*National Affaires
Economic Headlines:
1. Vodafone to distribute iPhones in Egypt. (The Daily Star Egypt)
British mobile phone giant Vodafone announced Tuesday that it will distribute Apple’s wildly popular iPhone in 10 new countries including Australia, India and South Africa and Egypt.
Vodafone said in a statement that under its accord with Apple, it will also get the right to sell iPhones in the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and Turkey.
The phones that it sells will be intended to work on the Vodafone network.
Launched one year ago, officially the iPhone is only available in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland and Austria.
http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=13527
2. Egypt cancels some free-zone privileges. (The Egyptian Gazette)
The Egyptian Government has abolished the privileges of energy-intensive companies in free zones as part of a budget amendment approved by Parliament on Monday, Minister of Investment Mahmoud Mohieddin said.
Mohieddin told Reuters in an interview Monday night the move would affect companies in five industries, including steel, fertilizers, petrochemicals, natural gas liquefaction and natural gas transport." All tax and custom exemptions for these companies, along with all other free-zone privileges, will be cancelled immediately," he said. The decision would apply to about 39 companies, he added. "We will keep for three years the custom exemption only on capital goods and machines for companies which are still being set up," he said. The move will reduce the number of companies with free-zone privileges in Egypt to 1,104, with a work force of 233,000.A statement from the ruling National Democratic Party said on Monday that energy-intensive companies have made higher profits because of increases in international prices of oil and gas, which they buy in Egypt with subsidized prices." They no longer need the tax and custom privileges provided by free zones ... so society is entitled to take them back," it said."
http://www.egyptiangazette.net.eg/
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*Regional and International Affairs
Political Headlines:
1. Anti-government protesters paralyze Beirut. (The Washington Post)
Supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah-led opposition blocked main roads in Beirut with burning barricades on Wednesday, paralyzing the city and deepening a political conflict with the U.S.-backed government.
The opposition supporters set cars and tires ablaze to block the main road to Beirut's international airport, where air traffic was suspended because of a strike by staff taking part in a labor union protest to demand higher wages.
The opposition has backed the strike. Activists loyal to Hezbollah, a political group with a guerrilla army and backing from Iran and Syria, also blocked routes to Beirut's main commercial district.
The scenes were reminiscent of an anti-government protest in 2007 that led to some of Lebanon's worst internal strife since its 1975-90 civil war. A stun grenade exploded in Beirut, slightly wounding one person, a security source said.
In Lebanon's deepest political crisis since the civil war, Hezbollah has been leading a campaign against Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government since November 2006. The standoff has left Lebanon without a president for five months.
Hezbollah, Lebanon's most powerful Shi'ite faction, and its allies in the opposition have deemed Siniora's cabinet illegitimate since all of its Shi'ite Muslim ministers resigned in 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/07/AR2008050700289.html
2. Iraq readies arms case against Iran. (The Washington Times)
Iraq's ambassador to the U.S. said yesterday that a high-level committee will investigate Iran's role in arms trafficking across his country's borders, after the discovery of large caches of weapons and explosive devices recently manufactured in Iran.
"It's a bit disingenuous to believe such quantities of up-to-date weapons manufactured this year, last year, can flow into the country without the knowledge of the Iranian government," Ambassador Samir Sumaida'ie told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.
"However, I understand that the prime minister ordered the formation of the committee only in the last 48 hours to put facts together, to establish where the connection is between these weapons and evidence of training so that we can basically confront our Iranian neighbors," he said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080507/FOREIGN/530929735/1003
3. Hard Tasks Lie Ahead for Protégé in Russia. (The New York Times)
When Dmitri A. Medvedev, Russia’s president-elect, utters the oath of office on Wednesday in the splendor of St. Andrew’s Hall, the ceremonies will mix Soviet nostalgia, czarist symbols and a Russian strut reflecting a renewed national pride credited to eight years of President Vladimir V. Putin’s rule.
The Kremlin then plans to crown the occasion on Friday with a triumphant military parade in Red Square of a sort not seen since the cold war years, complete with flyovers of strategic bombers and rumbling columns of tanks.
Mr. Medvedev, 42, will be Russia’s third post-Soviet president and newest source of speculation. He has presented a puzzling self-portrait, at times suggesting that major changes are necessary including attacking the country’s manifest corruption and reducing the bloat of its bureaucracy and at other times insisting that he will broadly follow the path chosen by Mr. Putin, his sponsor.
There is no doubt, however, that he will be taking charge of a portfolio and a position more difficult than the celebrations will suggest.
The policy challenges are unenviable, even if Russia has recovered from its severely weakened state. Mr. Medvedev faces steeply rising inflation, an outsize bureaucracy, pervasive corruption, a weak judicial system and a population decline fueled by a low birthrate, substandard health care and poor public health.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/world/europe/07moscow.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
4. Months after election violence, Kenya helps refugees return home. (The International Herald Tribune)
The bus was full. Expectant faces pressed against the windows. Soldiers stood guard with their guns.
