Big Board to Face Lawsuit on Merger
Date: 02 September 2005
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
The New York Stock Exchange must face a lawsuit that could derail its proposed takeover of Archipelago Holdings, the New York State Supreme Court ruled yesterday. Justice Charles E. Ramos rejected the Big Board's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed in May by four exchange members who said the exchange was being shortchanged by the transaction, which will transform the world's largest stock market into a for-profit public company.
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African Insurer Offers to Buy Skandia
Date: 03 September 2005
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Old Mutual, the largest insurer in Africa, has offered to buy Skandia for 44.9 billion kronor ($6.1 billion) to enter Scandinavia and increase sales in Britain. The deal would be Europe's largest insurance takeover in five years.
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Chrysler Discounts Will End in October
Date: 03 September 2005
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
The Chrysler unit of DaimlerChrysler will end employee discounts for all buyers on Oct. 3 and does not plan to match General Motors and Ford Motor by extending the deals to 2006 models, the company said yesterday. ''We're looking for September to be a very big clearance month as we end our employee pricing on Oct. 3,'' Chrysler's sales chief, Gary Dilts, said yesterday on a conference call with analysts and reporters.
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World Business Briefing | Europe: Britain: Cadbury to Sell Beverages Division
Date: 02 September 2005
By Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Cadbury Schweppes, the world's third-largest maker of soft drinks, plans to sell its European beverages unit and use the proceeds to reduce about £4.3 billion ($7.8 billion) of debt. The business, which makes Orangina and Schweppes and accounts for 10 percent of sales, may fetch at least £1 billion, according to Richard Workman, an Oriel Securities analyst in London. The Goldman Sachs Group is advising the London-based Cadbury, a company spokeswoman, Katie Macdonald-Smith, said. Cadbury's chief executive, Todd Stitzer, is focusing on faster-growing businesses, like United States beverages.
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Newsday Cuts News Staff in New York
Date: 02 September 2005
By Katharine Q. Seelye
Katharine Seelye
Nearly three decades after its first foray into the New York City newspaper market, Newsday is further retreating to its home base of Long Island by shrinking its presence in Manhattan and cutting its city staff by 45 editorial employees. ''The decision to reduce our city staff was wrenching,'' John Mancini, the paper's editor, said yesterday in a memo. ''But the cold, hard truth is that we can no longer support the investment necessary to cover the city as ambitiously as we do today.''
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NEWS SUMMARY
Date: 03 September 2005
INTERNATIONAL A2-9 Iran's Nuclear Plan Remains Puzzle, U.N. Says Despite an intense, two-and-a-half year investigation, critical elements of Iran's nuclear program remain shrouded in mystery, according to a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency. A3 China Prodded on Civil Rights China must tie its economic growth to faster improvements in the legal and political rights of its citizens, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights said. A3 Israel Freezes Housing Plan Israel has bowed to the United States and frozen a much-criticized plan to add 3,500 housing units near a large West Bank settlement, according to Ehud Olmert, Israel's deputy prime minister and a close ally of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. A4 Muslim Leaders React to Video British Muslim leaders distanced themselves from a videotape claiming to show one of the London bombers pledging allegiance to Osama bin Laden before he killed six other people aboard a subway train on July 7. The tape raised concern among some European counterterrorism experts that it might contain coded messages exhorting terror cells in Europe to strike. A6 2 Sunni Mosques Attacked Gunmen opened fire on worshipers at two Sunni mosques in southern Iraq, killing one and wounding four, as imams across the country devoted their weekly sermons to the nearly 1,000 victims of Wednesday's deadly stampede in Baghdad. A8 Saboteurs shut down Iraqi crude oil exports to Turkey for virtually all of the past year, but the oil is flowing again after Iraq's government put in place elaborate new security measures and decided to move its product in a clandestine operation. A8 NATIONAL A11-19; 22 In New Orleans, Aid ArrivesAnd Evacuation Continues Military vehicles bearing food and supplies sloshed into the drenched heart of New Orleans, while commercial and cargo planes arrived to lift beleaguered hurricane survivors from the depths of horror. A1 Members of Congress from both parties acknowledged that the federal response to Hurricane Katrina had fallen far short and promised hearings into what had gone wrong. A14 President Bush, facing searing criticism over the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, toured New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in his first on-the-ground look at the desperation that has gripped the region for the last four days. A1 Education Secretary Margaret Spellings telephoned the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama state school superintendents and other top Gulf Coast educators, offering broad federal assistance to stricken schools and universities. A19 A Conviction in Maryland Arson A federal jury convicted a 21-year-old man Friday of being the ringleader behind fires that caused $10 million in damage, to a new subdivision in southern