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Alitalia favors Air France-KLM bid

MILAN, Italy (AP) — The board of Alitalia on Friday named Air France-KLM as its preferred bidder for privatizing the ailing state-controlled airline, but the ultimate decision will be made by the government next month.

The board said in a release that the Air France-KLM plan offers the appropriate solution, saying the proposal was both financially more convenient and highly credible.

It issued its decision after the close of trading, following a 6 1/2-hour meeting during which it evaluated competing offers from Air France and the Italian airline Air One.

Air France-KLM said it would make an immediate capital increase of 750 million euros (US$1.08 billion) to revamp cabin design, in-flight entertainment and ground services to restore Alitalia’s image and its stature as an international company.

Alitalia shares rose 2.95 percent to $1.15 on opening on Friday as the market signaled eagerness at even a preliminary step toward the sale of the loss-making airline, which has been dragging on for a year.

While the board issued its decision on Friday, the government this week said it wanted time to review the offers, amid reports ministers are split over which company should be the sole bidder.

Both leading bidders said they would make an immediate cash injection and modernize the fleet while laying off workers.

Meanwhile, a consortium led by Italian business lawyer Antonio Baldassarre has launched a third bid.

Air France-KLM said it would make an immediate capital increase of $1.08 billion to revamp cabin design, in-flight entertainment and ground services to restore Alitalia’s image and its stature as an international company.

Air One, Italy’s second-biggest airline, said it plans a total investment of $7.63 billion by 2012, including a capital hike of at least $1.44 billion.

It said Alitalia could break even by 2009 through a fleet renovation and a five-year, $4.32 billion investment on 130 new planes.

Although Alitalia has been losing money for years, analysts say its route network makes it an attractive investment.

The government owns a 49.9 percent share and has been shopping around since last December for a buyer — first for a 39 percent share, then for its entire stake.

An auction failed this summer after bidders complained they were denied access to Alitalia books and not guaranteed full control of the airline.

Even now, analysts have said it is not clear if the government would retain the right to exercise a so-called golden share, giving it a say in strategic and contentious decisions involving routes and employment levels.

The Alitalia board failed in two previous meetings in the last week to decide on a bidder.
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Devil in the details for Romney

WASHINGTON (CNN) — For Mitt Romney, the devil is in the details.

A few of his campaign trail anecdotes — especially those he relates while on the defensive — come complete with elements that pack an extra political punch, but sometimes seem to require a steady stream of qualifiers after the fact.

During his recent speech on faith, the former Massachusetts governor told his audience how he had witnessed his father, George Romney, marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Romney repeated the claim that his father, who was the governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, had marched with King on NBC’s Meet the Press last weekend, growing emotional as he discussed his own reaction when he learned that Mormon leadership had decided to allow black people to participate fully in church rites.

I’m not going to distance myself in any way from my faith, Romney told NBC’s Tim Russert. But you can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at, at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mom was a tireless crusader for civil rights.

But Romney never did witness his father march with King, as the campaign now acknowledges.

Romney’s presidential campaign says that the elder Romney marched with the civil rights leader, that he told his sons he had, and that written accounts from the time back up the claim.

But experts quoted in a Boston Globe investigation this week concluded that the event never happened.

It’s a figure of speech, Romney said this week of the claim he’d witnessed his father and King together, like saying You know, I speak in the sense of ‘I saw my dad become president of American Motors.’ I wasn’t actually there when he became president of American Motors, but I saw him in the figurative sense of he marched with Martin Luther King.

It isn’t the first time Romney has been forced to back down from a convenient defense.

Guns have been a particular problem for him. Earlier this year, he told a New Hampshire voter: I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life, but he admitted later that he did not own a gun or possess a hunting license, and had been hunting only twice in his life.

During Romney’s recent Meet the Press interview, he said that his gubernatorial bid had received a National Rifle Association endorsement — but later conceded that the group’s support had been limited to phone banking efforts, which is not an official endorsement.

