Fair Proxy Web

Alibaba soars 122 pct on HK debut

HONG KONG, China (AP) — Chinese e-commerce portal Alibaba.com debuted on the Hong Kong stock market Tuesday, with its shares soaring 122 percent to 30 Hong Kong dollars from its issue price of HK$13.50.

Demand has been heavy for the business-to-business Web site, which raised more than $1.5 billion through its global offering of 858.9 million shares, a 17 percent stake of the company.

The public portion of its offering was 257 times oversubscribed.

Investors have been keen to tap into the booming Chinese technology market. Alibaba.com said its share sale was the biggest technology IPO since Google.

I want to turn the company into a leading e-commerce platform for China, Asia and even the world, Jack Ma, founder of parent company Alibaba Group, said at a forum in Taipei.

Ma disputed that China’s business climate makes it difficult for e-commerce to grow.

People think that there is no mutual trust in China and the Chinese government imposes too many restrictions, Ma said. Yet only when you work harder than others under rough conditions do you have a chance to succeed.

Ma attributed Alibaba Group’s success to good teamwork and clear focus.

I have seen many who are more clever and hardworking than (my team and me), Ma said. But we have a loyal team which has stayed on the same course and not wavered.
found here.

Thousands mistakenly allowed past U.S. border, report says

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Government watchdogs have found that thousands of people who shouldn’t have been admitted to the United States were mistakenly allowed in last year because of security lapses at legal border crossings.

The number of inadmissible aliens who managed to enter through official ports of entry in 2006 was not disclosed in Monday’s report from the Government Accountability Office.

However, a source who has seen a full version of the report, in which those statistics were included, put the total at 21,000.

The author of the GAO report, Richard Stana, said most of those who were wrongly allowed to enter were economic migrants who did not present a security risk.

But as we saw in the recent past, it doesn’t take too many people getting through the ports of entry to cause some real trouble, he said. And not everyone who comes in and is a danger needs to be a terrorist. It could be someone connected with a criminal enterprise.

Understaffing and turnover at Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the nation’s 326 land, sea and air ports of entry, has contributed to the problem, according to the GAO report. However, investigators also cited weak management controls and complacency and inattentiveness by some officers.

GAO investigators arriving at one point of entry found no border agents in the inspection booth, while at other locations, agents didn’t ask for travel documents, according to the report.

Supervisors aren’t demanding that the agents do their jobs and ask the right questions and look at the right documents, Stana said. It’s because they can’t get people trained properly, and it’s because staffing is short.

The Customs and Border Protection’s stance is that at busy border crossings, it has to balance security with commerce.

As a result of its own earlier investigations, Customs and Border Protection issued new policies and procedures to tighten security at ports of entry, but, months later, GAO inspectors found that many of the same weaknesses persisted.

In July, Customs and Border Protection issued new procedures for conducting inspections at border crossings. However, GAO investigators concluded the agency has not put the management structure in place to make sure those procedures are consistently implemented at all of the crossings.

Monday’s report confirms that Customs and Border Protection must do a better job of recruiting new officers and retaining and training those already on the job, said Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Employee retention and recruitment problems at CBP may be indicative of larger morale and vacancy problems at the Department (of Homeland Security), but that’s no excuse, he said in a statement. While this administration pumps millions of dollars into hundreds of miles of real and virtual fences, it must not ignore critical vulnerabilities at our ports of entry.

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 17,600 Customs and Border Protection officers manning ports of entry, said the agency is understaffed and poorly managed and officers are overworked and not adequately trained.

About 400 million people enter the U.S. through legal checkpoints every year, according to The Associated Press.

It is clear that CBP needs thousands more front-line employees, not just to do the job the nation has a right to expect but to provide enough manpower to staff ports of entry while critically necessary training is provided, said Colleen Kelley, the union’s president, in a statement.
found here.

Bush urges Musharraf to hold elections, sever ties with military

LAHORE, Pakistan (CNN) — The United States has urged Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf to sever his links with the military and reinstate civilian rule.

Our hope is that he will restore democracy as quickly as possible, President Bush said Monday after a White House meeting with Turkey’s prime minister.

Musharraf imposed emergency rule in Pakistan on Saturday, saying the suspension of his country’s constitution was made necessary by the growing threat of terrorism and out-of-control judicial activism.

By imposing a state of emergency, Musharraf suspended Pakistan’s constitution and put elections that had been scheduled for January on indefinite hold. Press freedoms have been curbed and independent television stations taken off the air.

Bush said Monday he recognized the threat Musharraf faces from extremists, citing past attempts on Musharraf’s life, but said the emergency measures undermine democracy. Watch Bush’s message to Musharraf

We expect there to be elections as soon as possible and that the president should remove his military uniform, Bush said.

Musharraf is also Pakistan’s military chief. Pakistan is a nuclear power and a key U.S. ally in the war on terror.