Maryland, the costliest residential arson in state history. A11 New Group Presses Wal-Mart Having failed to unionize any Wal-Marts, American labor unions have helped form a new and unusual type of workers' association to press Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to improve its wages and working conditions. A11 Muslims Meet With Bush Aide American Muslims met with Under Secretary of State Karen P. Hughes at an Islamic convention to offer advice as she began an initiative to improve the flagging image of the United States among Muslims overseas. A11 Beliefs A12 NEW YORK/REGION B1-5 Judge's Ruling Ends Rowland Ethics Probe A Connecticut judge rejected the chief state's attorney's request to issue an arrest warrant for former Gov. John G. Rowland, left, ending what would have been the state's first criminal prosecution for a violation of its ethics code. B1 Storm Affects Mayoral Race With just 10 days before the Democratic primary, coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is overwhelming newspapers and the local television and radio newscasts, robbing mayoral candidates of precious air time and column inches that their campaigns had been counting on to make their cases. B1 Clintons Campaign Together Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton brought her husband along to the New York State Fair in Syracuse, drawing a sharp contrast with her likely Republican rival in next year's Senate race, Jeanine F. Pirro, who has mostly kept her scandal-plagued husband out of public view since announcing her candidacy. B4 SPORTSSATURDAY D1-7 ARTS B7-15 OBITUARIES B16 Nell I. Mondy A Cornell biochemist who extolled the nutritional benefits of the potato to consumers worldwide and pushed hard to dispel its reputation as a weighty clump of empty calories, he was 83. B16 BUSINESS DAY C1-13 Sporadic Gas Shortages Less than a week after Hurricane Katrina severely disrupted energy supplies, spot gasoline shortages were reported at service stations nationally. A1 A catastrophe modeling firm offered the first estimate of economic losses from Hurricane Katrina, it is $100 billion. C1 With New Orleans closed to tourists for at least the rest of this year, according to the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau, several hundred groups are scrambling to find other cities for their conventions. C1 Job Growth Remains Strong The nation's pace of job creation remained strong in the weeks before Hurricane Katrina, as the unemployment rate edged down to 4.9 percent in August, the government reported. C1 Business Digest C2 EDITORIAL A20-21 Editorials: Katrina's assault on Washington; a Democratic candidate for mayor; the bra wars. Columns: Maureen Dowd, John Tierney. Bridge B8 TV Listings B15 Crossword B12 Weather C14
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News Summary
Date: 02 September 2005
INTERNATIONAL A3-10 Tape by Al Qaeda PraisesJuly London Bombings Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant praised the July 7 London bombings in a tape that also featured a statement from a man who closely resembled one of the suspected bombers. If proven authentic, the tape would either be evidence of a link between Al Qaeda and the bombings, or an attempt by the group to associate itself with the attack after the fact. A3 Iraq Stampede Victims Buried Thousands of people attended funerals for the victims of a stampede during a Shiite procession, while some families continued searching for relatives in hospitals and morgues in the wake of the worst one-day death toll Iraq has endured in years. A10 Kurd Claims Charter as Victory A Kurdish leader in Iraq and a former warlord said he relished the victories his people won in the writing of the new Iraqi constitution, which includes powers of autonomy that approach those of a sovereign state. A1 Israel and Pakistan Meet The foreign ministers of Israel and Pakistan met publicly for the first time, a diplomatic breakthrough brokered by Turkey that appeared to be the first payoff for the Israeli pullout from the occupied Gaza Strip. A6 4 Charged in Hariri Killing A Lebanese prosecutor charged three former security officials and a sitting security chief with murder in the killing of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, the most significant step yet in the investigation of the Feb. 14 bombing. A5 Election Gains for Musharraf Allies of Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, scored gains in the first rounds of local government elections, a development likely to further consolidate General Musharraf's grip on power ahead of the general elections, political analysts in Pakistan say. A8 Would-Be Tory Chief on Attack Kenneth Clarke, a former minister of health of Britain who is running for leader of the Conservative Party, opened his bid for the party leadership with an attack on the Iraq policies of Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush. A4 Old Conflict Still Rages in India A law that gives Indian troops extraordinary powers to quash ethnic insurgencies in the northeast part of the country has inflamed a conflict that has been grinding on since India's independence and his killed roughly 200 people a year. A8 OBITUARIES B7 Sir Joseph Rotblat A physicist who was the only scientist to quit working on development of the atomic bomb for moral reasons, and who won the Nobel Peace Prize a half-century later for his worldwide campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons, he was 96. B7 NATIONAL A12-21 New Orleans Mayor Sends An SOS as Chaos Widens Despair, privation and violent lawlessness grew so extreme in New Orleans that the flooded city's mayor issued a ''desperate SOS'' and other local officials, describing the security situation as horrific, lambasted the federal government for responding too slowly to the disaster. A1 Lines for gas along the devastated Gulf Coast of Mississippi were