Alleged shooter’s name prompts response from American Muslims

Washington (CNN) — Ibrahim Hooper knows the drill.

When news first broke Thursday that a shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, killed and injured U.S. soldiers, the national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations wrote a statement of condemnation.

He only sent it out later, when reports emerged that the alleged shooter’s name was Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

“As soon as we saw what appeared to be a Muslim name, we issued our statement,” Hooper said. “Until that time, we were praying that no Muslim would be involved.”

That’s the reality of crisis management for the Muslim-American community, said Hooper, who handles communications for the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.
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GM plans to cut 10,000 Opel jobs

General Motors (GM) has confirmed that it plans to cut 10,000 jobs across its European car unit Opel, which includes the Vauxhall brand in the UK.

The announcement comes a day after GM said it was cancelling its deal to sell Opel to Canadian car parts firm Magna.

The 10,000 planned job cuts is broadly similar to the amount Magna proposed.

Unite, the main union at Vauxhall, which employs 5,500 people, said its task was to minimise the number of jobs lost, and to ensure they are voluntary.

Tony Woodley, Unite’s general secretary, said it was “inevitable” there would be some job losses at Vauxhall.

He added that it was right that GM should hold onto the two Vauxhall plants in Luton and Ellesmere Port “because this country is one of its strongest and most loyal customers”.

Mr Woodley said it was now “absolutely certain” that GM will need repayable loans “from four or five” European Union nations.

Opel employs a total of 54,000 workers across Europe, with 25,000 based in Germany.
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General Motors cancels Opel sale

General Motors (GM) has cancelled plans to sell a majority stake in its European car business Opel, including its UK brand Vauxhall.

The US giant said in a statement that its board had made the decision because of “an improving business environment for GM over the past few months”.

GM had agreed to sell Opel and Vauxhall to Canadian car parts firm Magna.

It added that it would now be seeking aid for Opel from the German government and other European states.

GM added that it had also come to its decision because of the importance of Opel and Vauxhall to its global strategy.

It said it would now “initiate a restructuring of its European operations in earnest”.

However, its decision is likely to cause much anger in Europe, where the planned sale of Opel has been dragging on for months, and the German government had pledged Magna 4.5bn euros ($6.7bn; £4bn) of loans.

Government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said Berlin regretted the decision, adding that it wanted GM to repay 1.5bn euros in bridge financing extended by German banks.
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The problem with Don Vito’s friends

Troubling questions for the opposition party, and for Spanish politics

HE OILED his hair, told employees to call him Don Vito (the Mafia boss played by Marlon Brando in “The Godfather” films) and, according to Spanish investigators, allegedly kept politicians on his payroll. Documents released by a Spanish court indicate that for Francisco Correa, a Spanish businessman, bribery, fraud, money-laundering were all part of his way of doing business.

Those same documents have also lifted the lid on Mr Correa’s extensive network of friends and clients inside Spain’s opposition People’s Party (PP). To the immense embarrassment of a party that aspires to govern, they include everyone from a former party treasurer to a son-in-law of the former prime minister, José María Aznar.

Mr Correa (pictured above) has been remanded in prison, pending investigation. A flurry of forced resignations and expulsions is unlikely to mark the end of the affair. A police report released by the court claims some €5.5m ($8.2m) went into the pockets of 17 PP politicians.
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A prepackaged pratfall

CIT, a lender to thousands of small businesses, files for bankruptcy

THE most gut-wrenching failures may be over, but the financial crisis continues to claim the occasional big victim. CIT, a lender to small and medium-sized businesses, from clothing retailers to Dunkin’ Donuts franchisees, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday November 1st after failing to garner enough support for a debt-restructuring plan. With $71 billion in assets, the century-old firm is only one-ninth the size of Lehman Brothers, which collapsed in September 2008. Nevertheless, its Chapter 11 filing augurs ill for America’s corporate minnows, whose financing options have narrowed dramatically over the past year.

Financial-services firms have a harder time than most bouncing back from bankruptcy, because their business relies so heavily on trust, which has a tendency to evaporate in such situations. CIT has improved its chances by securing the support of the vast majority of its bondholders for a “prepackaged” filing that will reduce its debt by $10 billion while allowing its subsidiaries to go on operating. Among those persuaded to come on board is Carl Icahn, a veteran corporate gadfly who had been trying to derail CIT’s restructuring in the hope of profiting by picking through its entrails; he has even offered a $1 billion back-up loan. The firm’s advisers say it could emerge from bankruptcy by the end of the year.
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Canadian’s bid to sue US rejected

A New York court has ruled against allowing a Syrian-born Canadian to sue US authorities over his mistaken 2002 arrest for alleged terrorism links.

Maher Arar was held at New York’s John F Kennedy airport following erroneous advice from Canadian officials that he had links to Islamic militants.

Mr Arar was then flown to Syria where he claims he was tortured, something which Syrian authorities deny.

In a statement, Mr Arar described the US ruling as a loss to the rule of law.

After exonerating him in 2007, Canadian authorities paid him 10.5m Canadian dollars (US$8.9m; £4.54m) in compensation.

Mr Arar is now seeking redress from the US, arguing that he was a victim of “extraordinary rendition”, a process in which terrorism suspects are transferred to foreign countries for harsh interrogation.
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Obama urges ‘new Afghan chapter’

US President Barack Obama has urged Afghan leader Hamid Karzai to “write a new chapter” in governing Afghanistan, after its disputed presidential poll.

Mr Obama said that in a phone call, he had also asked Mr Karzai to intensify efforts to eradicate corruption.

He was speaking after the Afghan president had been declared winner of August’s fraud-marred election.

Earlier, poll officials scrapped a planned run-off following the withdrawal of Mr Karzai’s challenger.

‘Legitimate leader’

Mr Obama said he had congratulated Mr Karzai on his re-election.

He described the poll as “messy”, but stressed that the final outcome was “in accordance with Afghan law”.

Mr Obama said Mr Karzai “assured me that he understood the importance of this moment. But as I indicated to him, the proof is not going to be in words, it’s going to be in deeds”.
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Glaciers disappearing from Kilimanjaro

(CNN) — The ice and snow that cap majestic Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are vanishing before our eyes.

If current conditions persist, climate change experts say, Kilimanjaro’s world-renowned glaciers, which have covered Africa’s highest peak for centuries, will be gone within the next two decades.

“In a very real sense, these glaciers are being decapitated from the surface down,” said Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. Thompson is co-author of a study on Kilimanjaro published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study’s authors blame the disappearing ice on increases in global temperatures and diminished snowfall at Kilimanjaro’s summit.

Previous studies of Kilimanjaro’s glaciers have relied on aerial photographs to measure the rate of the retreating ice. For this new survey, scientists climbed the mountain and drilled deep into the glaciers to measure the volume of the ice fields atop the 19,331-foot (5,892-meter) peak.

The ice sheet that capped Kilimanjaro in 2007 was 85 percent smaller than the one that covered its plateau in 1912, paleoclimatologists explained in the study.

The mountain’s ice cover shrank about 1 percent a year from 1912 to 1953, a rate that has accelerated in recent years. From 1989 to 2007, that rate jumped to 2.5 percent a year. Since 2000, the plateau’s three remaining ice fields have shrunk by 26 percent, scientists found.
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