Conference Offers Tryout for Hopefuls

 

The Faith and Freedom Coalition’s two-day conference showed that the religious right still plays a major role in the nominating process, even if it is less organized than during the Christian Coalition’s heyday.

The gathering was a tryout for candidates hoping to fill a void left by former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, an ordained Baptist minister who won the 2008 Iowa caucus but is not running for the 2012 Republican nomination.

Most candidates spent more time on money issues than on spiritual matters on the opening day. But they generally portrayed the federal debt and health care policies as moral concerns. They also paid tribute to religious conservatives who often place social issues ahead of concerns about taxes and spending.

“I do not believe the Republican Party should focus solely on our economic life to the neglect of our human life,” Jon M. Huntsman Jr. told the audience of several hundred after citing antiabortion laws he signed when governor of Utah.

The Republican contenders who seem to be making the most direct appeals to evangelical voters are Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota; Tim Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota; Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania; and Newt Gingrich of Georgia, a former House speaker, who declined an invitation to speak.

Mr. Pawlenty opened and closed his remarks with biblical quotes. He said his top four “common-sense principles” for the nation were to turn toward God, protect the unborn, support traditional marriage and keep Americans secure.

Ms. Bachmann, inching toward a presidential bid, reminded the audience that she home-schooled her five children and ended with a prayer that asked a blessing for President Obama, whom she had sharply criticized moments earlier.

Mitt Romney may have the toughest task in wooing religious conservatives. As governor of Massachusetts, he supported legalized abortion, gay rights and gun control, but he has reversed his stands. He cited “our belief in the sanctity of human life” and said marriage should apply to “one man and one woman.”

Representative Ron Paul of Texas mixed quotes from the Bible with his familiar libertarian proposals, like returning to the gold standard.

All these lines got applause. Still, a sense of unease sometimes hung over the event. Organizers acknowledged that some religious conservatives were not happy with the current emphasis on economic matters. The audience members sat silently when Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi urged them to embrace the eventual nominee. “Purity is the enemy of victory,” said Mr. Barbour, who has decided against his own presidential bid.

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BP Offers Plan to Salvage Its Swap Deal With Rosneft

BP said it would agree to hand over a potentially lucrative exploration deal in the Arctic to its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, in exchange for completing the share-swap, a move that would comply with a arbitration panel ruling released Friday. Any changes are subject to approval by Rosneft, which did not return calls seeking comment.

BP hopes the concession will end a three-month dispute with the Russian billionaires who are its partners in TNK-BP and who had opposed the Rosneft deal.

“This is a step in the right direction,” a spokesman for BP in London, Robert Wine, said. “It shows that there is an element of agreement.” BP’s shares rose 2.5 percent on Friday in London.

The partners had blocked BP’s $7.8 billion agreement with Rosneft, which included access to exploration blocks in Russia’s Arctic that might hold billions of barrels of oil. The partners argued that the deal breached their shareholder agreement with BP and demanded to be part of any new business in Russia.

BP’s deal with Rosneft initially lifted its shares because it promised to strengthen the British oil company’s position in the world’s biggest oil-producing country. It also guaranteed access to potential new oil reserves at a time of heightened competition and growing demand for oil. Handing the exploration deal to its joint venture would make it less profitable for BP.

The arrangement would cede some operational control over the venture in the Arctic Ocean to BP’s litigious Russian partners, even as BP contributed the technology to make it possible. The share-swap would still strengthen BP’s presence in Russia and could ease its participation in future oil deals.

It also highlights the significance of access to a site off Russia’s northern coast, given the lawsuits and environmental reviews stalling drilling on the other side of the Arctic Ocean in Alaska and Canada.

BP’s chief executive, Robert W. Dudley, came under pressure from some investors over the last month to find a solution to the standoff with the TNK-BP partners. The dispute had angered some investors, who had accused Mr. Dudley of misreading Russian politics and of failing to steer BP clear of difficulties so shortly after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company now has to seek approval from Rosneft to make the changes, which would include putting any shares that are part of the share swap in a trust. In that case, neither company would have any direct voting rights in the other. BP and Rosneft would also have no seats on each others’ boards.

Stan Polovets, chief executive of AAR, a firm that oversees the Russian partners’ holdings in TNK-BP, said his group welcomed Friday’s development. “We see the Arctic transaction with Rosneft as a great opportunity for TNK-BP and for Russia which we would like to succeed.”

He added that the “agreement provides a good way forward for achieving these priorities and opens the way to bring BP’s valuable expertise and technology to offshore exploration in Russia.”

