*National Affaires:
Political Headlines:
1. Egypt opens border to sick and wounded Gazans. (The Daily Star Egypt)
Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing with the besieged Gaza Strip on Saturday to allow hundreds of Palestinians to leave the Hamas-ruled territory for advanced medical treatment.
"We will transport 550 patients in 40 Palestinian ambulances and five trucks. All of them have official medical referrals from the health ministry," said the director of Gaza emergency services, Dr Muawiya Hassanein.
The patients include 200 people wounded in Israeli military operations and 70 children under the age of 16, he said.
A senior Hamas official confirmed that the crossing would be open for three days to allow the sick to enter for treatment and those trapped on one side or the other to cross back to their place of residence.
http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=13630
2. Israel to hear Egypt on Gaza truce idea Today. (The International Herald Tribune)
Israel will host an Egyptian mediator Today to hear a proposal for a truce with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, though the Jewish state would still shun direct negotiations with the Islamist faction, Israeli officials said.
Following talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman in Cairo last month, Hamas offered a six-month halt to hostilities in Gaza if Israel were also to lift a crippling embargo on the coastal Palestinian territory.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rebuffed the initiative when it was broached, but Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai signalled possible flexibility on Sunday.
"Omar Suleiman will come, we will listen to him, we will confer, we will see what he is offering, and on that basis we will make decisions," he told Israel Radio.
"As of now, there is nothing on the table for discussion... We have no dialogue with an organisation that flies the flag of our destruction," Vilnai said in reference to Hamas's refusal to forswear violence and recognise Israel.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/05/11/africa/OUKWD-UK-PALESTINIANS-ISRAEL-EGYPT.php
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Economic Headlines:
1. Exported gas prices to be reviewed, says ministry. (The Daily Star Egypt)
The prices of exported Egyptian gas will be reviewed, including the price of gas to Israel, the Ministry of Petroleum said.
Assistant Minister for Natural Gas Ismail Karrara reportedly told the local press that the ministry was intending to renegotiate all gas deals, including the Israeli one, to bring it in line with current world prices.
The controversial agreement to export gas to Israel was signed in 2005.
Karrara also denied that Egyptian gas was already flowing to Israel, despite press reports and Israeli statements to the contrary.
The assistant minister added that a new price for the Israeli deal had not been proposed yet, but in light of the increased oil and gas prices worldwide, Egypt would be looking to renegotiate deals with, amongst others, Spain and France.
Last week Members of Parliament had sought a motion of no confidence in Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy over the Israel gas deal.
Karrara said gas was not yet being exported to Israel because the pipeline which will transport the gas was still being tested. Additionally, the project was to be postponed until a new price had been set and agreed on.
The gas is being transported via a 100-km-long underwater pipeline from Al-Arish near the troubled Egypt-Gaza border to the Israeli port of Ashkelon. The source of the gas is a field in Northern Sinai.
http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=13634
2. Finance Ministry considers removing tax exemption on state bonds. (The Daily Star Egypt)
Government bonds could lose their tax-exempt status as part of a revised budget law scheduled to go into effect this July, said Minister of Finance Youssef Boutros-Ghali at a press conference Sunday.
Treasury bills, with shorter maturity periods than bonds and which were formerly tax-free, are now taxed as part of a package of budget reforms proposed, debated and passed in a swift parliamentary session on May 5.
State bonds’ tax-free status is protected within the current budget law, he said. “Of course with the new budget law, we are going to revise this,” he said. “But again, it will be effective only when the law is up.”
Boutros-Ghali said he would recommend the new budget law drop tax exemptions on bonds so that all state financial instruments stay aligned. “I have one that is tax exempt and one that is not tax exempt,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=13632
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*Regional and International Affairs:
Political Headlines:
1. Hizbullah seizes key areas of Lebanon. (The Guardain Unlijmited)
Iranian-backed Hizbullah and its opposition allies yesterday escalated their armed takeover of key areas of Lebanon held by the western-backed government, gaining control of the Druze heartlands of Mount Lebanon and clashing with pro-government Sunni fighters in the northern port city of Tripoli.
The pro-government Druze leader, Waleed Jumblatt, who had controlled the mountain areas south-east of Beirut for generations, ordered his fighters to stand down after fierce clashes with Hizbullah militants in which both sides kidnapped and executed rival supporters.
The area was turned over to the opposition Druze leader Talal Arsalan, who asked the army to deploy. Hizbullah and Amal fighters later largely withdrew from areas occupied in west Beirut after the army pledged that Hizbullah's secure telephone network would not be dismantled.
The overturn of power in Mount Lebanon was another major blow to the government, whose key figures sat besieged in their homes by opposition gunmen after Thursday night's routing of Sunni fighters in west Beirut by Shia Hizbullah and Amal militants and allies in the Syrian Social National party.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/12/lebanon
2. Darfur rebel leader vows more attacks on Khartoum. (The Washington Post)
Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim said on Monday he would launch more attacks on Sudan's capital Khartoum until the government fell.