Senior U.S. officials said U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson and other senior ambassadors — including Britain’s — met with Musharraf on Monday to raise Washington’s concerns with the heavy-handed measures taken in Lahore, where police, wielding batons, clashed with lawyers and journalists Monday outside the courthouse.

Video showed plainclothes security officials herding protesters onto large buses, sometimes dragging them through the streets, as uniformed officials shot tear gas canisters in an attempt to control the demonstrations.

The confrontation took place as more than 1,500 lawyers were arrested across the country — 1,200 in Lahore itself and more than 300 in Faisalabad and Karachi — with police blocking roads leading to courthouses in major cities.

Senior Pakistani officials said the figure of 1,500 detainees is an underestimate and that several thousand lawyers across the country of 160 million people have been detained. They added that police stations are packed with the detainees, forcing the government to use schools as temporary holding cells.

Political opposition figures have also been rounded up. Qazi Hussain Ahmad, president of the country’s largest Islamic party, said he has been placed under house arrest. Ahmad, a prominent opposition leader and head of the Religious Party Alliance, is confined to his home in Lahore. The Associated Press reported that Pakistan’s opposition groups believe about 3,500 people are detained. Others under arrest include more than 60 members of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, a senior police official said.

Bhutto’s spokesman called Musharraf’s declaration an act of terror against civil society and predicted it marked the beginning of the end of Musharraf.

Unlike other opposition leaders, Bhutto remains free and her spokesman denied reports she may have struck a deal with Musharraf. He said Musharraf would face a severe backlash if he arrested Bhutto.

Bhutto condemned the arrests of her party members at a news conference Monday in Karachi and said she will head to Islamabad on Wednesday for a meeting of Pakistan’s opposition parties.

She also called on world leaders to put pressure on the Pakistani president to reinstate the constitution.

Britain called on Pakistan’s government to release all political prisoners detained under the emergency. A spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Britain is reviewing its aid program to Pakistan, worth $493 million over the next three years. Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao said elections would not be held until things become normal. Watch interior minister discuss the emergency

While Musharraf said the suspension of the constitution was made necessary by the growing threat of terrorism and out-of-control judicial activism, opponents said Musharraf was trying to avoid a Supreme Court decision expected in the coming days possibly ruling him ineligible for the presidential term he just won.

The United States postponed a Pentagon official’s visit to Pakistan this week for a yearly meeting with his Pakistani defense counterpart.

Opposition parties had petitioned the Supreme Court to declare Musharraf ineligible for a third term as president because he remains the head of the country’s military.
found here.

U.S., Turkey to share intelligence on Kurdish rebel group

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The United States will help Iraq and Turkey crack down on Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq, President Bush said Monday after meeting with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Bush told reporters U.S. and Turkish commanders will share intelligence on the rebels.

With Turkey threatening to launch cross-border raids against the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, Bush pointed to the weekend release of eight Turkish soldiers captured by the rebels as evidence that a crackdown is under way.

I’ve assured the prime minister that we’re working very carefully and closely with people in the Kurdish part of Iraq to help deal with the movement of these people, to help locate and find and stop the leadership of the PKK from continuing doing what they’re doing, Bush said.

Erdogan told reporters his people are demanding action against the PKK, and that a solution to the border crisis must come in the shortest time possible.

Turkey has no patience left to deal with mechanisms which have been dragging over time, which were tried but did not yield any results, he said.

However, Erdogan was asked later at the National Press Club whether he was satisfied with what he heard from Bush. I’m happy, the prime minister said.

The United States and the European Union consider the PKK a terrorist organization, and Bush called it an enemy of Turkey, a free Iraq and the United States of America.

Bush said top U.S. and Turkish military officials have set up an arrangement to keep in touch with each other and with the U.S. commander in Baghdad, Gen. David Petraeus.

Good, sound intelligence, delivered on a real-time basis, using modern technology, will make it much easier to deal effectively with people who are using murder as a weapon to achieve political objectives, he said.

Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, has put tens of thousands of troops along the border with Iraq after a series of attacks by the PKK. Erdogan had said he would stay any decision on possible action until after his talks with Bush, which lasted nearly two hours.

The rebels have spent two decades fighting for an autonomous Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. But Washington fears a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region could destabilize Iraq’s U.S.-backed government and jeopardize supply lines for more than 160,000 American troops in Iraq.

The crisis threatens to shake up Iraq’s Kurdish provinces, which largely have avoided the sectarian and insurgent warfare that has plagued the rest of the country over the past four years. Washington and Ankara are pressuring the Iraqi government and Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government to clamp down on the PKK, and some Kurdish authorities have taken some steps to defuse the standoff.

The Iraqi government helped secure the release of eight Turkish soldiers abducted by Kurdish rebels two weeks ago. The soldiers were handed over to Kurdistan regional government officials in northern Iraq on Sunday, and have returned to Turkey.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki vowed to close PKK offices and front businesses across the country. A Kurdish political party with ties to the rebels was shut down over the weekend, the state-run television network al-Iraqiya reported. Iraqi authorities have announced tighter controls at airports and border crossings, and suspected PKK members captured by the government will be tried in Iraqi courts on terrorist charges, al-Maliki said.