BP’s Russian partners previously rejected cash offers from the company and said that its agreement with BP gave TNK-BP exclusive rights to pursue opportunities in Russia.

Despite the disagreements with its partners, TNK-BP remains a financial success for BP. After contributing about $6 billion in cash and assets to the founding of the TNK-BP venture in 2003, BP has since then made $14.3 billion in dividends from it, and it still retains 50 percent of the assets. The venture accounts for a quarter of BP’s production.

Andrew Kramer contributed reporting from Yekaterinburg, Russia.

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President of Yemen Offers to Resign for Immunity

  Police officers were confronted by a large crowd of antigovernment demonstrators in the Yemeni city of Taiz on Friday.

CAIRO — Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, agreed on Saturday to leave power after 32 years of autocratic rule, according to a top Yemeni official, but only if the opposition agrees to a list of conditions, including that he and his family be granted immunity.

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President Ali Abdullah Saleh at a pro-government rally in Sana on Saturday.

Opposition leaders said they were prepared to accept most of the terms of the deal, which both they and a Yemeni official said would establish a coalition government with members of the opposition and ruling party. The president would turn over authority to the current vice president 30 days after a formal agreement was signed.

But the opposition said it could not guarantee at least one of Mr. Saleh’s demands — that demonstrations be halted — and opposition members said they would quickly present a counteroffer to the president. The opposition said it had little influence with the tens of thousands of mainly young protesters who have been demanding Mr. Saleh’s departure.

Even if the opposition and the government agree to a deal, it is unclear if the demonstrators will go along, especially after pro-government snipers brutally crushed a protest on March 18, killing 52.

Mr. Saleh is a wily political survivor, and it was unclear whether his offer was a real attempt to calm the political turmoil and growing demonstrations that have rocked his country for weeks or a way to shift blame for a stalemate to the opposition. His offer follows days of unrelenting pressure — from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring states fearful of more instability in the region — for him to step aside.

A Yemeni official portrayed the deal as one devised by the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional group dominated by Saudi Arabia. But a member of the council said it had presented only a framework for a political solution, not a plan with such specifics.

“The most important thing in the initiative to all parties, including Saleh himself, is for a smooth and peaceful transition of authority,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the negotiations. “Now the devil is in the details. This is up to them to decide, not up to us.”

Mr. Saleh has been an important ally of the United States in its efforts to stamp out Al Qaeda, which has an active branch in the country. The relationship became especially crucial to the United States after attempted terrorist attacks were linked to the Qaeda branch there. That included an attempt to bring down an airliner bound for the United States on Christmas Day 2009.

But in recent weeks, American officials began joining calls for Mr. Saleh to step down; they said the White House had determined that he would not make the changes necessary to bring stability to the country. American officials were also increasingly worried that the stalemate and continued violence there were allowing Qaeda members to become even more entrenched.

The State Department reacted somewhat cautiously Saturday. Acting Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said officials had seen news reports about President Saleh’s apparent acceptance of an agreement with the opposition, which he said would be welcome. But he added that “The participation of all sides in this dialogue is urgently needed to reach a solution supported by the Yemeni people.” He also specified that the nation’s youth should be brought into the process.

“We will not speculate about the choices the Yemeni people will make or the results of their political dialogue,” Mr. Toner said. “It is ultimately for the people of Yemen to decide how their country is governed.”

Nasser Arrabyee contributed reporting from Sana, Yemen, and Thom Shanker from Washington..

 

President of Yemen Offers to Resign for Immunity

  Police officers were confronted by a large crowd of antigovernment demonstrators in the Yemeni city of Taiz on Friday.

CAIRO — Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, agreed on Saturday to leave power after 32 years of autocratic rule, according to a top Yemeni official, but only if the opposition agrees to a list of conditions, including that he and his family be granted immunity.

var _obj = new NYTMM.FadingSlideShow($("nytmm_embed947"),190,126,chameleonData); _obj.setPhotoData(chameleonData.photos); Video interviews with more than two dozen people under 30, from Libya to the West Bank, talking about their generation’s moment in history and prospects for the future.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh at a pro-government rally in Sana on Saturday.

Opposition leaders said they were prepared to accept most of the terms of the deal, which both they and a Yemeni official said would establish a coalition government with members of the opposition and ruling party. The president would turn over authority to the current vice president 30 days after a formal agreement was signed.

But the opposition said it could not guarantee at least one of Mr. Saleh’s demands — that demonstrations be halted — and opposition members said they would quickly present a counteroffer to the president. The opposition said it had little influence with the tens of thousands of mainly young protesters who have been demanding Mr. Saleh’s departure.