several miles long, and food, water and ice did not arrive as promised. For storm survivors, life has become a giant scavenger hunt for the most basic necessities. A1 For many African-American leaders, there is a growing outrage that many of those still stuck at the center of the tragedy were those who for generations had been pushed to society's margins. A1 A political furor intensified over President Bush's handling of the hurricane as Democrats, local officials and members of a bewildered public accused the president of responding to the storm too slowly. A16 As residents in Gulfport, Miss., struggle with the immensity of the destruction, the entire hurricane-ravaged region has been declared a federal health emergency. Among the worries is 40 tons of chicken and a million pounds of frozen uncooked shrimp that had been awaiting distribution on the waterfront when the storm hit and is now strewn all over the west side of Gulfport. A18 F.B.I. Abandons Disputed Test F.B.I. scientists said that they were abandoning a bullet-matching technique that had been used in thousands of investigations because it had been misused in courts. A12 Liberal Fears on Court Fight As liberal groups scramble to rally grass-roots supporters in the days before the confirmation hearings for President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Judge John. G. Roberts Jr., some opposition groups worried that their efforts had failed to pierce the din of concerns about rising gasoline prices, casualties in Iraq, and, most recently, the hurricane devastation in New Orleans. A14 Reports on 9/11 Ringleader A Defense Department inquiry has found three more people who recall seeing an intelligence briefing slide that identified the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks a year before the hijackings and terrorist strikes, Pentagon and military officials said. A14 Muslim Leaders Oppose Terror Nearly four years after the 9/11 attacks, American Muslim leaders are campaigning to persuade American Muslims -- especially the young -- to beware of preachers peddling extremism and terrorism. A12 EDUCATION Chicago Victory on School Law Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced that she would allow the Chicago Public Schools to run federally financed tutoring programs for students at low-performing schools, despite Chicago's failure to meet academic goals. A12 NEW YORK/REGION B1-6 Theater to Be RenamedFor a Dying Playwright August Wilson, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama, will receive one of the highest honors in American theater when a Broadway theater is renamed for him. But he might never see his name on the marquee: he has terminal liver cancer. B1 Fire Dept. Defends Hires The New York Fire Department acknowledged that it has been making increasing use of hiring agreements that allow firefighters with minor drug and alcohol convictions to join the ranks so long as they agree to random substance abuse tests. B1 Formal Complaint on Corzine The Senate Ethics Committee received a formal complaint that Senator Jon S. Corzine had violated Congressional financial disclosure rules by failing to report that he had given a $470,000 mortgage to the head of a major state employees union. He was dating the union leader at the time. B4 ESCAPES F1-10 WEEKEND E1-24;E25-32 SPORTSFRIDAY D1-7 Age Is Served, for Today Amid a rising crop of Eastern European players and an imminent clash of eras, the ''old'' generation of women tennis stars held steady. Lindsay Davenport, 29, the No.1 player in the world today, cruised to a 6-1, 6-1 victory over a 19-year-old qualifier from France, Pauline Parmentier, above, in the second round of the United States Open. D3 BUSINESS DAY C1-14 Gas Woes in Katrina's Wake The Gulf of Mexico, the nation's largest energy center, was still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, with gasoline supplies crippled in some parts of the country. In response to the turmoil, the government stepped up its release of strategic oil stocks to refiners. C1 Across the country, dealers posted eye-popping gasoline prices, reflecting panic not seen since the days immediately after Sept. 11, 2001. C1 Soaring gasoline prices and fears over supplies may spell trouble for the tourism and airline industries. C1 Bayou Charged With Fraud Federal prosecutors sued Bayou, accusing the hedge fund company and securities firm run by Samuel Israel III of directing a years-long fraud that attracted more than $300 million from investors. C1 Banker's Wife Found Guilty A jury in Hong Kong found Nancy Ann Kissel guilty in the murder of her husband, Robert Peter Kissel, a senior Merrill Lynch banker, in a case that had transfixed investment bankers and captivated expatriates across Asia. C6 Business Digest C2 EDITORIAL A22-23 Editorials: The man-made disaster; Baghdad and Philadelphia; tongue-tied on bilingual education. Column: Paul Krugman. Crossword E17 TV Listings E24 Weather D8
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Hurricane News Coverage Affects Mayoral Primary
Date: 03 September 2005
By Jim Rutenbergand Diane Cardwell
Jim Diane
With just 10 days before the Democratic primary, there is no more important time than now for the candidates to get their faces and platforms out in front of voters. But the havoc in New Orleans is seriously affecting their plans on what is effectively the last full weekend of trying to reach voters before the Sept. 13 primary. None of the candidates, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, plan to campaign or advertise on Sept. 11, which is a Sunday.
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Cameras Captured a Disaster but Now Focus on Suffering
Date: 02 September 2005
By Alessandra Stanley
Alessandra Stanley
Television coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath appraised (M)
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