hotel that as many as 90 percent of subscribers have come back since the Japanese company began restoring service last month.

“Our brand perception, you’ll be happy to know, is clearly improving again,” he told a less-than-happy crowd.

Executives faced harsh questioning from individual shareholders, who expressed frustration and anger over the hack. One man even asked for Stringer to step down. Though his suggestion generated scattered applause, it ultimately went nowhere.

Sony’s stock price has fallen 30 percent this year, compared with a roughly 6 percent decline in the benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average.

The Tokyo-based company estimates the hacks will cost 14 billion yen ($173 million) in increased customer support costs, freebie packages to welcome back customers, legal fees, lower sales and measures to strengthen security.

Stringer said he believes Sony was attacked because it tried to protect its intellectual property, lending credence to widespread speculation that the moves were meant to punish the company for suing hackers like George Hotz. Known as “Geohot,” Hotz broke into the PlayStation 3 operating system and posted the steps online.

“These are our corporate assets, and there are those who don’t want us to protect them,” Stringer said.

Executives reiterated that the attacks have not derailed Sony’s core strategy of more deeply connecting its hardware, content and services.

“My foremost responsibility to the board and all of you is to further advance the transformation process, firmly establish Sony’s position as a global product, content and service leader in the networked digital era and ensure our continued development and growth,” Stringer said.

Sony is forecasting a return to profit for this fiscal year after logging three straight years of red ink. Along with the data breaches, the company has been battling production delays and sales losses after supplier factories were damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

It expects an 80 billion yen ($989 million) profit for the current fiscal year.

In a statement later Tuesday, Sony released executive compensation figures for the last fiscal year through March 31. Stringer received 345 million yen ($4.3 million), along with stock options worth 518 million yen.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects day to Tuesday in paragraph one)

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Dietician Maisie Vanriel won Moneyville’s blogging contest and will begin writing twice a week beginning in early July exploring smart food shopping, and things the food industry doesn’t want you to know. She will also be taking part in a 12-week challenge to reduce her family grocery spending.

Canadians can reduce their grocery bill and eat healthier food and they do not need coupons and special deals to do it. As a dietitian, I often teach healthier eating by teaching smarter shopping, because supermarkets have perfected separating you from your money and not always in the healthiest way.

Here are 5 things you may not know about grocery stores:

1. Why produce is misted.

The first thing you see when you enter many grocery stores is a colourful wall of fresh produce, sometimes being misted gently. It screams healthy. That wholesome look has been proven to result in $5 to $8 more in sales per visit.

So next time you go into a grocery store save the produce area for last. Start by walking past the cash registers and the rows of chips, candy and treats. I guarantee you will buy less. Nothing kills spending faster than the thought that the last thing your waistline needs is $5 worth of treats.

2. Why milk is at the back.

Most quick trips to the grocery store are for bread, milk and eggs, so marketers place these items at the back of the store hoping you will walk down an aisle and make an impulse buy. Avoid the temptation — just walk around the perimeter, pick up your bread, milk and eggs and leave.

3. Always try lower shelves.

If you must walk down an aisle it is easy to buy healthier foods and save money by choosing the foods you have to bend down or stretch up to reach. The shelf space at eye level is aimed at the average Canadian woman who is 5-foot-5. Since women do most of the grocery shopping manufacturers will pay thousands of dollars per store to own that space.

Take the cracker aisle; the least healthy, most expensive crackers are generally on the eye-level shelves. Choose healthier and less expensive crackers by just bending down or stretching up to reach them.

4. Featured specials aren’t so special.

Be wary of items that are “on special” or “featured” at the front of an aisle. Notice they don’t always say “on sale,” because often times they are not. A “featured” cereal may be exactly the same price as it is in the aisle, just placed in a more prominent spot to increase sales.

5. Watch for “me too” items.

The front of the aisle is also a favourite spot for what I call “me too” items. A more expensive cereal is “accidentally” placed next to the featured cereal, and only when you get to the checkout do you find out it is more expensive. Most shoppers just keep it rather than go back to change it. Next time avoid those featured areas.

It may not seem like much but remember, “look after your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.” It is often the mundane day-to-day activities like grocery shopping where people are most easily parted from their money.

Also read:

New blogger to cut food spending 15%

Maisie Vanriel is a nutritionist with the Region of Peel in the Toronto area. She has a degree in Nutritrion and Food Science and has been a cook since the age of six.