Even if the opposition and the government agree to a deal, it is unclear if the demonstrators will go along, especially after pro-government snipers brutally crushed a protest on March 18, killing 52.

Mr. Saleh is a wily political survivor, and it was unclear whether his offer was a real attempt to calm the political turmoil and growing demonstrations that have rocked his country for weeks or a way to shift blame for a stalemate to the opposition. His offer follows days of unrelenting pressure — from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring states fearful of more instability in the region — for him to step aside.

A Yemeni official portrayed the deal as one devised by the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional group dominated by Saudi Arabia. But a member of the council said it had presented only a framework for a political solution, not a plan with such specifics.

“The most important thing in the initiative to all parties, including Saleh himself, is for a smooth and peaceful transition of authority,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the negotiations. “Now the devil is in the details. This is up to them to decide, not up to us.”

Mr. Saleh has been an important ally of the United States in its efforts to stamp out Al Qaeda, which has an active branch in the country. The relationship became especially crucial to the United States after attempted terrorist attacks were linked to the Qaeda branch there. That included an attempt to bring down an airliner bound for the United States on Christmas Day 2009.

But in recent weeks, American officials began joining calls for Mr. Saleh to step down; they said the White House had determined that he would not make the changes necessary to bring stability to the country. American officials were also increasingly worried that the stalemate and continued violence there were allowing Qaeda members to become even more entrenched.

The State Department reacted somewhat cautiously Saturday. Acting Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said officials had seen news reports about President Saleh’s apparent acceptance of an agreement with the opposition, which he said would be welcome. But he added that “The participation of all sides in this dialogue is urgently needed to reach a solution supported by the Yemeni people.” He also specified that the nation’s youth should be brought into the process.

“We will not speculate about the choices the Yemeni people will make or the results of their political dialogue,” Mr. Toner said. “It is ultimately for the people of Yemen to decide how their country is governed.”

Nasser Arrabyee contributed reporting from Sana, Yemen, and Thom Shanker from Washington..

 

Advertising: Checkout Coupon Company Joins Boom in Online Discount Offers

The Catalina Marketing Corporation is introducing Coupon Network by Catalina, to be found online at Couponnetwork.com. Advertisers with offers on the Web site include pantry mainstays like Campbell Soup, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft Foods, Nestlé, Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever.

There are also some unexpected offers on Couponnetwork.com, among them savings on toys from the Fisher-Price division of Mattel and light bulbs from General Electric.

Coupon Network is an addition to the decades-old businesses that Catalina calls shopper-driven marketing, intended to help advertisers more efficiently and effectively reach target audiences. Catalina estimates that it distributes more than $6.5 billion in coupons to shoppers each year through its printers at store checkout counters.

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The checkout coupons provided by Catalina compete for consumer favor with coupons in free-standing inserts, which are the coupon booklets carried in Sunday newspapers; coupons in magazines and so-called penny-saver publications; and coupons distributed by direct mail.

Catalina is so well known for checkout coupons that many devoted couponers, as avid discount-seekers refer to themselves, call the offers “Catalinas.” There are few higher accolades in marketing than a brand becoming synonymous with a product, whether it is Band-Aid, Kleenex or Q-Tip.

Still, the online coupon field is alluring, because it is booming. Two factors are feeding its growth.

One is the increasing influence of the Internet in everyday life. Not only are there printers in millions of homes, readily printing out coupons from Web sites, but there is also the phenomenon of social daily-deal coupons from companies like Groupon and LivingSocial.

The other factor benefiting online coupons is the recent bumpy economy. Coupon redemption rates had been falling for decades until the recent recession.

Although online coupons account for only 1 percent of all coupons distributed, they account for about 10 percent of all coupons redeemed, said Susan Gear, group vice president for digital at Catalina in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Ms. Gear also noted that consumers “can print out coupons for exactly the products they want,” which adds to their appeal.

For some time, Ms. Gear said, Catalina had been considering an entry into the online coupon realm, joining Web sites like Coolsavings.com, Coupons.com, Couponmom.com, Redplum.com and Smartsource.com.

The idea gathered momentum after Catalina took technological steps in the last couple of years that included offering coupons by mobile e-mail, handling Target’s coupons section on its Web site and acquiring E-centives, an Internet coupon company.

In developing the Web site, Catalina consulted with advertisers, retailers and bloggers, among them the “Super-Coupon Queen,” Jill Cataldo.