Nechirvan Barzani — the prime minister of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government — wrote Monday in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that the autonomous government welcomes the meeting between Bush and Erdogan and said the only solution to this decades-old problem lies in diplomacy.

The KRG is, and will remain, fully prepared to find a long-term solution to this problem, he said. We must discard the rhetoric of violence and recognize that a military response to the current crisis would be a disaster for everyone except the PKK.
found here.

A year from Election Day, Clinton remains person to beat

WASHINGTON (CNN) — With the election of the next president a year away, Sen. Hillary Clinton remains the person to beat, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday suggests.

As the countdown begins to November 4, 2008, the the New York Democrat continues to dominate the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and comes out ahead when voters are asked whether they prefer her or the GOP front-runner, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

But Clinton’s path to the White House is in no way certain. Clinton was criticized for her performance during a debate last week, and her rivals for the Democratic nomination have stepped up attacks that she has equivocated on her position on Iraq, Iran and other major issues.

The Republican presidential candidates have also stepped up their attacks on the Democratic front-runner, with each suggesting that he has the best chance of stopping Clinton.

The attacks may be working. The CNN/Opinion Research polls suggests that Clinton’s support has slipped from its height one month ago.

Clinton’s strength is about where it was throughout the summer, indicating that she has lost the support she gained last month but that Obama has not yet cut into her core constituency, CNN political director Keating Holland said.

Clinton is the top choice of 44 percent of the likely Democratic voters interviewed for the poll. Her closest rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, was the top choice of 25 percent, and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina has 14 percent.

All other Democratic candidates were in single digits. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was backed by 4 percent, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware by 3 percent, Sen. Christopher Dodd by 2 percent, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich by 2 percent and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel was at 1 percent.

The poll involved 467 interviews conducted on November 2-4 with Democrats or independents who lean Democratic. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. View the poll results

In an October CNN/Opinion Research poll, Clinton was supported by 51 percent of Democratic voters and had a 30 point lead over Obama.

During last week’s Democratic debate, Clinton received heavy criticism from her fellow Democratic presidential rivals, who are desperate to shake up the presidential race just months before the first voting occurs in the Iowa Caucus in early January.

Edwards was particularly aggressive during the debate, criticizing Clinton for her stance on Iraq, Iran and Social Security.

The American people … deserve a president of the United States that they know will tell them the truth and won’t say one thing one time and something different at a different time, Edwards said.

Edwards has also accused Clinton of being a corporate Democrat too willing to defend a corrupt Washington establishement.

We desperately need in the next president someone that recognizes we have a system in Washington that’s become broken, corruption has crept into it, and we have to tell the truth about that, Edwards said Monday. If you defend that system, I don’t believe you can bring about the change that America needs.

In the Republican presidential race, Giuliani continues to be the leading candidate, with the backing of 28 percent of the Republican primary voters polled. Former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee was backed by 19 percent. Sen. John McCain of Arizona was the top pick of 16 percent, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had 11 percent.

Of the remaining Republican candidates, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee received 10 percent, Texas Rep. Ron Paul 5 percent, California Rep. Duncan Hunter 4 percent and Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo 3 percent.

The poll involved telephone interviews with 397 Republicans or independents who lean Republican. The poll’s margin of error was 5 percentage points.

In a head-to-head matchup of the two front-runners, Clinton leads Giuliani 51 percent to 45 percent. That lead has increased since October, when Clinton led Giuliani 49 percent to 47 percent.

The overall political environment seems to favor the Democrats, partly because Democratic voters are more enthusiastic about the coming election and partly because the public is in a sour mood, which is usually not a good sign for the incumbent party, Holland said.

Only 42 percent of Americans think things are going well, while 58 percent think things are going badly, the poll found.

The public is not just pessimistic about the country — Americans are angry, Holland said. More than eight in 10 say they are angry about the way things are going in the country.

Clinton’s lead over Giuliani would be greater if a third-party candidate entered the race who believes abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, the poll found. In a three-way race, Clinton would get the support of 48 percent of voters, Giuliani 32 percent and the third-party candidate 18 percent.

The poll’s margin of error was plus-or-minus 3 percent.

My analysis of it is that [a third-party candidate] is more of an attempt to keep the nomination from me, Giuliani said. You know it is a tactic, and a legitimate one. People have to think about that and consider it.”

The lack of enthusiasm for Giuliani, particularly by social conservatives, could spell trouble for the GOP next year if he becomes the nominee, Holland said.

Only 27 percent of Republicans say they would feel enthusiastic if Giuliani won the GOP nod, and the remaining GOP candidates fare even worse, he said.
found here.