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Ads that are clever and actually help sell the product? What a novel idea.

This weekend at the Oscars of advertising, a festival in Cannes, France, judges for the first time will give an award for effectiveness _ evaluating ads for whether they sell more computers or deodorant, not just whether they make people laugh, cry or cringe.

The award, to be handed out Saturday at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, signals a shift toward accountability, and comes at a time when advertising agencies are fighting for every dollar they can get.

Corporate marketing budgets were slashed by 8 percent during the Great Recession, and that spending still hasn’t come back, according to Zenith Optimedia, a research division of communications giant Publicis Groupe.

“You have to prove you got someone to pay attention and act, particularly in this economy,” said Chris Kempczinski, Kraft Foods’ senior vice president of marketing, who helped judge the category.

Cannes told agencies making submissions that to win in the effectiveness category, an ad had to show a proven impact on “consumer behavior, brand equity, sales, and where identifiable, profit.” Judges combed through more than 150 nomination forms audited by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

The 10 finalists, announced Friday, include four campaigns from the United States and three from the United Kingdom.

Some were obvious picks, like Apple’s Mac-versus-PC campaign, in which two men, one uptight and the other hip, role-play as the equipment. Others had subtler impact, such as one for Hasbro’s online game “Monopoly City Streets,” where players built virtual properties on Google Maps, then collected rent.

Industry insiders say the front-runner is a campaign for Old Spice men’s body wash called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” The commercials, made by the Portland office of agency Wieden+Kennedy, feature a muscular man _ shirtless more often than not _ who repeatedly tells female viewers to look over at her man _ then at him.

“Sadly, he isn’t me,” he says in the spot, “but if he stopped using lady-scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me.”

The ad created buzz for Procter & Gamble, which makes Old Spice. The first commercial in this campaign got 40 million YouTube views in a week. The spot was parodied dozens of times, including by Grover on “Sesame Street.” The star, Isaiah Mustafa, made the talk show rounds and appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Ellen.”

A response campaign consisting of more than 180 YouTube videos in which Mustafa addresses viewers’ comments directly got 5 payday loans.9 million YouTube views in its first 24 hours, more than President Barack Obama got for his election-night victory speech, Wieden+Kennedy says.

“It was a magic moment kind of thing,” says Mark Fitzloff, an executive creative director at the Portland agency.

But that won’t be enough by itself to convince the Cannes judges, who are more concerned with business results. The Old Spice spot will have to be deemed more effective than ads for Snickers and Axe shower gel, among others.

“Who cares about brand buzz?” says judge Tim Broadbent, Global Effectiveness Director at Ogilvy & Mather. “We wanted to know, could you prove to a skeptical finance director that it worked?”

Marc Pritchard, who oversees P&G’s $8.6 billion marketing budget, says yes. Before the campaign, the brand was facing huge challenges, he says. Old Spice was seen as, well, old. And most men were perfectly content to clean themselves with soap.

But that’s changed. Old Spice body wash sales grew 27 percent in the six months after the campaign launched, making it the top seller in the category.

The weeklong festival honors the most creative work from around the world in film, radio, print and outdoor advertising. Twelve of the 13 main categories will still be about presentation _ how funny, shocking or quirky the ads are.

In years past, when that was all the judges had to worry about, winners included Bud Light’s 2004 “Real Men of Genius” campaign, mocking men who commit faux pas like wearing too much cologne.

For traditional ad firms facing challenges from scrappy digital upstarts, it’s important to be able to demonstrate to clients like P&G that a full-fledged multimedia campaign featuring highly produced television commercials is a better investment than a viral video shot on a handheld camera.

After all, it can cost $2 million to produce a 30-second television commercial and an additional $10 million to buy the ad time for a national campaign in the U.S., Kraft’s Kempczinski says. Companies expect to get their money’s worth, especially because budgets are still tight.

“I think the idea that creatives should be shielded from commercial reality is insane,” Broadbent says. “Cannes is growing up.”

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Owners of cars that were new or redesigned for the 2011 model year are reporting more quality problems, partly because of glitches with the navigation screens, voice-activated systems and other technology packed into their dashboards.

J.D. Power and Associates released its annual survey of new vehicle quality Thursday. Lexus, Honda and Acura were the top performers. Dodge was the worst-performing brand.