“They’ve got a lot of great printable coupons” on Couponnetwork.com, said Ms. Cataldo, of Huntley, Ill., who has a Web site, Jillcataldo.com, and writes “Super-Couponing Tips,” a nationally syndicated column.

Coupon Network “is doing a good job giving us coupons we might not have seen before and are pretty relevant to what I buy,” she added.

Those are welcome words to an advertiser like Karl Schmidt, director for promotional marketing at General Mills in Golden Valley, Minn. “We’ve been going digital with print-at-home coupons since tests in 2001,” he said.

“In the early days of print-at-home, six, seven years ago, there were issues with redemption,” Mr. Schmidt said, as retailers declined to accept them. As that largely disappeared, digital coupons have become “a significant percentage of our spending,” he added.

“We get great results; it’s the perfect self-targeting medium,” Mr. Schmidt said. “And they’re available 24/7.”

Also, “digital coupons attract younger consumers,” he said, “who aren’t buying the Sunday newspapers” that carry free-standing inserts.

In the digital coupon realm, Catalina executives “are playing come from behind, which they’re probably not used to,” Mr. Schmidt said. “But they have strong content and a strong sales force.”

Another point in Catalina’s favor is that Couponnetwork.com includes a type of Catalina in-store offer, called YourBucks, that are prized by couponers like Ms. Cataldo because they offer discounts off whatever they buy the next time they shop rather than savings on a single specified item the way regular coupons do.

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The retailers whose checkouts have been home to Catalina’s printers are unlikely to bemoan the company’s expansion online because they, too, have been going digital.

“More and more of our offerings are moving online as well, replacing circular coupons,” said Karen Meleta, a vice president at ShopRite, part of the Wakefern Food Corporation in Keasbey, N.J.

There is a section of Shoprite.com devoted to YourBucks along with other coupons.

Ms. Gear said Catalina has also been considering initiatives in areas like daily deals and group buying, adding, “We’re working with our clients to figure out how to market in this new world.”

“There’s a fun, engaging, gaming element to couponing,” Ms. Gear said. “We are exploring how you take the concept of social networks and add that to it.”

Among the attractive aspects of how social coupons work are the “element of urgency to the daily-deal buying,” she added, and their interruptive nature as companies “send out texts or e-mails.”

Because Catalina is privately held, she added, the company would not disclose how much it has spent on developing Coupon Network. Catalina is owned by the investment firm Hellman & Friedman.

 

In Singapore, the Party in Power Offers New Faces

 

SINGAPORE — After a painstaking search involving hundreds of man-hours and very likely thousands of cups of tea, Singapore’s overpowering political machine, the People’s Action Party, has presented to the public its carefully vetted crop of next-generation candidates for an election it is virtually certain to dominate again.

The party, which has never been out of power since Singapore became a self-governing state in 1959, now holds 82 of the 84 elected seats in Parliament and is expected to come close to that number again in the next election. It has introduced 24 new candidates over the past month, in a regular generational cycle that party leaders say is more significant than usual this year because the new slate probably includes the next prime minister.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has not yet announced the date of the election, which must be held by February 2012. But the People’s Action Party, or P.A.P., introduced its election manifesto on Monday and is already on the campaign trail, as are several smaller parties.

While Singapore has a multiparty system, opposition parties are hindered by a lack of funds, by the reluctance of potential candidates to challenge the government, by a configuration of districts that favors the governing party and by the sheer organizational power of the P.A.P. All 84 elected seats are being contested; the Constitution provides for the appointment of a small number of nonelected members.

But given the dominance of the P.A.P., the party’s search process — involving background checks, psychological tests and rounds of what are known as “tea session” get-togethers — has become, for all practical purposes, the system by which Singapore chooses its government and leaders.

“The people we’re bringing in now are not ready to be prime minister today,” Mr. Lee said this month. “But somebody amongst them or amongst the next batch — but I hope amongst the earlier ones — one day I hope will be prime minister.”

There are issues in this campaign — rising prices and rising immigration chief among them — but the elections are not so much about policy as about the people who will make the policies, mostly behind closed doors.

All of this is in line with the P.A.P.’s style of single-party governance: long-term decisions made by an inner circle, without the distractions of a substantial opposition or the time pressures of electoral deadlines. Public debate can make issues “harder to solve,” the prime minister said this month.

“I would say that our concerns about adversarial politics is why we feel that it’s good for us to have the P.A.P. as a broad-based party representing many views and having some of these trade-offs and tensions resolved within the party rather than between parties,” he said.