That’s what happens in the course of a campaign, when everything you say gets jumped on, Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said Friday. Do you think every word that came out of your mouth this month was completely accurate? Can anyone’s speech stand up to that kind of scrutiny?

When campaign reporters pressed him on his King claims this week, Romney explained that he saw his father march with the civil rights leader in the figurative sense, but did not literally see the two men walk side by side.

The reference of seeing my father lead in civil rights, and seeing my father march with Martin Luther King, is in the sense of this figurative awareness of and recognition of his leadership, he said. I’ve tried to be as accurate as I can be. If you look at the literature or look at the dictionary, the term ’saw’ includes being aware of — in the sense I’ve described.

I’m an English literature major. When we say, ‘I saw the Patriots win the World Series,’ it doesn’t necessarily mean you were there, he said. (The Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 2007. The New England Patriots last won the Super Bowl in 2005.)

The explanation didn’t quite satisfy the media. But will it be enough for voters?

A CNN poll conducted earlier this month found that a quarter of New Hampshire’s Republicans found Romney the most believable candidate in the race — enough to give him a tie for the top spot in that category.
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Police investigate FedEx truck hijacking

NEW YORK (AP) — Gunmen hijacked a FedEx delivery truck loaded with Christmas presents early Friday on a Manhattan street, officials said.

The driver, who was found later in Brooklyn, wasn’t hurt, police and FedEx Corp. spokesman Steve Barber said.

The truck — an 18-wheeler and one of the biggest FedEx vehicles — was later found abandoned in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn around 5:30 a.m.

There was cargo inside, officials said.

Jim McCluskey, a spokesman for the Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx, said no packages were missing and that those in the truck would soon be sent out.

No arrests were made, and no suspects have been identified, police said.

The FedEx Express truck was headed to a company facility in Newark, New Jersey, after midnight when two men brandishing a gun confronted the driver at a traffic light, police said.

The driver was forced out of the truck and into a car.
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Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli divorce

LOS ANGELES (AP) — After seven years of separation, Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli have jumped forward and completed an amicable divorce.

The Los Angeles Superior Court judgment Thursday didn’t provide details about a custody arrangement for their 16-year-old son, Wolfgang.

The bass player is with his father on a Van Halen reunion tour.

Bertinelli cited irreconcilable differences when she filed for divorce in December 2005. The couple were married in 1981.

Van Halen, 52, and his band have sold 80 million albums worldwide.

His guitar licks and David Lee Roth’s flamboyant stage persona sent songs such as Jump, Panama and Hot for Teacher to the top of the charts.

Bertinelli, 47, starred in the TV series One Day at a Time and Touched by An Angel.
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Senate stays in session over holiday to thwart Bush

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The last political scuffle of the year between the White House and the Democratic-led Congress played out on the floor of the Senate Friday morning — even though nearly all the senators had left the Capitol for the Christmas holiday earlier in the week.

In a session that lasted under a minute, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, opened and then immediately gaveled closed the Senate.

His sole reason for doing so was to block President Bush from naming controversial recess appointments — a constitutional mechanism that allows the president, during congressional recesses, to fill top government posts for up to one year and avoid Senate confirmation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced late Wednesday he would keep the Senate open with a series of pro forma sessions through mid-January.

Tense talks had just broken down with the White House on a deal that would have allowed the president to make dozens of those appointments if he agreed not to appoint one controversial official, Steven Bradbury, to be the permanent head of the influential Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.

Bush declined to accept the Democrats’ offer, and Reid refused to approve Bradbury because of Democratic concerns about Bradbury’s involvement in crafting legal opinions for the administration on interrogation techniques of terrorism suspects.

Similar sessions were conducted for the same reason over the Thanksgiving recess.

Webb won’t be the only senator tasked with presiding over the shortened sessions. Other Democrats — including Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Cardin of Maryland and Chuck Schumer of New York — will share the duty.
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