The survey questioned 78,000 people about the problems they had with 2011 model-year vehicles in the first 90 days of ownership. Owners reported an average of 107 problems per 100 vehicles. That jumped to 122 problems for cars that were new or redesigned in 2011, up 10 percent from 2010 model-year cars and trucks.

J.D. Power said new technology was partly to blame.

“Clearly, consumers are interested in having new technology in their vehicles, but automakers must ensure that the technology is ready for prime time,” David Sargent, J.D. Power’s vice president of global research said in a statement. “There is an understandable desire to bring these technologies to market quickly, but automakers must be careful to walk before they run.”

New technology was likely responsible for Ford’s declining quality Online payday loans. The brand dropped from fifth place in 2010 to 23rd this year.

Ford launched its My Ford Touch voice-activated dashboard system on the Ford Edge and the Ford Explorer in the 2011 model year. The system allows drivers to control climate, navigation, entertainment and other features by voice. Ford said earlier this week that 73 percent of owners with My Ford Touch say they’re satisfied with it, but the company has acknowledged it’s been difficult for some buyers to use. Ford says it has made some software updates to make the system easier to use and is now offering workshops at dealerships to help owners.

Toyota saw a big leap in quality, jumping 14 spots to seventh place. Toyota’s 2010 rankings were hurt by a series of safety recalls that year. Also, Toyota introduced few new products for 2011, so it didn’t experience the glitches other manufacturers did.

Cadillac and GMC, both General Motors Co. brands, and Mazda rose into the top ten performers this year, while Hyundai and Ford Motor Co.’s Lincoln luxury brand dropped out of the top tier.

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China’s surging inflation should rise again this month after flooding damaged crops and pushed up food costs, the government said Wednesday.

Communist leaders have declared taming soaring living costs their priority this year and have been frustrated as inflation climbed steadily, hitting a 34-month high of 5.5 percent in May. Inflation is especially dangerous for the ruling party because it erodes economic gains on which the communists base their claim to power.

“The estimate is that the overall price increase in June will be higher than May,” said a statement by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Cabinet’s economic planning agency. It gave no specific June target.

In the second half of the year, “new price increases should decline and prices for the full year can be controlled,” the statement said.

The agency said floods in eastern and southern China that damaged crops were partly to blame totally free credit score. The May price rises were driven by an 11.7 percent jump in food costs.

Earlier reports by state media cited farmers who said vegetable output in some areas was down 20 percent. The official Xinhua News Agency said prices of green vegetables were up 40 percent in some areas.

Private sector analysts blame China’s inflation on the dual factors of demand fueled by higher incomes that is outstripping food supplies and the effects of a bank lending boom that helped the country ward off the 2008 global crisis.

Beijing is trying to cool an overheated economy that grew at a sizzling 9.7 percent rate in the first quarter of the year.

The government has raised interest rates four times since October and has told banks to increase their reserves to limit lending.

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Tens of thousands took to the streets of the capital on Monday, demanding that the president’s sons leave Yemen as pressure rose for the wounded leader being treated outside the country to step down.

Ahmed Saleh, 42, is a one-time heir apparent to his father, who was badly wounded in an attack earlier this month. A ruling party official had said last week the president would return home soon from medical treatment in Saudi Arabia despite reports that he was heavily burned.

In his absence, pressure has been mounting at home and abroad for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step aside after nearly 33 years in power.

His son Ahmed Saleh commands the elite Presidential Guard, the country’s best equipped and trained military unit. The force has played a key role in protecting his father’s regime since pro-democracy protests erupted in February.

The protesters on Monday called for Ahmed Saleh to leave, along with his brother Khaled, who is also an army commander. Their demonstration led to the closure of major streets in the capital. Most stores shuttered down, but there were no immediate reports of clashes with security forces.

More than 100 influential religious clerics and tribal leaders have called for the president’s ouster and elections to choose a new leader, saying he is unfit to return to his post.

Militants, meanwhile, are taking advantage of the internal strife in Yemen to overrun parts of the country.

In the southern port of Aden, government forces early Monday killed one Islamic militant and wounded two others in an exchange of fire near the offices of the local branch of the Central bank at Crater, the city’s ancient historic port district, according to security officials. No casualties were reported.

Militants also seized two towns in the southern province of Abyan late last month and attacked a town in a neighboring province last week.