It was time to go home.
"I'm ready," said Dominick Ngigi, 80, a farmer, who was stoically clutching a plastic bag with no more than a sweater and a flashlight in it.
For the first time since the disputed Kenyan election erupted in crisis in December, the government has started a large-scale operation to resettle thousands of people violently driven off their land.
Many have been living in squalid, wet camps that turned into breeding grounds for disease, crime, idleness and frustration. They have been languishing for more than four months, since the disputed election set off a wave of ethnic and political bloodshed that pitted neighbor against neighbor and drove more than 600,000 people from their homes.
More than 1,000 people were killed, and Kenya, once celebrated for its stability and relative harmony in a tumultuous region, ripped apart along ethnic lines.
Operation Rudi Nyumbani (Operation Return Home), which began in full Monday, was all about stitching the country back together again.
Packed buses with heavily armed soldiers in tow rumbled across a scarred landscape, past homes with roofs burned off, past trees downed in January to block roads, past the very spots where farmers, laborers, mothers and children were killed by machetes, arrows and fire.
The buses disgorged the occupants into familiar settings, but now with a strange dynamic: new arrivals in their old homes.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/06/africa/kenya.php
5. Ethiopian soldiers accused of war crimes in Somalia. (The International Herald Tribune)
Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women.
In a new report, the human rights group, which is based in London, detailed chilling witness accounts of indiscriminate killings in Somalia and called on the international community to stop the bloodshed. The Ethiopian government said the report was unbalanced and "categorically wrong."
Amnesty said testimony it received suggested that all parties to the conflict had committed war crimes. But it cited Ethiopian troops, in the country to back Somalia's UN-sponsored government, for some of the worst violations.
The shaky transitional government invited Ethiopian forces into the country to help it battle Islamic insurgents. Somalia has been torn apart by years of violence between the militias of rival clan warlords.
The rights group said it had scores of reports of killings by Ethiopian troops. In one case, "a young child's throat was slit by Ethiopian soldiers in front of the child's mother," the report says.
The Ethiopian information minister, Berhanu Hailu, said the report was "totally unfounded."
"Normally, when they report, they do not balance it out. They have to go and see the reality for themselves. They shouldn't report from abroad saying this is happening," he said in Addis Ababa.
Amnesty said about 6,000 civilians had been reported killed and more than 600,000 had been forced to flee their homes in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, last year.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/06/africa/somalia.php
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US:
1. McCain assures conservatives of his stance on judges. (The International Herald Tribune)
Senator John McCain reached out to conservatives on Tuesday by vowing to appoint judges he characterized as strictly faithful to the Constitution and who did not engage in what McCain condemned as "the common and systemic abuse of our federal courts."
The issue is of enormous importance to conservatives, who have rallied against what they call activist judges who they say decide cases based on their personal beliefs rather than the law. McCain has faced suspicions among conservatives about his intentions on the judicial front, and although he regularly says in his campaign appearances that he would appoint only judges who "strictly interpret" the Constitution, he has not given a lengthy speech on the subject until now.
"With a presumption that would have amazed the framers of our Constitution, and legal reasoning that would have mystified them, federal judges today issue rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically," McCain said before a large crowd of students assembled in Wait Chapel at Wake Forest University here. "Assured of lifetime tenures, these judges show little regard for the authority of the president, the Congress and the states. They display even less interest in the will of the people."
McCain's speech was a clear embrace of the judicial philosophy of President George W. Bush and other recent Republican presidents who sought judges who generally construed laws as narrowly as possible, who for the most part favored government authority in criminal matters and who were opposed to the expansion of abortion rights.
McCain, who since the presidency of Ronald Reagan has been a loyal soldier but not a major player in the effort to put more conservatives on the federal courts, cited Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito Jr. as models of the kind of jurists he would nominate. He sharply criticized his Democratic competitors, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, for voting against their nominations.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/07/america/07mccain.php
2. Obama Wins North Carolina Decisively; Clinton Takes Indiana by Slim Margin. (The New York Times)
Senator Barack Obama won a commanding victory in the North Carolina primary on Tuesday and lost narrowly to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Indiana, an outcome that injected a boost of momentum to Mr. Obama’s candidacy as the Democratic nominating contest entered its final month.
The results from the two primaries, the largest remaining Democratic ones, assured that Mr. Obama would widen his lead in pledged delegates over Mrs. Clinton, providing him with new ammunition as he seeks to persuade Democratic leaders to coalesce around his campaign. He also increased his lead in the popular vote in winning North Carolina by more than 200,000 votes.
“Don’t ever forget that we have a choice in this country,” Mr. Obama said in an address in Raleigh, N.C., that carried the unity themes of a convention speech. “We can choose not to be divided; that we can choose not to be afraid; that we can still choose this moment to finally come together and solve the problems we’ve talked about all those other years in all those other elections.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/us/politics/07elect.html?ref=us