Here's some actual news. A tipster writes:

We hear axes are falling at iVillage, the women's-oriented media company bought by NBC Universal two years ago for $600 million. According to a source, the company "just cut about 20 positions, some of them occupied. Maybe a dozen people got the axe." Adding insult to injury, the poor employees left standing are being relocated from Midtown to the CNBC campus in Englewood Cliffs by the end of the month. iVillage editorial director Tina Gaudoin left the UK's version of the site to join the Wall Street Journal in January. Let us know if you hear more.

Some circle the wagons against interlopers. Yahoo, instead, is swinging the ax. Planned layoffs have started and are hitting high in the ranks. One of the victims, we're told, is Todd Daum, the Burbank-based VP of marketing for Yahoo's search-ads business. A few years ago, Daum championed a contest with Richard Branson to give away Yahoo ads. Too bad for him: It turns out you can't even give Yahoo's search ads away. Any other VPs laid off? Send in their names.

The Polaroid camera is dead. Not the company and not all its cameras, but the instant-film cameras you remember from you childhood are no longer under production. The Boston Globe reports Polaroid also canned about 150 employees and shuttering its Massachusetts-based plants. How are we to shake it, shake it, shake it now? (Photo by chad™)

New Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes just held his first earnings call since taking over the top spot back in January. And to celebrate? Layoffs! Time Warner, the parent of AOL, Time Inc., HBO, and Warner Bros., among others, will cut 75 today from its corporate offices — about 20 percent of the headquarters staff. Still, 75 is plenty enough for chuckles. [AdAge]

In his latest companywide memo, copied below, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang wants to "make sure you all realize how essential you are to yahoo!s success." And by "you all" he means all but the 1,000 or so he planned to "reallocate" in the next few months. But maybe it would have been awkward to take those slotted for firing off the email list?

RealNetworks laid off a dozen pepole from its online music service, Rhapsody, the company says, a move prompted by the merger of Rhapsody with MTV's Urge. RealNetworks cut 100 employees in December. [SFWeekly]

Microsoft may have just salvaged your stock options, Yahoos, but you're not out of the woods yet. Layoffs are still coming. It just might not Decker and Yang dropping the ax. But don't worry! Your employer has advice for you Check out "Bullet-Proof Yourself Against a Layoff" by Caroline Levchuck for Yahoo HotJobs, here condensed into a more digestible but still bitter pill.

Yahoo will fire 1,000 employees soon, mostly from its Yahoo Network Division and offices in Europe, according to rumors. Meanwhile, CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker said on this week's earnings call that investors and employees need to be patient. (Haven't they already?) By 2009 Yahoo's display advertising business will have finally turned around. But some are sick of waiting. Yang has been with the company from the start; Decker joined Yahoo as CFO in 2000. The two have had their chance, skeptics say. In this Valleywag poll, tell us: Is it time for this pair to go?

Poor earnings and looming layoffs mean there are daggers in Yahoos' smiles. The latest potshot comes from a tipster taking aim at Yahoo News GM Amy Iorio. Word is, Iorio loves Yahoo for its family environment. You know, her family. Our tipster offers a litany of accusations of how Iorio has taken nepotism too far in troubled times.

Yahoo cuts will include "a few hundred" from the Yahoo Network Division, the umbrella for Yahoo's sprawling content operations, a new tipster tells us. Combined with deep cuts from Yahoo Germany, France, Italy and Spain, the layoffs should total at least as many as the 1,000 doomed employees CEO Jerry Yang set aside for "reallocation" during yesterday's earnings call. The details seem to confirm older rumors that the layoffs would include featured bloggers from Network Division sites such as Finance and Food.

"Reduced," "reallocated," "redeployed," "realigned." Can Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang not find the words to describe Yahoo's anticipated 1,000 layoffs? Here's a suggestion: The Yahoos who lose their jobs should use Yahoo Live, the Web portal's new employees-only lifecasting service, to record their meetings with HR as they receive the pink slips. That could be almost as entertaining as AOL France's poignant farewell.

Yahoo! Food helps you adjust to the coming recession with this "dressed up" Ramen "recipe," a truly sad collection of words to end up in a sentence together. Next week: how to make a rucksack and the fine art of pencil sales! This will certainly come in handy for anywhere from hundreds to thousands of people in the next couple weeks. [Yahoo]

A tipster tells us Yahoo will hold an all hands today at 2 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday at 9:30 a.m.. The company is expected to announce layoffs of around 1,500 to 2,500 employees. Sources have told us that Yahoo HR boss Libby Sartain will be among those cut. So will some featured bloggers and the entire Brand Universe team, formerly under Vince Broady. But that won't begin to cover the numbers being discussed. Who else is on the block? Let us know. The official all-hands announcement, after the jump.

Yahoo is now considering drastic layoffs, in the range of 1,500-2,500 heads — not the mere "hundreds" suggested by the New York Times after the first rumors of layoffs emerged. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Yahoo China today began job cuts that could close some of its new media units, according to RedLine China. The news comes as Alibaba Group, the owner of Yahoo China, announced it would start new search and advertising groups. What's wrong with Yahoo's efforts in those areas? Yahoo China is not a Yahoo subsidiary; Yahoo swapped its Chinese unit for a stake in Alibaba. These cutbacks seem unrelated to Yahoo's pending layoffs — but it's telling that Alibaba thinks it's better off with homegrown efforts than the businesses it inherited from Yahoo.

Laid off? Here's the good news. You have plenty of time to read Robert Scoble's 1,416-word post on what to do. But if your just looking for your morning hit of schadenfreude, well, then you'll need our 100-word version.

A source close to the company tells us Yahoo has dismissed the entire Brand Universe team that reported to the already-booted Vince Broady. "Guess that was a real stinker, wasn't it?" our source notes. A separate source with inside knowledge has other fresh details on the impending Yahoo layoffs.

Desperate to deflect attention from impending layoffs, Yahoo's top management has put pressure on the ranks to deliver some splashy product launches and distract the media. Gullible as the tech press corp is, they'll likely fall for it. A top candidate: Fire Eagle, Yahoo Brickhouse's long-delayed location-data tool. Brickhouse chief Salim Ismail, embarrassingly, has been talking up the project long before it was actually ready; he last promised to deliver it by the end of November.

Yahoo's pending plans for layoffs have curious timing. You see, a number of Yahoos were in the job market already. A fair number of them have restricted-stock grants which vest in February, removing a last reason to stay. And yet managers are encouraging employees who were ready to quit to stay on through the layoffs. Why?