Asked whether there were not 20 people equally qualified to run against the P.A.P., Matthias Yao, who is retiring as a member of Parliament after four terms in office, said, “If we did have 40 good people, why not put them in one team, not two teams, when the other half by definition must oppose what the first team is doing?”

In the five years since the last election, the governing party has had “tea sessions” with more than 260 prospects, sometimes traveling abroad if these individuals had overseas jobs, Education Minister Ng Eng Heng, a senior party member, said in a recent forum.

“We didn’t always tell them why we were talking to them,” he said. “There were some tea participants whom we saw through changes in jobs. Some got married, pregnant, delivered. We saw them in various forms, antepartum and postpartum.”

As part of the process, Mr. Ng said, “We shortlisted some for intense, eight-hour psychological profiling.” Each prospect attended at least five tea sessions with members of a six-person interview panel, and the fittest of them were sent to a final session with the prime minister, said a member of the panel, K. Shanmugam.

 

Fujitsu offers UK fast rural net

 13 April 2011 Last updated at 10:34 ET  Many rural areas lack access to fast broadband technology, such as fibre optics. Fujitsu is to create a superfast broadband network for rural parts of the UK, rivalling BT's service.

Virgin Media and TalkTalk have already said they will use it to provide internet services. It will also be open to local authorities.

Much of the system will be built on BT infrastructure, such as underground ducting and phone poles, which it has been forced to open up to competitors.

Fujitsu wants ￡500m of government money to help fund the project.

That would account for the lion's share of the ￡530m the government has set aside to stimulate rural broadband projects.

This cash comes from a fund originally intended to help the digital switchover. A further ￡300m, from the BBC licence fee, will be available after 2015.

The money will be given to local authorities with Fujitsu able to bid to provide the network in that area.

Without it, the network will not be built, Andy Stevenson, managing director of network solutions at Fujitsu told the BBC.

"Assuming we are successful we would hope to add our first retail customer in 2012 and reach 5 million in three to five years," he said.

He is hopeful that local authorities will band together to provide funds for the project.

"We don't want to end up with 40 fragmented networks so it makes sense for regions to come together. That is not mandated but it is what we expect to happen," he said.

The announcement comes as research suggests just 1% of UK households currently have access to superfast broadband, defined as speeds of over 25Mbps.

The Fujitsu network will offer fibre optic cabling directly to homes - so-called Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH). That could bring speeds in excess of 1Gbps with the potential to go even faster.

The system would be more sophisticated than BT's superfast network, which relies mainly on slower Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology. FTTC offers speeds of up to 40Mbps.

Genuine choice

Other ISPs, community groups and local authorities will be able to take advantage of the network.

Duncan Tait, chief executive of Fujitsu thinks it could breathe new life into rural communities.

"If done correctly this can be a key vehicle to accelerate recovery in the UK and bring genuine choice to generations of communities staved of participating fully in the UK economy," he said.

Virgin Media's chief executive Neil Berkett described it as: "a once in a lifetime opportunity to make the ambition of a digitally enabled society a reality beyond the country's cities and towns".

It is estimated that a third of the UK will not be served by existing commercial broadband solutions because it is not economically viable to offer them in remote areas.

Communication minister Ed Vaizey said the planned network was "exactly the sort of ambition and innovation" that the government wanted to stimulate.

Sebastien Lahtinen, co-founder of broadband news site ThinkBroadband said the collaboration between Fujitsu, Virgin Media and TalkTalk would provide "a real alternative to BT wholesale which could help jump ahead of urban areas".

"It is exactly what campaigners for the final third have been seeking. The UK could be about to take the biggest leap forward in next-generation broadband access," he said.

Modest pace

However, one sticking point could be the price BT is proposing to charge for access to its ducts and poles. It was forced to open them up to rivals but ISPs, including Virgin Media and Sky, have written to the government asking it to reassess the price.

In the letter, sent earlier this month, Virgin Media said it would be more cost-effective to build an entirely separate duct and pole network than pay the prices being asked by BT.

The government has said it wants to make the UK the best place in Europe for superfast broadband by 2015, but new research suggests that it is being adopted at a relatively modest pace.

Broadband analysis firm Point Topic found that just 1% of homes currently have broadband speeds of 25Mbps or above.

By the end of 2010, there were 175,000 superfast broadband lines, the majority made up from the 118,000 Virgin Media customers signed up for its 50Mbps broadband service. The rest came from BT or alternative operators.

"At that rate we should pass the quarter of a million milestone sometime between now and the end of April," said Point Topic chief analyst Tim Johnson.