Military officials, meanwhile, on Monday raised to 17 the number of militants killed in fighting in Abyan the previous day and said at least five soldiers, including two senior officers, were killed Monday when a mortar hit their position.

The security and military officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Yemen’s political turmoil began with anti-government protests in February. The country is the poorest in the Arab world, suffers numerous internal conflicts and is a potential source of instability for neighboring Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich parts of the Arabian peninsula.

For the U.S. and Europe, the main concern is the al-Qaida offshoot that has found refuge in Yemen’s mountainous hinterlands and has been behind several nearly successful strikes on U.S. targets.

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Stock futures are pointing to a lower opening as worries about Europe’s debt problems continue to fester.

Greece needs more cash to avoid defaulting on its debt, an event that would trigger losses for banks that hold Greek bonds. In order to get its next installment of bailout money, euro-area finance ministers say Greece must first further cut its deficit. Such moves have been unpopular, and the Greek government faces a Tuesday confidence vote.

Ahead of the opening bell, Dow Jones industrial average futures are down 62, or 0 loans for people with bad credit.5 percent, to 11,876. S&P 500 futures are down 6.60, or 0.5 percent, to 1,259.40. Nasdaq 100 futures are down 9.75, or 0.4 percent, to 2,180.50.

Stock futures do not always accurately predict how prices will change once the market opens.

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As its strike against local building contractors moves into its fourth week, the St. Louis Bricklayers union plans to ask a federal mediator to step in if the contentious impasse continues when the two sides reconvene on Monday.

Business Manager Don Brown of the bricklayers’ Local 1 blames the stalemate on the St. Louis Mason Contractors Association, which Brown accuses of trying to use the economic downturn to loosen the unions’ grip on local construction projects.

“It’s a tactic that hasn’t been tried here before,” Brown said. “They’re trying to get members to resign from the union. It’s telling guys, ‘You can scab on your own union.’”

Association Executive Director David Gillick denies any attempt to bust the union, citing an alliance between the bricklayers and union contractors dating back a century. At issue, Gillick said, is the association’s belief that the future success of regional construction rests on a fundamental shift in the way unions and contractors do business.

“We choose to be union contractors. They choose to be union bricklayers. But if we don’t change the path we’ve been on, the marketplace will change it for us. It won’t be our choice anymore,” said Gillick.

Len Toenjes, president of the Associated General Contractors of St. Louis, said the split between the two parties exemplified a failed reliance on short-term fixes to the complex task of positioning the region to compete in the post-recession economy.

“In order to attract development, we need to be competitive,” Toenjes said. “But striking a reasonable balance is difficult for everybody. And it’s especially hard when two (organizations) that have been doing business for 100 years are suddenly thrust into the global marketplace.”

The public bickering marks an end to a pledge by the union not to negotiate the terms of its next contract in public. Brown said he broke that agreement in response to remarks Gillick made in an interview ten days ago with Charlie Brennan on KMOX radio.

The bricklayers walked off the job when the five-year contract they agreed to in 2006 expired at midnight, June 1. Approximately 500 members of Local 1 haven’t worked since.

Another 200 have remained on projects, part of an “interim agreement” with a handful of contractors who agreed to honor the terms of a new contract retroactively, assuming a settlement can be reached.

Local 1 also hit the pavement five years ago when talks faltered in a resolution of the 2006 pact. That strike lasted only five days.

What separates the tone of the negotiations in 2006 from 2011, said Brown, is the economic climate.

Compensation and work rules are the primary negotiating points separating the two parties. The association is asking for concessions that would peel back salary and benefits by four percent. Local 1 has balked at the proposal, noting that economy-induced declines in construction already slashed the average annual bricklayer salary to $30,702 in 2010.

The hours worked by bricklayers this year have already dropped 38 percent, Brown said. To the union, taking a salary reduction in a depleted construction market makes no sense.

“Even if we agreed to (a pay cut), there still won’t be any residential work out there, because they just aren’t building homes right now, and they won’t start until the banks start releasing money,” said Brown.

The two sides also can’t get together on a rule change that would increase the allowable weight of bricks lifted by workers from 30- to 40-pound masonry blocks.

Brown, citing a study, said a bricklayer hoisting 40-pound blocks 200 times a day would lift the equivalent of five pickup trucks a week or 2 1/2 fully loaded 747 jetliners over the course of a year.

Gillick maintains the 40-pound lift is consistent with union-regulated rules in other jurisdictions, including those in Illinois.