"This is just the start of a process and the end is the termination of this regime," Ibrahim, whose Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked Khartoum at the weekend, said in a satellite phone call. "Don't expect just one more attack."
Ibrahim said he was speaking from Omdurman, the western Khartoum suburb where the attack occurred -- just across the Nile river from the heart of the capital.
But there was no independent verification of Ibrahim's whereabouts. Omdurman was quiet overnight and government officials have said the last rebels fled the area on Sunday.
The weekend attack was the first time fighting had reached the capital in decades of conflict between the traditionally Arab-dominated central government and rebels from far-flung regions in the oil-producing nation -- Africa's biggest country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051200210.html
3. U.S. to mine N. Korean papers for answers, progress. (The Christian Science Monitor)
A US diplomat returns to Washington Monday with 18,000 pages of information supplied by North Korea after talks in Pyongyang meant to end the impasse on getting the North to give up its nuclear program.
Despite the volume of papers given to Sung Kim, a US State Department expert on Korea, analysts doubt if the documents address vital US questions on enriched uranium and export of nuclear expertise to Syria.
Still, analysts say, the hand-over marks a concrete step forward that could open the way to further progress, driven in part by North Korea's desperation over looming threats of famine and disease.
But analysts don't suggest that North Korea is ready to give up all its nuclear secrets, much less the warheads it has already produced.
"Fundamentally, I don't think the North Koreans will be very correct and honest in their declaration," says Kim Tae Woo, senior fellow of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, affiliated with the defense ministry. "It's impossible they will give up their nuclear option."
Nonetheless, says Mr. Kim, "Even though the declaration is not perfect, still they need progress." Analysts say the country's economic problems and food shortage are approaching the widespread famine and suffering of the 1990s.
The US is reportedly prepared to send North Korea 500,000 tons of foodstuffs as US technicians monitor disablement of the Yongbyon complex amid reports that the North may blow up the reactor's cooling tower as symbolic evidence that it's making good on its promise to give up the entire program.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0512/p04s04-woap.html
4. Opposition leader vows to return to Zimbabwe for runoff election. (The International Herald Tribune)
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Zimbabwean opposition, announced over the weekend that despite brutal attacks on hundreds of his party's workers and fears for his own life, he would soon return home to face President Robert Mugabe in a runoff election.
While insisting that he had been cheated out of an outright victory in the presidential balloting of March 29 and allowing that another vote may lead to increased bloodshed and a rigged result, Tsvangirai said Saturday in Pretoria that the runoff "could finally knock out the dictator for good," ending Mugabe's 28 years of control.
After more than a month's delay, the Zimbabwean election commission reported on May 2 that Tsvangirai had received 47.9 percent of the vote to 43.2 percent for Mugabe. Since neither candidate had secured a majority, a runoff was required by law within three weeks.
But no date has been set for that second election, and Tsvangirai, who contends he won 50.3 percent of the initial vote, has been in a prolonged debate with advisers about whether to take part in another round.
Hanging in the balance is the immediate future of a nation of 13 million people, most of whom are jobless. The official inflation rate is 165,000 percent and the currency is so devalued that one of the newest denominations, a $100 million bill, is barely enough for a loaf of bread.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/11/africa/zimbabwe.php
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US:
1. In congressional races, Republicans are losing ground. (The Christian Science Monitor)
The prospect of a special-election loss in yet another seat this week is fueling calls for House Republicans to radically shift course – or face losses in November that could lock their party in the minority for a generation.
Strike one: A Democrat wins the seat vacated by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R) of Illinois, a March 8 stunner.
Strike two: A Democrat wins a May 3 vote in a Louisiana congressional district that President Bush in 2004 carried by a 19-point margin.
Tuesday's runoff election in Mississippi's First Congressional District could be strike three. Democrat Travis Childers already nearly defeated Republican Greg Davis in an April 22 special election to replace GOP Rep. Roger Wicker, falling just 410 votes short of a majority. The idea that a Democrat could win the runoff has shocked national party leaders into overdrive.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0512/p01s04-uspo.html
2. For Obama and McCain, similar plans for victory. (The International Herald Tribune)
Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are already drawing up strategies for taking each other on in the general election, focusing on the same groups including independent voters and Latinos and about a dozen states where they think the contest is likely to be decided this fall, campaign aides said.
In a sign of what could be an extremely unusual fall campaign, the two sides said Saturday that they would be open to holding joint forums or unmoderated debates across the country in front of voters through the summer. Obama, campaigning in Oregon, said that the proposal, floated by McCain's advisers, was "a great idea."
Even before Obama fully wraps up the Democratic presidential nomination, he and McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, are starting to assemble teams in the key battlegrounds, develop negative advertising and engage each other in earnest on the issues and a combustible mix of other topics, including age and patriotism.
McCain, of Arizona, will spend the next week delivering a series of speeches on global warming, evidence of his intention to battle Obama for independent voters, a group the two men have laid claim to. Those voters tend to recoil from hard-edged partisan politics, and presumably would be receptive to the kind of bipartisan forum that McCain and Obama seemed open to on Saturday.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/11/america/11strategy.php
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