McDonald’s cooking fries trans-fat-free

McDonald’s said Thursday its french fries are now trans-fat-free in all its restaurants in the United States and Canada, catching it up with its fast-food rivals in that category.

CEO Jim Skinner made it official at its annual shareholders meeting at McDonald’s Corp. headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill.

McDonald’s has lagged behind other restaurant operators in switching over to a zero-trans-fat cooking oil out of worries it would compromise the taste of its trademark fries. It has been under increasing pressure from consumer advocates and some public officials to make the change, but it did so quietly.

“For a few months now, customers in our U.S. restaurants have been enjoying our fried food items, including french fries, hash browns, chicken and filet of fish, as well as our biscuits, with zero grams of trans fat per labeled serving,” Skinner said.

•Yahoo Inc. on Thursday postponed a looming showdown for control of its board, giving itself more time to prepare a defense – or negotiate a sale to Microsoft Corp. that would cause activist investor Carl Icahn to call off the mutiny.

The showdown pitting the slumping Internet pioneer’s board against Icahn and other unhappy shareholders was supposed to come to a head at the Sunnyvale-based company’s July 3 annual meeting.

But Yahoo is dragging out the drama by pushing the meeting back to an undetermined date in late July, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This is the second time Yahoo has postponed its annual meeting, usually held in May or June. The previous delay, announced in March, gave Yahoo more time to explore alternatives to Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid, which was withdrawn this month in a pricing disagreement.

•Mesa Air Group Inc. warned Thursday that it faces a cash crunch and could be forced into bankruptcy if it can’t stop Delta Air Lines Inc. from going through with a plan to cancel a regional flight contract.

The Phoenix-based airline said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the loss of $20 million in monthly revenue from the Delta deal could lead to a cascade of defaults unless Mesa can restructure its debt or raise additional capital.

Mesa’s filing said the Delta operations accounted for about 20 percent of its 2007 revenue. Losing the deal to provide Delta regional service would cost the company an estimated $960 million over the next four years.

In addition, Mesa would be on the hook for leases for 34 regional jets that it likely would be unable to redeploy to other routes.