The union and the contractors are in accord on one aspect of the strike: Without an expedited agreement, current projects throughout the region will soon suffer the consequences of the labor stoppage.

Toenjes says some construction sites are already ’seeing an impact.”

And Gillick cautions the situation is “hitting a critical point” as bricklayers are needed to complement the work of carpenters, ironworkers, sheet metal workers and other tradesmen.

“Their patience is running thin, and they won’t be able to let a project dwindle,” Gillick said of general contractors and clients in the region. “They are going to have to make a decision about whether to bring in a union guy or a non-union guy. And in some cases that is already happening.”

On Friday, Day 17 of the strike, neither Gillick nor Brown was optimistic that an agreement might be imminent.

One measure of the distance separating the two men was Gillick’s reaction when asked if he’d agree with Brown to turning negotiations over to a federal mediator.

His answer: Probably not.

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Germany softened its position on giving Greece more help by agreeing with France on Friday that private investors would be involved only on a voluntary basis, a move that boosts hopes the debt-ridden country will get another rescue package.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced they had reached common ground on the delicate topic of involving Greece’s bondholders, calming fears Germany wanted to see losses forced on private creditors.

Eurozone finance ministers earlier this week failed to reach a deal on a second set of rescue loans necessary to save Greece from defaulting on its massive debts amid divisions over the role of banks.

Merkel told reporters that Germany had agreed that “participation of the private creditors, on a voluntary basis, and I stress that,” was needed in order to swiftly secure a new rescue package for Greece and ensure the stability of the common currency.

In recent weeks, Merkel had backed her finance minister’s calls for banks and other private bondholders to give Greece an extra seven years to repay its bonds. Rating agencies as well as the European Central Bank, however, warned that such a moved would likely count as a “credit event,” a partial default by Greece that could spread panic on financial markets and hurt Greek banks.

After the meeting, Merkel indicated she now favored a so-called “Vienna-style” agreement, which had previously received support from the ECB and France.

Under such a deal, banks and other private investors would commit to maintaining their exposure to Greece by buying new bonds as old ones expire and keeping their Greek banking subsidiaries afloat. That type of bond roll-over would likely have to come with some tweaks, as market interest rates on Greek bonds are currently way above what the Greek state could afford.

“It is about a voluntary participation of the private sector, and for that the ‘Vienna-style,’ as it is called, is a good basis and I think that we can use it to move forward,” Merkel told reporters.

Sarkozy said “relatively precise principles” for the private-sector involvement would now have to be fixed, adding that “this can be put into place relatively quickly.”

Merkel also ruled out the idea of triggering anything that could be counted as a default payday loans. “We do not want that,” she stressed. “This is about a voluntary participation.”

J.P. Morgan wrote in a research note that “Germany appears to have backed down” and welcomed the move as the clearing of a key obstacle to a solution for Greece.

European finance ministers meet Sunday and Monday to discuss the crisis.

A decision to extend the maturities of Greek bonds without the creditors’ consent or a haircut on the value of the debt would have been an immediate hit to banks, with the biggest fear being that of contagion _ a difficult-to-predict chain reaction that could roil markets and make it harder for other indebted countries to cope with their debts, with the result being higher borrowing costs for eurozone countries.

The European Central Bank has been very hostile to seeing private creditors sharing a part of the burden for fear it would be considered a credit event that would erode trust in the 17-nation currency.

Merkel therefore stressed that any solution must be found in accordance with the ECB.

“This should be worked out with the European Central Bank. There may be no contradictions here,” she said.

The EU’s top financial official, Olli Rehn, indicated Thursday that Greece will likely get its next financial lifeline in July if Prime Minister George Papandreou’s government can pass new budget cuts and privatizations before the end of the month. The next euro12 billion ($17 billion) injection would keep the country afloat until September.

In Athens, Papandreou replaced his finance minister Friday as part of a broad reshuffle in an effort to calm criticism and meet the requirements to get the fresh aid injection.

The Franco-German announcement on private creditors was reminiscent of a similar bilateral deal last fall, when the two leaders set out the cornerstones of new pan-European fiscal rules and a permanent bailout mechanism.

“I believe that this meeting … again shows the power of the Franco-German couple,” Sarkozy said.

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Gabriele Steinhauser contributed to this report from Brussels.

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DES MOINES, Iowa